leadership | 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

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Lifelong Learning: Opens you to Growth

When you are faced with struggles in your ministry, are you motivated and encouraged to find a solution? Does the struggle you are facing renew your creativity and drive you to make a greater impact than before? Then you are engaging yourself in lifelong learning and opening yourself to growth; to being the best you, you can be!

Open to growth:

Eagerness to respond to God’s guidance- He is guiding each of us. Are you listening?
Network with others in the same line of ministry- We are all in this together. We are meant to learn from each other. Through the downfalls and victories, share them!
Accountability- Who are you accountable to? Share with someone you trust your deepest concerns, your weaknesses and strengths, and let them hold you accountable. Let them help you up when you fall down and celebrate with you when you are up.
Attend conferences/training courses- They enrich you and your ministry. You will leave refreshed, with new ideas, and creativity to bring into your ministry.
Reading- You can do this on blogs like morethandodgeball.com, in books, magazines, the Bible. Reading enriches the mind and helps you gain helpful insight.
Experiment- Step out! Don’t be afraid to try new things. Stepping out of your comfort zone is a way to growth.
Keep your focus on Jesus- If it is not in line with God’s word, it does not deserve your focus. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Apply these daily long after your ministry days begin and you will see growth not only in areas of your ministry but in your personal life, your career, your spiritual life and the list goes on. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6).

Ashley Fordinal is the Children’s Church volunteer at Family Life Church in Sulphur Springs, TX.

1 View Comments April 7, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Non-negotiable Aspect of Leadership: Leaders Follow God’s Vision

Leadership continues to be one of the hot topics in the church today. Now more than ever before we are seeing books, seminars and coaching sessions revolving around leadership. My hope of writing this series of blog posts isn’t to bring anything new to the table; rather I want to share with you what in my opinion are four non-negotiable aspects of Christian leadership.

This past Christmas I went to a huge mall to buy a small gift and stocking stuffers for my wife. The problem was that I had already purchased everything I knew I wanted to get for her and now I was just getting extras. I ended up walking around the mall for a good two hours only to purchase more items than I had planned to and spent more money than I wanted. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t being thoughtful; I had just fulfilled my earlier vision and hadn’t come around to have a new vision for the stocking stuffers I wanted to buy.

In order to get things do things properly as a leader we need to have vision and understand our mission. While I had a mission at the mall I didn’t have a vision and one without the other is incomplete. When Christian leaders are directing people where God would have them go, they need to understand what God’s vision is and how to articulate this. Jesus gives us an example of how we should interact with mission and vision of the Father. Jesus continually explains to his disciples and others his mission and the vision that he has been given. When Jesus was in Nazareth toward the beginning of his ministry he explained to the members of the synagogue that he had come to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah by reading from Isaiah (Luke 4: 16-21). Jesus not only understood why he came he also understood his role, He knew he had come to preach and share the Gospel (Mark 1:38). By explaining His relationship with the vision God had given the Israelites, Jesus gave himself credibility while also trying helping others to understand their roles in the grand picture. This leads to the understanding of another key skill that Christian leaders should possess. If a leader can take scripture and the revelation of God in their own life and put them together it would inspire greater credibility and confidence in who they are and where they are leading.

What ways are you gaining credibility and helping others understand vision and mission?
Does your current vision for where you are going include some backing with Scripture?

Kyle Corbin has been serving youth as a volunteer or pastor for over 10 years. He is currently the youth pastor at the Bridge Church in North Vancouver B.C. You can follow his blog at: kylecorbin.blogspot.com or Twitter: @CorbinKyle

Add Comment April 7, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Summer Interns: Watch, Partner, Lead

summer-events-all

Summer is right around the corner, and that means we’ve got summer interns coming in hot!

I’m thrilled to add them to our student ministry team – each of them is “home grown” – the only summer interns we bring in are former students in our ministry who are ready to come back as leaders. We do offer longer internships for outsiders (if you or someone you know is interested, let me know!).

So what am I hoping our summer interns get out of this summer?

Watch
Enjoy the first month. Work hard. Do everything that is assigned. Get to know the team. Get to know students. Highly relational boss. Be above nothing. Laugh and learned a lot. Begin to wonder why people think youth ministry is so hard.

Partner
Co-lead an event. Co-teach a Bible study. Co-plan a trip. Work directly with a supervisor/mentor to understand the ins and outs of everything there is to do in youth ministry. Begin to understand the full scope of serving students.

Lead
Your turn. Lead the team. You shoot and edit the video. Run something from start to finish. Pull it off. Backup as needed, encouragement all the way, but it is yours to lead! Begin to feel the weight of leading a ministry and the pressures that comes with it. Also begins to understand the depth of fulfillment when following God’s call.

So pumped about this summer!

JG

Add Comment April 4, 2013

Chris WesleyMore Posts Where Persistence Is Needed

Youth ministry was very frustrating until I realized it’s more of a journey than an experience. My problem is that I wanted instant and powerful results. All I got was disappointment. It’s not that the ministry was a failure (It was anything but that), it’s just that what I wanted was not what we were getting. I was impatient.

Again, youth ministry is a long journey and if you stick around long enough you will see fruit. To produce disciples and bring teens into a deep relationship with Jesus Christ takes hard work, patience and PERSISTENCE. If you are persistent in your ministry you’ll eventually build momentum and see the reward to your labor. Three areas in youth ministry where persistence is key are:

Recruiting Volunteers: There is no silver bullet to recruiting volunteers. It takes a lot of:

Meet and Greet
Email Blasts
Announcements From The Pulpit
Phone Calls
Invests and Invites

The more you make it a part of your routine and your volunteers the more leaders you’ll recruit. There will be seasons when you get better results than others; however, the key is to continually ask.

