Josh GriffinMore Posts10 Phrases I Love to Hear

If you want to win my heart, start a sentence with the following words. You’ll have my full attention:

  1. What if we …
  2. No one has ever tried something like this …
  3. Here’s something that will make us more effective …
  4. blah, blah, blah, FREE, blah, blah
  5. I had this idea …
  6. It doesn’t seem possible, but …
  7. I’ve been praying about this a ton …
  8. I know this might sound crazy …
  9. I think God might be leading us to …
  10. I’d like to take you out to lunch …

JG

TagsComments 7 View Comments April 21, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsHSM Weekend in Review: Volume 45

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Weekend Teaching Series: Mission Trips Celebration Weekend (1-off)
Sermon Title: Serve to be Great
Bible: Mark 10:43-45

Sermon in a Sentence: You are never more like Jesus than when you serve.
Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 6 out of 10.
Attendance: Up 7% from last weekend, up 102% from same weekend last year
Service Length: 64 minutes
Understandable Message: This weekend we put students on center stage. Eight students and a volunteer shared stories and memories from trips to both Kenya and New Mexico. The message was so simple and so clear – and as always, when a student speaks, students listen. We had a highlight video from New Mexico as well.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: The service from start to finish was done by volunteers and students. Really amazing how it all came together – so proud of students willing to share their testimonies. I’m still amazed at how powerful someone’s story is.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We didn’t do too much fun up front, but did have a silly video that we opened with and made sure there were a few fun stories in what the students were sharing.

Music Playlist: Tell the World, To The Ends of the Earth, Center

Favorite Moment: When Tom (a volunteer) shared the story of his experience as a leader and leading a student to Jesus it was so incredible. Then that student, Max, right afterward revealed the student was him shared that very story of accepting Christ. Every one of the students were great, but that was a standout moment.

TagsComments 2 View Comments April 19, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsYou Probably Can’t Trust What You’re Hearing

Thinking about the power of community in leadership this week – how a leader who stands alone is in a dangerous position. When all you think are your thoughts and your passions crowd out others, you could soon find yourself in a situation where you’re leading, and no one is following. Very few leaders truly see the big picture of their organization completely honestly, our perspectives are skewed by the passions we have and the burdens we carry. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – churches are often earmarked by passionate leaders in specific areas of influence. But a good leader hears other perspectives from trusted counselors and weighs them against their own.

You probably can’t solely trust you own perspective. You are the leader for a reason, but don’t lead alone.
You probably can’t always trust what you hear. You will hear what you want to hear, and people who agree with you will be the most vocal.
A good leader might have to dig up and draw out a holistic perspective.

Let me explain the idea with examples:

  • If you’re evangelistic by nature, you’ll always be thinking about reaching the next student and not thinking about growing the ones you already have. Like me, balance will be difficult for you.
  • If you’re a traditionalist, you’ll hear mostly from people wanting to remain traditional. When someone does have the courage to speak to you about change, you have stacks of mental notes already against the idea because you’ve stored evidence that supports your position. You fight against change or easily dismiss it altogether without another thought.
  • If you’re a worship pastor, you lean toward more experiences and expressions of worship naturally. Also, you’ll hear from people like you who love to express their heart in singing and have to fight to think outside of the song box.
  • If you’re a numbers person, your default will often and quickly be “no” because of the cost. Leading in community weighs the cost and the return and occasionally gives the green light to a ridiculous-but-God-idea.

A leader must serve in community to be able to hear many voices, and staff around him or her the passions that they don’t posses naturally. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success.”

Don’t believe everything you hear, think or feel. Trust your leadership in community.

JG

TagsComments 1 View Comments April 12, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsKeeping the Volunteers You Have

Every year youth ministry plays a little game. We’ve burned out the adult leaders we managed to convince to stay for that year, and go on a quest to lure in enough leaders to cover the next season. The high turnover isn’t ideal for effectively ministering to students, and the pressure of finding a new team every year is impossibly challenging. There’s got to be a better way!

What if we focused our energy, not on recruitment (although that still won’t totally go away) and focused on keeping the volunteers we already have on our team. What if we celebrated, loved, encouraged and trained the leaders we already have in such a way that they stayed longer than a year. What if we worked hard to create “lifers” that outlast us and at the same time intuitively mentor the new leaders that are attracted to serving in your ministry.

Who’s already on your team who you could connect with this week? Who do you see as a long-term player in your youth ministry inner circle that might not see that above themselves? What are you doing in your ministry to keep the keepers? I want to be a part of a place that pours into volunteers, caring for them in such a way that they stay on the team for years, not months. I know that still not all make it and we will still have to recruit this Fall, but at least we’re not playing the game anymore.

