Being in youth ministry for fifteen years now I have seen a lot of different youth group styles, philosophies, and I can tell you that haphazard is not a good style or philosophy. Having a strategy for your youth group needs to be a value, but not an idol. Strategy is important; it provides clear understanding of objectives and parameters around how they will be achieved.

It’s not the be all end all – but if done right, it will go a long way to creating a smoother process for yourself and your leaders. Here’s why:

Strategy breeds consistency:  Having a standardized skeleton of how things are done is really disarming for students and leaders. When the program changes week in and week out and we stand at the front and encourage them to bring a friend, what are they bringing them to? When you have objectives and a somewhat strategic program, leaders know what to expect and students know what they are bringing their friends to. This simply requires that we commit to following through with whatever we decide will be our approach.

Strategy requires rationale: When we use a strategic approach, it requires that we have a reason for every element of the program and that if asked we can explain it to a parent or student. An example might be playing a secular song when the students are coming in as a means of disarming visitors who might be walking into a church for the first time. Why do we have worship? If didn’t have it, why not? Why do we play very few games? I am not sure its wise to have many elements of a youth night that have no reason or purpose.

Strategy is dynamic: It is vitally important that we be attentive to what God is doing in the midst of all of this. If students are encountering God in worship, it might be time to cut back the intro to increase the worship time. Maybe your group is not ready for a thirty-minute talk. Keep tabs on things and adjust as necessary.

Strategy is important … but not the most important thing. Doing good ministry, being attentive the needs of your students’ spiritual growth is key. Having a strategy is most helpful in taking the high level vision to an attainable and implementable set of actions for your leaders to work with.

JG

We often discuss church growth or student ministry growth. This is a topic of conversation for good reason, because we all are interested in building our student ministry. Here are a few reasons why your student ministry may never grow:

1. Lack of Prayer – This is the biggest part of growth. You must daily pray and ask God to build your student ministry. You must be praying for your ministry to grow. Do not expect any growth (or perhaps the wrong kind of growth) if you are not daily praying over your ministry. Bathe it in prayer, and trust God for the growth.
2. Lack of communicating clear vision – This is often times that the biggest problem with growth. You have to regularly communicate vision to the people. It must constantly be in front of the people. Then, you must live out the vision. “If your church does not know where it is supposed to be, then, they will attempt to go everywhere and eventually wind up nowhere.”
3. Leadership – Ultimately, it could be a reflection on YOU. Make sure you are a passionate leader. Make sure you are living the Word. Make sure that you are carrying out the vision and communicating it clearly to your people.
4. Selfishness – This can be a reflection upon leadership and the people. Sometimes, God may want to take the church in a place where you do not want to go, but you are still responsible for going in that direction. Do not be selfish and want the church to be what you want. Also, your people must not be selfish in trying to create the church that they want to have. It is not about us, but all about Him.
5. Energy – If you fill the leadership with energy-less people, you will create a energy-less congregation. Be energetic and passionate, and the congregation will follow suit. Create a load of energy every service for the people to desire to come back.

Let’s make sure that we are doing everything that we can to grow our ministry!

Josh Evans is the student pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in the Winston Salem, NC area. He has been a mentor and pastor to students for 4 years. You can connect further with Josh on his blog or send him a direct email at joshhevans@gmail.com.

The old saying goes: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. My mom always used to say that the grass is green over there because there was a septic tank underneath it.

But fewer words could be truer in Youth Ministry and church life for that matter. The grass always seems to be greener in someone else’s church. The advent of Facebook™ and Twitter™ you get to read about another youth worker’s work and how many students stood and received Christ for the first time, and how many dollars the group donated to a charity. It can feel like a non-stop highlight reel of comparison and discouragement compared to the situation you may be facing at the moment.

So I’m not surprised when people make comments about how great it would be to have my job, or to run a ministry like this. Truth be told, it’s a ministry just like yours, full of students who are hurting and broken and who make poor decisions regularly. When I spend time with students, it is often dealing with tough issues just like you. I usually Tweet about and post about the good, but truth be told, its tough, and the grass is not as green as you think. The same goes for the big youth group across town from you that has awesome music, great media and kids getting saved and baptized weekly. That is not the whole story.

