encouragement | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts Just Believe

This is the time of year many youth workers get disillusioned with their ministry. Another job opportunity piques interest or the thought of working a simple 9-5 becomes a little intoxicating to think about. The fun of the fall kickoff is in the rear view mirror; the big events have died down while students hunker down for the last couple months of the school year. The grass looks greener everywhere else, and you start to get down on yourself or look for a way out.

Feel familiar? If it does, read on and find some hope to fight the Spring-time itch:

Believe in your calling. 
You are called to do ministry—you are made for this! You stand shoulder to shoulder in the long line of incredible men and women God has used to further his kingdom. Satan is an expert at “kicking us while we’re down,” and he will also try to kick us during the “down times” of the ministry season.

I (Kurt) have found that the early spring is often the time of the year that I find myself a little frustrated in ministry; and it’s in these times Satan likes to kick me. Reminding myself of my calling and thanking God for allowing me to play a role in his kingdom is the best way to kick back.

Believe in your church. 
You are called to your church—maybe not for the rest of your life, but don’t let anyone else know that. Serve like you will be there for the rest of your life. When something happens to make you question that calling (maybe an unsupportive leader or discouraged pastor) make sure you get it all out on the table so it doesn’t fester inside and eventually cause damage. Maybe take some time today to reflect on the early days of hope and joy when you first started working with these students and believe again.

Believe in your people. 
You have the right people in your church to build a great team of youth workers. Believe in them enough to value their time, encourage them well and train them for the challenges of working with students. Pray for your leadership team before you delete this email, and send them an encouraging note letting them know you did!

Believe in students.
Students are young and immature—sometimes they say things quickly that sting or hurt you with their naïve words, unaware of the verbal damage they have caused. There may need to be a confrontation or a challenge to maturity, but chances are they need a leader who will love them and be long-suffering in his/her guidance over the long haul. Believe God has given you the right students to change your community for him.

I (Josh) started a fantastic spring tradition in our ministry a few years ago: For five weeks in a row our students are in charge of every aspect of our church services. Seeing them rise to the occasion always renews my belief in the teenagers God has called me to serve.

Not sure what you’re facing this Spring…or maybe we just needed to say some things to ourselves today. Just believe.

This post was written by Josh Griffin and Kurt Johnston and originally appeared as part of Simply Youth Ministry Today free newsletter. Subscribe to SYM Today right here.

Add Comment April 9, 2013

Chris WesleyMore Posts Give Every Teen a Voice

I have mixed feelings when it comes to student leadership groups within your student ministry. While it’s important to create leaders, to group them risks creating a click within the ministry. No matter what your feelings are on student leadership groups, it’s important to nurture teens to be leaders. One of the best ways to do this by giving them a voice.

It’s with a voice teens feel empowered, encouraged and valued. It’s with a voice that you are mobilizing the next generation. To give teens that voice you need to:

Encourage Them To Serve: Actions speak louder than words. Not only does service speak loud but it teaches humility and love. Allow teenagers to serve alongside of adults in ministry and mission. They’ll become visible to the rest of the congregation and community, and that’s huge. If they lead with their actions, you give their actions a physical voice that’s hard to ignore.

Seek Their Feedback: If you speak to teens you need to get their thoughts and input. To be proactive give them rough drafts of your message, ask them to comment of possible statements you might make. I do this by going on Facebook and messaging a few teens I know. Give them permission to share with you what they really think and they’ll support you in your leadership.

Brag About Them To Leadership: If there are teens in your ministry you want to spot light let the rest of your staff (Especially your pastor) know about their hard work. This will encourage coworkers to recognize the student leaders in your church and they’ll feel like they’ve been noticed. This will help them feel value beyond youth ministry.

Give Them A Platform: If teens are given the opportunity to share their faith publicly you prepare them for leadership roles in the future.

Playing in a worship band.
Giving a testimony.
Small group leading their younger peers.

Are all ways of how teens can lead as adults in the future. Not only are you giving them a platform; but, the opportunity to lead in the same way adults can lead. This will show them how they can lead in the future.

When teens feel like they have a voice they’ll embrace your ministry more. They’ll be taking on responsibility to grow the church and have it function at a high level. When they feel empowered they feel motivated. When teens have a voice you’ve done your job of mobilizing the next generation.

How do you give teen’s in your ministry a voice?

Chris Wesley (@chrisrwesley)

1 View Comments March 28, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: Authentic Encouragement

Authentic encouragement is an important part of a successful youth ministry. Here are some tips to effectively encourage students.

1) BE SPECIFIC

Don’t just tell a student that they rock. Tell them why they rock. The more specific you are the more encouraging it is to the student.

2) DON’T BE or SOUND CONDESCENDING

It’s very easy to sound condescending when you are trying to be encouraging. Make sure that you are not talking down to them, and be aware of your tone. When in doubt practice the statement with yourself or another adult leader to test if it is condescending. I know that may seem weird, but it is better than inadvertently being condescending to a student when you are just trying to encourage them.

3) MEAN WHAT YOU SAY

Students can tell when you aren’t being sincere. Don’t try to fake it, mean what you say!