Connecting With Parents: No offense, but you are not the first person on a parent’s mind. To bust through the noisiness of a parent’s life you need to persistently call, reach out and connect with them. If you are hosting an event, don’t just throw out a flyer, create a buzz. If you are trying to meet one on one with a parent, set-up the meeting, check-in and then confirm it. Hold them accountable and support them by consistently communicating with them.

Leading Up: If you want your pastor to respect and support you, then you need to make the relationship a priority. To keep it in the front of your mind you need to be persistent when dealing with contention and disagreement. Communicate when it’s hard to talk and shout his praise when it’s not easy. Work through the tension and watch the relationship grow.

Persistence is a key to endurance in youth ministry. It means working through the tension and trusting that God will pull you through. It’s easy to give up, change things around and abandon ship when life gets hard. What you need to do is stand up straight and move forward.

Where else is persistence needed in youth ministry?

Chris Wesley (@chrisrwesley)

2 View Comments April 4, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts Don’t Send That Email

The week before going to camp or this case a retreat is always hectic with tons of plans and last minute details that have to hammered out. The stress level is high and patience is running low as we rush around sourcing out pens and extension cords. We do a retreat every year and somehow we hadn’t learned from the year before and were allowing students to sign up after the registration deadline which increased the workload for our team in shuffling cabins and bus lists but we knew it would be all worth it and after all the more the merrier of course!

In the craziness of last minute registrations and final details we were experiencing a problem bigger than insufficient pens and power bars. With two days remaining until we were leaving for camp, a significant number of our leaders were not committed or not coming to camp. When our leaders sign up for the year we give them two weekends we were all hands on deck for and this was one of them and they just weren’t committing to be there.

I was frustrated.

I was frustrated because they had said they would be there and now nearly half weren’t coming. Some had to work, others had weak excuses and others did not respond to multiple emails and texts. We had a leader crisis two days before camp.

I didn’t know what to do, so I drafted up a long and well articulated email that outlined my frustration, reminded them of the commitment the made and tried to explain the life change that happens at camp and basically tried to take them on an all expenses paid guilt trip. It felt great to write, to get my feelings out but I quickly realized that while helpful for me, it was not going to be helpful for our team. I left the message for an hour and after showing my colleague, rewrote the email shorter, clearer and outlined THE NEED -More volunteers for the weekend THE ASK - Would you consider shuffling the weekend to spend with our students at camp THE WHY - Help them understand why our weekend camp is the most important event we do all year. The result was 11 more volunteers committing to being there.

Here is what I learned:

Anger, Frustration and Rebuke are not best communicated via email.
Let someone you trust get you off the ledge by showing them your draft and chat with them about your frustrations.
Deal with the need before the event and follow up one on one after you have cooled down.
Remember that God is going to do something in spite of you, or your volunteers.

There are going to frustrating situations where you might be tempted to use email to let someone or a group of people know how you are feeling, and while it might feel good for the moment its not the place for conflict. Deal with immediate need and once you have sorted out your feelings, take the time to meet one on one with your team when the extra time to meet will be worth it in the long run.

Long story short: Don’t send that email.

-Geoff @geoffcstewart

3 View Comments April 3, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Chick-Fil-A Leadercast

Very excited about the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast that happens every year about this time. I’d love to find a location that is close to us – use the tool above to find one in your area and I’m told they’ll be adding locations all of the time. Killer lineup, too: Mike Krzyzewski would be worth the price of admission alone!

JG

2 View Comments April 2, 2013

Josh GriffinMore Posts Non-negotiable Aspect of Leadership: Leaders are Sacrificial Givers

Leadership continues to be of the hot topics in the church today. Now more than ever before we are seeing books, seminars and coaching sessions revolving around leadership. My hope of writing this series of blog posts isn’t to bring anything new to the table; rather I want to share with you what in my opinion are four non-negotiable aspects of Christian leadership. Have you ever had to give so much it hurt? Did you give your time, your money, and your left kidney?

My most memorable sacrifice during ministry was to break down the barrier with a kid at camp. We had a student with some mobility issues who just refused to open up. They were angry about their disabilities and would not hear about anything that anyone had to say. Our camp had a huge zip-line that students would love to ride. I noticed that this student with the disabilities really wanted to go on the zip-line. After a long period of “encouraging” the student to actually do it despite their fear, I strapped the student to my back and carried them up a 50 foot tower and then set them up on a zip-line. The sacrifice wasn’t much but by giving up my break and carrying that student’s weight, I was able to help break down their defenses and they went on to engage in a lot of spiritual conversations with their counselor.

I’m sure it won’t take much convincing but Christian leaders need to lead by giving sacrificially. Obviously our greatest example is Christ himself. Two of the greatest examples from Jesus’ life are when we got down on his knees and washed his disciples dirty feet. Then he asked us to follow him when He said, “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” (John 13: 13-17) Clearly, if Christ tells us that if we should follow him by making a simple sacrifice such as humbling ourselves, we need to do so. The second example is the obvious example of his death. While we may never be called to lay down our own lives as leaders, we can expect to have to make sacrifices regularly for the cause we are directing people towards. Jesus makes it clear that we will need to deny ourselves daily. (Luke 9:23)

I think that if someone really wants to be an excellent leader they need to be willing to sacrifice for their cause.

Do you have any great stories of sacrificing for the people you lead?

Kyle Corbin has been serving youth as a volunteer or pastor for over 10 years. He is currently the youth pastor at the Bridge Church in North Vancouver B.C. You can follow his blog at: kylecorbin.blogspot.com or Twitter: @CorbinKyle