Here is the honest truth; God has brought you to your church and your ministry for this moment. Don’t worry about what’s next or let your mind wander every day searching for. When your eyes and heart are on what others have, and what is happening down the road, you lose because you get discouraged, your students lose because you are distracted and say why bother and God loses because the person entrusted to lead Hid children is disheartened.

Here are two things to focus on:

Bloom where you’re planted
Just because you know that a ministry 3000 miles from you has great media, does not mean your students do. If you were to poll your students you will find that the thing that keeps them coming back is not an expensive youth room, free pizza, Xbox® Kinect™ or lasers – its relationships. Your students love coming to your group because they are known there, they matter there, and people care for them there, people pray for them there and people accept them there.

It may sometimes be a mess in your eyes, but you are called there, to share Jesus with your students, and it’s a blessing to be able to do that. Every church is messy. Accept the fact that pushy parents, apathetic teens and cranky facilities staff are a universal experience.

When you think about your group, think about the lives and stories that you have an opportunity to speak into and strive daily to show Jesus to each of them. We are blessed to work with a generation so hungry for significance and passionate about having a life that counts. They are just waiting for you to give them something / someone to live for.

Take a step forward today
Maybe you feel like you have nothing to add to the youth ministry landscape, when in fact you really do. There are thousands of youth pastors out there that are struggling, trying to figure out how to do ministry in a context just like yours. If you have been in youth ministry for more than two years, you have more to offer than you can imagine.

How can you share your experiences, good or bad so that other youth workers can benefit from it?

• Start a blog
• Write a guest post for someone else’s blog
• Submit a magazine article (easier than you think)
• Walk alongside a new Youth Worker in your area
• Speak at your local training event

 

These are simple ways for you to share the lessons that God has taught you through being in the trenches. People need to know the pitfalls; they need to know how to deal with tough situations like the ones that you experience all the time.

Make the grass under your feet green.

JG

1. Build a healthy relationship with them- When you recruit youth workers, choose people who you can have a relationship with. One of the coolest things about our youth leaders is that most of my wife and I’s closest friends serve in our student ministry. So, we have some strong relationships with the ones who are in there! If you want to keep youth leaders long-term, you need to have a relationship with them.
2. Listen to their feedback- I came from a small church where we had 30 students and a few youth leaders that I personally recruited. I basically started the youth group from scratch and the Lord blessed. Then, He moved me to a different church with about 75 students and about 25 youth leaders. They knew the system way better than I did. One thing that I tried to do and still do is listen to their feedback and ideas. Some youth pastors have a way of doing things, and they are not open to ideas from their youth leaders. This is something that turns people away from serving in your ministry so listen to their feedback, and do not be afraid to use their idea and give them the credit!
3. Show them that they are appreciated. I am reading a book right now called, “life in student ministry” by Tim Schmoyer, and he constantly is hitting me hard about praising your youth leaders! This is a great way to keep youth leaders with you. They must feel like their ministry is important to you. They must know that you appreciate them. Try your best to pay for their ministry stuff. Our budget cannot handle paying for every youth leader for every event, but we try to cut cost for leaders and be a blessing to them. If we had the budget to pay for every leader, I for sure would take that and apply it! Shower your leaders with gifts and blessings. We just had our Christmas party, and we got each leader a Christmas photo of their entire small group. It was not too expensive, and it means a lot to our leaders. They must know that they are appreciated if they are going to serve with you long-term.
4. Your heart must be fleshed out- Volunteer youth leaders do not want to serve in your ministry if they cannot see that you genuinely have a heart for your students! They must see your heart, passion, and enthusiasm for this ministry lived out!
5. Cast vision regularly- Vision is not something that you cast once a year! This is something that the leaders need to be reminded about over and over again! They must hear where you feel God wants to take the youth group. You must cast is regularly, and you must live out the goals and vision that you are casting!
6. Train them- Leader training is so important. This is something that we are working on, but we are going to try to improve even more on. Your leaders need training. We always have areas that need improvement, and you need to provide this for your leaders. They also need to be humble enough to be willing to go through some training.
7. Pray with them- There is nothing better than having a relationship with your youth leaders where you can drop down and pray with them. You both need this relationship! Ask them how you can pray for them and their families! They need to be assured that you are praying for them outside of youth group.
8. Model their job description- Many times we have a job description for youth leaders that we as the youth pastor hardly hold! The youth leaders need to see you living out the Christian life as well as the job description and standard that you hold them too.
9. Let them lead- Many times youth pastors want to do things themselves. We are human, and we struggle with being on an inward power trip thinking that we can do things better than the youth leaders. If you give them a responsibility, allow them the authority to carry it out.
10. Support them- You must support them from the pulpit of your church as well as from the pulpit of your student ministry. They must know that they are supported by their student pastor. Support them in front of the students and take their side on issues unless it is a moral problem on their part. They must feel supported.