4) WATCH FOR THE MIDDLE STUDENTS

Middle Students are the students who are not the rough students, but also aren’t the really outgoing talented ones. These students are the most neglected, and need the most encouragement.

5) KEEP THE ATTENTION ON THEM

This is not the time to talk about yourself, or sneakily brag about yourself. This is all about them and for them.

6) ASSUME THEY ARE NOT GETTING ENCOURAGEMENT ANYWHERE ELSE

You may be the only person that ever encourages them. So go in with that mindset with every student, because it may be true.

7) ENCOURAGE OFTEN

Make encouraging a common practice in your life. You may not be a natural encourager, but the more you do it the easier it gets.

Derek Parson is the youth pastor at Shippensburg Church of the Nazarene in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He has a youth ministry blog:www.youthministrycafe.com.

-GS

1 View Comments February 15, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Things Your iPhone Should Have

Here are a couple apps and one feature that I have been using a lot recently:

Over- If you have an advertisement to make and don’t have a graphic design bone in your entire body, than this is for you. In a nutshell, the app allows you to put words on any picture saved on your phone. Students have made this app (or others like it) famous by putting cliché quotes over sunsets and kittens, but you can redeem the app by using it for ministry! I have been using it to make advertisements for our ministry’s Instagram account. While it isn’t a total substitution for a graphics guy, it will help you make ads that look clean and professional.

Group Text- Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone, but I am not a huge fan of the “group chat” feature. When I want to make jokes with my friends, group chat is great. When I am trying to coordinate student volunteers, group chat is awful. To avoid it, I use the app, “Group Text.” Group Text allows you to create multiple lists of contacts and lets you send them all individual text messages rather than the “group chat” feature the iPhone defaults to. I use this almost everyday to communicate with my small group, volunteers, and parents. Love it.

Encouragement Photo Album- This one isn’t an app, just a cool idea. When I first started in ministry, my mentor told me to keep all of the encouraging notes in a box so that, when I get discouraged, I can go through them and remember why I do this. I loved the idea, but had no clue what to do with texts and emails. The solution: “screenshot” all of the texts and emails and save them into an album solely dedicated to encouragement. Simple. Easy. Free.

What apps/features are you using right now?

Colton Harker is the Student Leadership Director at Saddleback HSM. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him at coltonharker@gmail.com or on twitter at @ColtonHarker.

2 View Comments January 26, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Wordle Affirmation Picture Frames

Today the HSM Team and I are away at a fun day as we get near the holidays. We do it every year – I call it the State of HSM, but it is really a time of fun, stories and affirmations. I wanted to show you a fun affirmation we’re doing today that I think is easily transferable to your ministry and something you might consider doing in your group.

We collected 10 words people used to describe the selected person – you could do this in a variety of ways – slips of paper, email, whiteboard, sign in sheets, etc.
Collect and compile them into a document
Drop them into Wordle.net, words are sized according to the number of times they were repeated
Print the final rendering on photo paper, then frame and reveal

Jessica had this great idea and the final product is nothing short of fantastic. I posted one here as an example. So easy and so powerful!

JG

Add Comment December 13, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: 4 Ways to Take Better Care of Your Volunteers

You already know that your volunteers are a crucial piece of your healthy ministry. That’s why you spend so much time identifying, training, and developing awesome volunteer leaders.

But what are you doing to make sure your volunteers are really cared for?

Remember, your volunteers are susceptible to stress and burnout, just like you are. They also have important relationships with students, just like you do. That means that if a volunteer leaves your ministry, they’ll leave behind some saddened kids, and now you’ll have to start finding and developing a new person to fill that spot.

But, if you exercise good care over your volunteers, there’s an excellent chance they’ll be there for the long haul. That’s what you want.

Here are four (fairly) easy ways to make sure you take better care of your awesome volunteers:

1. Regularly send notes of encouragement.
Did a volunteer do something exceptional? Tell him. Is it her birthday or anniversary? Celebrate with her. Did you spontaneously remember the Cheez Whiz incident from last fall’s retreat? Send a note to your volunteer so you can laugh about it together.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but sometimes the easiest way to tell someone you appreciate them is to actually tell them.

2. Create volunteer teams that are larger than they need to be.
Your leaders shouldn’t feel anxiety if they have to miss youth group because they’re going to an out-of-town wedding. But if you are always tight on volunteers, then that’s exactly what will happen.

You want your leaders to be missed when they’re gone, but they also need the freedom to take a session off without guilt.

3. Pray for and with your volunteers.
This seems like a no-brainer, but when a volunteer reveals a problem, stressor, or struggle, they are asking you for your prayers. Yes, add them to your prayer list.

But as a leader (administratively and spiritually), be willing to place your hands on another person and to lift them up in prayer. It won’t take long until you become comfortable with this, and you won’t believe the impact your prayers and presence can have on your volunteers.

4. Say ‘no’ for your volunteers.
There are always a few volunteers who will say ‘yes’ to everything. I love those volunteers. So do you.

But be careful about overdoing it. Your volunteers need to have healthy home lives and careers in addition to helping with ministry. Don’t impose your own program so much that it starts to affect everything else.