JG

TagsComments 7 View Comments April 7, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsTwitters and Gamertags of the Youth Ministry Team

Many fell in love with Twitter this week at the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry (PDYM) Conference, and I got a few requests for Xbox 360 Gamertags, too. Here’s a who’s who of the youth ministry team on both platforms here at Saddleback Church:

Twitters:

Gamertags:

JG

TagsComments 6 View Comments March 29, 2009

Josh GriffinMore Posts3 Key Learnings about Discipleship This Past Year

Kurt and I just finished up a 3 Key Learnings part of the general session on discipleship at PDYM. Here are some of the notes we took into the talk, if there’s something here you can use:

SESSION 6 — DISCIPLESHIP

1. Expect resistance. I love programs – and discipleship at Saddleback is a non-program. Youth pastors are good at launching programs – we use them to defend ourselves from parents and problems. It doesn’t come naturally for everyone, so you might find resistance from parents or volunteers, too. Small group leaders have to see this as an integral part of their role. HABITS are modeled and handed down through the small group ministry – we even had a short HABITS highlight every week in our fall training so leaders could get an idea of what resources we were expecting them to help students go after.

2. Being connected to an adult leader makes all the difference. Someone is Twittering every time we say something about relational volunteers. They are the BIG deal.

3. “Growing On Your Own” (Sprout/H.A.B.I.T.S.) requires continuous vision casting. We say “grow on your own” then hide behind it. We need to walk a little way down the path, then help them take some steps on their own. In the talk, suggest a verse for core students to memorize. At the end of a message, consider a HABIT being an action step from the talk. But because there is no weekly class, or weekly meeting in a house, discipleship can slip under the radar too quickly. You have to keep beating this drum. Discipleship never ends.

JG

TagsComments 1 View Comments March 26, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsBook Review: Killing Cockroaches

Just read through Killing Cockroaches by Tony Morgan – and it instantly felt familiar to me. Of course, I’ve been a TM-stalker since the early days of his blog. Tony has put together his favorite blog posts, articles, writings and probably some new ideas into a little book that meanders through his leadership learnings over the past several years. The book has no chapters and reads like a slowly dripping mind dump from one of the modern day thought leaders of the church. Tony is engaging, casual and at times funny as he helps us think different about leadership and the church. A

JG

TagsComments Add Comment March 18, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsVolunteer Communications Coordinator

I believe in Dennis.

He’s a long-term volunteer here in HSM that has survived a few transitions in leadership and is still loving students and God week after week. I recently asked him to work directly with me to do everything communications-related in HSM – to go after social media, blogs and texting as it relates to our students. He’s got a funny post about how I asked him to do it, and has a ton of other great insights on his blog Volunteer Youth Ministry. Check it out!

JG

TagsComments Add Comment March 16, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsThe Youth Pastor Crush

I recently saw an email that Doug (Fields) wrote in response to a youth worker about a student having a crush on her youth pastor. I asked for permission to post his response, because it was so good. Here you go:

Protect yourself immediately. If you know this to be true (that she has fallen in love with you), tell someone in authority over you (i.e. your senior pastor, elder, someone on your youth board, etc…). Do this immediately. Tell them the details of the relationship. I’m assuming you’ve done nothing wrong and haven’t led her on.

Then, if it was me, I would have my senior pastor give me advice on what to do next. Then, follow his/her advice.

If I was your boss, I would encourage you to have a caring, but strong conversation with this young woman (in a public setting) and let her know that there’s no way in the world that a relationship will ever happen with her. You think she’s a wonderful girl (as are the other girls in the group) but you’re not interested (now or ever) to have a relationship with a teenager.

You need to make sure you’re not leading her on. If it’s gone beyond innocent and there’s been some two-way flirting, end it quickly. Involve someone for accountability. Make sure the girl is ministered to by someone other than you. Treat her just like you would any other girl in the group.

Crushes on youth leaders are natural… but, that doesn’t mean their good. Simply acknowledge that younger people are attracted to maturity, spiritual leadership and good personalities. If that describes you, don’t be surprised that there are kids who develop feelings for you.

So that’s what I’d do. I hope this is helpful.

JG

TagsComments Add Comment February 21, 2009

Josh GriffinMore PostsBook Review: It

It: How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It by Craig Groeschel is a fantastic book on leadership and the local church. We’ve all been to churches that have “it” and visited some that clearly didn’t. From the first page of the book to the last I was nodding my head in agreement with LifeChurch.tv’s pastor as he journeyed me through what a church must be and it’s leaders have to become.

He boils down the modern church with all of it’s trappings to come up with a description of what a healthy “it” church looks like. He focuses on walking with God, failures, teamwork and other classic leadership teachings. He profiles maybe a half dozen churches (Granger, NewSpring, etc) that have “it” right now and warned everyone that “it” comes from God and isn’t because of personality or performance. Groeschel borrows from tons of other leadership books and teachings but frames it in such a way that you can intuitively see whether a church gets “it” collectively or not. The best part of the book aren’t specific principles, but in the way Craig details how they do and don’t do those things. Brilliant transparency about the good, the bad and the ugly.

Here’s the challenging part – as you read the book, you’ll throw what he says up against your church. You’ll question whether your church has “it” or not. And I think that’s the point – he is giving a friendly reminder to all churches and church leaders, like yourself, to strive for what God intended the church to be, not what it has become.

Next year, I want you on the “it” list. A

JG

TagsComments Add Comment February 18, 2009
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