Josh Evans is the student pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in the Winston Salem, NC area. He has been a mentor and pastor to students for 4 years. You can connect further with Josh on his blog or send him a direct email at joshhevans@gmail.com.

I read about a jillion (with a “j”) blog posts every week. There are a ton of different blogs I subscribe to, but here are my favorites from 2011:

DougFields.com – I’m so glad my friend Doug Fields got into the blogging game. He is the best blogger in youth ministry and I read his stuff, every word of every post, because it is brilliant. OK, I skip some of it just like you do on my blog – but it is filled with incredible youth ministry, marriage and leadership insights and is not to be missed. Best new blog of the year!

DougFranklin.com – solid blog from LeaderTreks’ Doug Franklin doesn’t stray much from the student leadership drumbeat. Solid, consistent posts that are easy to rip off and share with your volunteers like you wrote it yourself!

Learning My Lines – Walk Mueller is in youth ministry culture, and cares about it more deeply than I ever will. I love that I can get up to speed on issues and influences of teenagers in seconds.

Glass House Spouse – Another GREAT new blog – this one focuses on the spouse of someone in ministry. Honest, funny, candid – I love it, my only hope would be that it becomes daily in 2012.

More Than Gossip - My friend Neely McQueen is doing some great work on her blog More Than Gossip. She’s always got an insight or observation from her focused ministry to girls. I learn a lot from her and appreciate the heart she puts into the site. Check it out!

What was your favorite blog in 2011?

JG

Want to keep your youth pastor forever? Awesome! Here are three sure-fire ways to make sure they never leave your church:

Believe, promote and defend them
Your youth pastor is probably wondering right now if you believe in them. Be a cheerleader! I work in one of the best churches in the world with an incredible supervisior, elders and senior pastor and I still wonder about it all of the time. Tell them you believe in them! Promote them from the stage, behind the scenes and in your prayer life. Ask God to bless them and expand their ministry in your church. When the youth worker wins – so does the senior pastor. Not being threatened by your student ministries pastor is a HUGE boost to your long-term relationship. Defend them to parents. Have great communication so that when tension/problems come up (and they will because youth workers do risky and/or stupid stuff) be quick to forgive and forget and lead your people to do the same.

Let them lead
If you want your youth pastor to stay forever – let them lead the youth ministry. Better yet, give them space to try out some of their crazy ideas that are working with students to grow the whole ministry. Let them share their heart with the congregtion, give them room to succeed and room to fail. youth workers are attracted to risk. Senior pastors typically worry about failure. When a youth pastor peaks in their area of influence they’ll look around and see where they can expand before they look elsewhere. Giving your youth worker a steadily-increasing amount of leadership responsibilities will keep them challenged for a long time.

Pay them well
One of the biggest barries to career youth ministers and longevity in your ministry is value. Show your youth pastor who much he/she is valued by paying them well. When you put a salary cap in place you’ll miss out on the best players. When there’s a huge gap between youth pastors and “real” pastors it encourages them to look somewhere will they will be valued. Send them to conferences. Give them a modest expense account (Taco Bell is cheap). I promise if you pay them well you’ll keep them a long time.

Agree? Disagree? What would you add? Leave it in the comments and help senior pastors know how you work.