Just because someone has the inability to say no doesn’t make it right for us to take advantage of that.

What else do you do to make sure that your volunteers are well-cared for? I’d love for you to share your input.

Aaron Helman is on a mission to help end the epidemic of youth worker burnout. He writes Smarter Youth Ministry to help youth workers with their biggest frustrations – like leading volunteers. He is also the youth minister at Firehouse Youth Ministries in South Bend, Indiana.

4 View Comments November 4, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Campus Outreach Ideas – Supporting Student Government

During a recent brainstorm of ways to love and serve our local campuses, we decided to focus on ASB (student government). I don’t know about your schools, but our ASB teams work so hard so support and entertain their schools. Because of their hard work, we came up with a few ways to show our support:

-Encouraging Notes. As youth workers, we know how hard it can be to entertain teenagers. Unfortunately, so does ASB. It is rare for these hard working to receive praise or acknowledgement for their effort. Try to get all of the names of the student government at a school and have some of your students write letters to them. Being able to tell the ASB that they are loved and appreciated is a guaranteed win at any school.

-Event Set-Up/Clean-Up. Having your ministry as a whole be available to help them set up and tear down their events can be huge. Sometimes the events that ASB throws are massive (i.e. dances, shows, etc.) and they require a lot of manpower to pull off. Again, we know how tiring it can be to be the first to arrive to an event and the last to leave, so we know how much it means to have someone offer to help. This is a great way to have your students be servants at their school.

-Bringing Food. This was an idea that one of our students came up with. Offering to bring a home cooked meal on a day that ASB is working late could mean the world to them. And it doesn’t always have to be some extravagant ordeal; it could even be something as simple as brownies or cookies. Putting in that effort could go a long way with showing love to the student government.

-Treat the Director. Don’t forget to include the ASB director! They are the ones that really help pull everything off! They are the ones that are empowering their students to make a difference at their schools. Many of our students’ lives have been changed by being in ASB, so it was so important to us to make that known to the directors. This could be something as easy as a Starbucks card and a handwritten note. Make sure they know how much they are appreciated and make sure they know your ministry is here to support them. Include your contact information so that they can let you know if they could ever use a hand. It is a GREAT way to build relationships with faculty!

We could not be more excited to get moving on all of these projects! Our ministry really believes in putting effort into campus outreach. It makes a huge impact on not just the campuses, but in our students as well.

Supporting ASB is one of the ways we are doing campus outreach, what is your ministry doing to serve the local high schools?

Colton Harker is the Student Leadership Coordinator at Saddleback HSM. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him at coltonharker@gmail.com or on twitter at @ColtonHarker.

Add Comment October 14, 2012

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: How To Make Youth Volunteer Meetings Worthwhile

Great ministry teams are key to effective and fulfilling ministry! Part of creating and sustaining a great team is ensuring that we meet regularly to be reminded why we do what we do, and to refocus on the vision. But, can I be honest for moment? I dislike meetings greatly! Although I see the need to meet, it’s sometimes hard for me (and my volunteers), to get excited about youth ministry team meetings!

However, with all that said, I have discovered four essential ways that help our team to be reminded of why we do what we do, and refocus on the vision, without it feeling like it’s an insurance seminar:

1) Celebrate What God Has Done: At every meeting I give my team the opportunity to share all the ways they have seen God moving in our student ministry. It’s human nature to get to a meeting and quickly focus on all that needs to be changed, tweaked, or challenged. Before we know it, we are looking to fix a plethora of problems. Every ministry will have issues and challenges, but that cannot be where we begin our meetings. It’s imperative that we begin by letting leaders talk about what God has been up to. When my leaders share their stories of changed lives, it paints the clearest picture of why we do what we do.

2) Talk Less, Type More! Part of refocusing the vision is ensuring that we provide a strategy and plan to accomplish the vision. My experience is that volunteers will only take in so much at a meeting. These days I talk through plans and strategy while also ensuring it is on paper or sent by email. This helps our meetings to move forward quickly knowing that leaders can go back to the details later. Don’t try to cover the details!

3) Make it Fun! Whether you give out some fun awards to leaders, share funny stories of ministry, or have your meeting at a fun coffee house, it’s essential to keep your meetings light and fun! Student ministry is highly rewarding but it also has its time of gut wrenching moments too. Therefore it’s essential that your team is able to breathe and refocus on the fun aspects when you come together.

4) Prayer: This should be number one on this list! Part of the reason I put this last was to communicate how we often allow it to slip to last place on our agenda. Sadly, I am guilty of this too often, and it is something that I am rectifying for myself and team. Prayer is the most effective way of being reminded by why we do what we do. When we pray, God does something amazing in our hearts and in the unity of the team. If you have been letting prayer slip down your agenda, I urge you to join me in making it a greater priority.

If you are the paid leader, what would you add to this list? Or maybe you are a volunteer who has experienced great meetings? What made them great?

Phil Bell is a high school pastor from Brighton, MI and is a tea drinking, soccer playing Englishman! He is passionate about developing youth ministry leaders for the future, and blogs over at youthworktalk.com