JG

If you are a youth pastor at your church – you are stuck in the middle. Chances are, you are a few steps removed from the top leadership position (lead pastor) and probably at least one step removed from the bottom (church janitor). Is it possible to lead while being positioned like this? We think so! Here are a few suggestions that will help you have upward influence:

Honor the Decision You Disagree With
As somebody in the middle, you often get decisions handed down to you that you, in return, need to hand down to others. There’s nothing more painful and frustrating then being handed down decisions that seriously affect your world with which you had little or no input. At times it will be very tempting (and rightfully so…) to use your lack of involvement in the decision to your advantage. If it’s bad news that you are expected to communicate to others it will be easy to say, “this wasn’t my decision but…”. If you don’t like the ramifications of a decision, it will be tempting to “play dumb” and act like you misunderstood the directives because you weren’t in the room when decisions were made. Here’s the deal: If you want to be a leader, act like one! Man (or woman) up, and honor the decisions made above you and implement them in your world the way a healthy leader should.

Speak Up
Being in the middle is difficult because it isn’t always clear when your voice should be heard. Here’s what we think: speak up! Don’t interrupt your next elder meeting – but take the time to share your perspective and thoughts at inventive times. Maybe shoot a note to your senior pastor every week giving him/her an update on youth group and a better context for the decisions they will make. Just because you aren’t the #1 leader, doesn’t mean your voice isn’t important!

Support the leaders above you
Support the “old guard”. Don’t fall into the temptation to take part in “water cooler” talk that is negative. Look for opportunities to speak highly of the sr. leadership of the church. Besides, someday you’ll be the old guy up front and want to be treated the same way, too.

Shape Decisions Behind Scenes
You don’t have to be in the “important” meetings to influence decisions that are being made! Those meetings are where things get finalized, but the decisions are often made well before the formal meeting ever takes place. If something is on the table that is important to you, then figure out creative ways to make sure your input is heard. Take your boss out to coffee, and ask if you can share your thoughts on the topic. If he/she is a healthy leader, they will welcome lots of input concerning upcoming decisions they need to make.

Be a Team Player
If you really want to be taken seriously by the leaders in your church, it’s time to start caring about your church! Don’t allow yourself to only be concerned about the youth group. Look for ways to chip in and lend a hand in church-wide areas. When senior leadership sees that you care about the whole church, and not church your little area within it, you may be shocked at how quickly your influence increases.

Being stuck in the middle is never easy – but it is possible to lead from that challenging position. As a youth worker, it is something you have to expect. Lead on, friends!

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.

I am not sure how we didn’t figure this out sooner, but after a few years of following up with new students to our ministry we never really had any sort of overwhelming response to what seemed like pretty intentional follow-up. We would call students, asked if they enjoyed coming to our group, asked if they had come with someone and always very cordially ended those conversations with something to the effect of “we hope to see you Thursday.” Nothing exciting, a simple phrase, which was true, that we did hope to see them out at youth.

What we didn’t realize until this year, that the wording of that was fairly non-committal for us, and for them. In response to this we have removed several commonly used statements that we often used when speaking to students on the phone, or in person. They include:

• Hope to see you at youth group!
• We would love to see you at youth!
• You should come out this week!
• It would be great if you could make it out this week!

The Facebook generation has pushed us into non-committal “maybe” type people and all those phrases can potentially elicit a maybe and since we didn’t expect an answer they could forget it all together. So we have changed how we speak to students and have replaced those statements with one simple question that we use before hanging up the phone or saying goodbye:

“Will you be at youth this week?”

It’s a question and not a statement and it opens doors for us to be better leaders. Firstly it requires and answer and thus commitment. If the answer is yes, of course we are delighted and look forward to seeing them. But if the answer is no, or a maybe, it allows for us to dig in and find out why? It is through these follow up questions where we can find out what is really going on. It could be school work, tests, family challenges or any number of things, and knowing the reasons allows us to be able to offer prayer to our students and support them even when they can’t attend.

Statements don’t often elicit honest answers, but questions can. I am not sure if the students have even noticed the change, but as leaders the change had had significant implications in our attendance and retention of new students. We follow up weekly with all guests to the program and simply ask if they are going to come this week. That invitation says a lot to a student and being asked to come back is a powerful statement.

This shift is minor, but the results have been significant. Try making “The Ask” when communicating with students; you might be surprised by the results.

Geoff Stewart is the Pastor of Jr & Sr High School for Journey Student Ministries at Peace Portal Alliance Church and regularly contributes GUEST POSTS to MTDB. Be sure to check out his Twitter stream for awesome ministry goodness. Want to get in on the fun and write up a guest post yourself? See how right here.

This week I’ve talked to a couple youth workers who had come down with the same symptoms of a serious disease that infects all of us from time to time: they stopped believing in their church. We’ve all been there (if you haven’t welcome to your first few months in youth ministry – I promise you it is just ahead). So what is your response?

Time for a change in attitude
Quite often when you stop believing in your church or leadership it is time for prayer, not departure. Seasons of discord and discontent are common in ministry – your first response to a frustration should be prayer and consideration to the fact you may just be out of line. Ask God to show you were you need to change, rather than quickly dismiss your inadequacies, arrogance or pride. A just a little heads up – usually you don’t see yourself very well and someone will have to help you with your attitude adjustment. It won’t feel very good.

Time for a change in your job description
Most frustrations can be addressed by a simple change in a job description. Did your youth ministry position recently morph into an associate pastor type of role? Does your job look WAY different than what was pitched to you when you were hired? If you’re feeling it right now, write up some adjustments to your description (or help yourself by writing an official job description if your church never gave you one) that is fulfilling of your responsibilities and  calling.

Time for a change in your leader
It’s possible that the leadership you report to needs to change. It will be very difficult to truly discern this – they need to sense God’s Spirit leading them and hear the words of wisdom in their Christian community. Pray that God will open their eyes to poor leadership decisions and pray that you may have a role in helping shape the vision which you are about to abandon because you’re giving up hope.

Time for a change in where you serve
If it isn’t an attitude problem on your part. If your job cannot be edited and adjusted to be a better fit. If your leader is unwilling or unable to change, you might need to begin praying about what God has next for you. When you stop believing in a church or a leader I believe you are quite possibly in the early stages of transition. I put this option last for a reason – this is usually what I flirt with first when I’m losing the vision for the church. Fight through the other steps first, and if/when you get here, pray for clarity and wisdom.

To youth workers who are hurting … I’ve walked that road in the past, and still dabble in it now from time to time. Don’t stop believing … and when you do check your heart, your role, your leader and if God wants to make a change.

JG

There’s nothing more painful than losing your dream team…or even one dream player. From time to time, you will be faced with a key leader moving away or a right-hand man being moved up to help with a program for adults. It happens – our adult ministry steals our best people all of the time!

So when this happens – you have a few choices to make: (1) you can wallow in the golden years of what was, or (2) you can get to work on rebuilding a young team and see where God takes you. Honestly, you’ve probably done enough of (1) already, so let’s talk about (2). Here we go:

Don’t compare to the past
Rebuilding a team is difficult enough without making comparisons to the past. You are building a new team now – with different gifts, personalities and passions – embrace it instead of focusing on the frustrating differences.

Adjust your leadership to who you have now
The way you led last year probably isn’t going to work anymore. Different people need to be led differently – the pressure to adjust is on you, not on them. Consider giving everyone a personality test or the 5 Love Languages quiz to see what you’re working with and make a real effort to lead in a new way in the new season.

Become the world’s best coach
Maybe one of the reasons you’re lamenting the loss of your teammates is because you had a whole pack of seasoned, battle-hardened veterans and now you’ve got fresh meat. Become the world’s best coach! Constantly push, nudge and challenge your people in the right direction. Before you know it, they’ll be veterans as well…and prime pickings for adult ministry to swoop down for another batch (not that we’re bitter or anything).

Face the challenges head on
Need a pep talk? We got one: You can do this! Keep your head in the game! Don’t run from the challenge! Rebuilding a team is not an easy task. Hang in there! We know that God is going to use you in new ways in the next season.

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.