leadership | More Than Dodgeball

Geoff StewartMore Posts Caught Not Taught: Part 5 – Work Ethic

For the past few weeks here on MTDB we have been going through a series about the 6 things our students must learn from watching our lives. When we preach on these topics, it needs to come from a place on integrity in our lives that we have been living out these values.

My life before going into ministry was very different than my life now. I was working as a general manager of a division of a company running a million dollar a year auto-shop. I was working from 7:30-6:00 M-F and one or two saturdays a month with 2 weeks of holidays. It was gruelling, stressful and demanded tangible, measurable outcomes of my work and effort. There was no showing up late, there was no leaving early and working from home? Yeah right!

Pastors Can Be Lazy: As I transitioned into ministry where the schedules were flexible, the expectations were less measurable and the rigidness of time and place lessened, I began to notice something startling. I noticed that it was very easy to slack off and get away with it, to be lazy and have no one notice and my start time of 7am moved to 8:30 over a few months. I meet youth workers all the time and many are hard working, diligent and focussed and others would have a hard time arguing they worked more than 30 hours of their 40 hour work week. If we understand 1 Corinthians 10:31 to say that whether we eat or drink that we do it all for the glory of God, you better believe that our work in the Church is an act of Worship.

A friend of mine who I would consider the hardest working Youth Pastor I know has built a culture in his team that even after serving all weekend at their youth conference, that he is the first guy in the office monday morning ready and working on the next youth night. I am inspired by people like this who work to honour God by serving the kingdom well. They understand that hard work can be contagious and his people need to see it in action.

There are lots of stereotypes about youth pastors and I am saddened that one of them is lazy and what is worse is that if you are lazy, your students are going to notice it. You set the culture of your team, your leaders and thus your students. Are you willing to stay late or show up early? On the same day? Are you willing to go out of your way for the sake of a student or leader in need? Don’t reinforce the stereotype.

Don’t Take Advantage: It can be so easy to get to a place where we take advantage of the freedom extended to us and if you were really honest with yourself and counted your hours that you worked in the past month averaged out would you be below/above/right at what you think you work. We are broken people and can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are working more than we are. I have seen it on our staff team, and seen in countless other ministries and its disappointing that we take advantage of the calling to ministry for our own advantage. Students don’t always have the best examples at home when it comes to work, and I pray that students see my diligence of hard work as a better way to live.

Your leaders need you to work hard, your students need you to work hard and your church needs you to work hard. Your work is a worship to the King, give it your all.

I was in Houston a few months back and the lady at Enterprise Rent-A-Car said to my wife and I about our all-out road trip we were heading out on “Hey man, if you are going go for it, you better go for it” I like that, I am going for it. I am all in. How about you?

-Geoff Stewart @geoffcstewart

Add Comment February 18, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: The Power of an Organized Youth Leader

One of the joys of working with youth is how spontaneous and creative the ministry can be. It feels so free flowing and easy going. Most youth pastors cherish this aspect of the ministry, but there is another side that a lot of us youth leaders fear and struggle with: administration.

The stereotype for youth leaders and youth pastors is that they are wild, free-for-all types who lack organizational skills. Often, this stereotype is closer to the truth than we’d like to admit. Yet this is unfortunate because there is power in being organized. Some examples from Scripture come to mind. Joseph’s knack for planning caused Egypt to become the most powerful nation on earth. Nehemiah organized the impressive construction project of rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem. Paul led a network of churches that spanned hundreds of miles even before the days of technology. None of these great feats could have been accomplished with a leader who was disorganized.

I know that organization is a skill that comes easily for only a handful of people. But it is something we all must address. An organized youth leader is able to accomplish more because he/she is on top of things. Events go more smoothly because they are well prepared for. Less students fall through the cracks because we can track their participation. Growth is easier to measure. Volunteer leaders become more dependable because they are not always frustrated. Students are better cared for because you know where they are it. Teaching is more well-rounded because you have a scope and plan for your material. There is a whole host of benefits to being well organized.

If you are not very good at being organized, you need to learn from or delegate to someone who is. It is too important a skill to be careless with. Here is a list of questions to help you get thinking about being organized:

Is your event schedule planned at least three months in advance?
Do your volunteers have job descriptions?
Do you have mission, vision, and value’s outlined on paper?
Are you keeping track of attendance?
Do you have a way of contacting parents at a moment’s notice?
Are you aware of exactly how much money you’ve spent from your budget, and on what?
Have you set any short and long term goals?
Are you keeping track of your Bible teaching so that you can confidently say you are teaching the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27)

Hopefully these questions will give you an idea of where you need to improve organizationally. It might feel at first like the task is too daunting, but the truth is that once you do the hard work of putting the right systems in place, being organized is a lot more enjoyable than winging it all the time. It is freeing. So get organized and get ‘er done!

Jeremy Edgar is the Youth Pastor Bible Fellowship Church in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario, Canada

-GS

3 View Comments February 16, 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

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: Adventures in the Interim

What in the world am I doing here? I fumbled my way through the Sunday morning lesson while 50 teens chatted and ignored me completely. I couldn’t do this. Why would God put me here where I was obviously not wanted?

Three years after we left volunteer youth ministry, God called us back in. This time as the leaders.

Our church had been without a lead pastor for around six months, and now their beloved youth pastor was moving on. They needed someone to keep the youth ministry going until pastors could be hired. For some crazy reason, God called my husband and me.

It was one of the hardest, sweetest, trying, and tearful 14 months of my life. It was wonderful.

The world of youth ministry was not foreign to us, but the world of leading one was. Without the proper training, our education came from the trenches. Here’s a little of what we discovered:

Own your ministry.

When we came in, we miserably attempted to recreate all the activities that everyone was so fond of. Every single one of them bombed. After about two months we realized that we had to be who we were. Things went much more smoothly after that.

God will provide.

I was convinced that God had closed that door forever on working with teens, and being back was not really where my heart was. I asked God to give me a love for these students because I simply didn’t have it in me. He was faithful to pour that into me, so much so that as the weight of it came over me, I second guessed that desire!

Establish healthy boundaries.

It didn’t take long for ministry to take over many areas of our lives, blurring some of our boundaries and creating a mess. My husband and I had to learn to respect each other and our differences. We established stronger time boundaries which also helped us in our personal lives.

Youth ministry is hard.

Yes, you know that. But seriously, volunteer sponsors really have no idea! We spent hours and hours helping, working, and serving in youth ministry, but still had no idea how much harder it is to be the guy in charge! It’s extraordinarily hard. And every youth pastor/director should be given something really awesome, like ice cream.

Simple can be good.

With our lack of proper training, an existing full time job, and not as many volunteers as we would like (can I hear an amen?) our students had to fill in the gaps. The amazing thing about this was that they did. And they were awesome! They learned and grew right alongside us. They got to experience the difficulties and take ownership of their ministry.

The biggest thing I learned was that God is in control and working bigger and better things than I can ever imagine.

I am just thankful he let me have a part in it.

Melissa Duggan just wrapped up a year of working as the Interim Youth Director at her church and is now (again) happily being the support guy in student ministry.

2 View Comments February 15, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: Youth Ministry’s Exceptional Everyday Gray

Getting into youth ministry is like signing up for a basketball league where every 30 seconds there’s another slam-dunk opportunity. But once you get into it, it feels much more like a soccer game where there’s a heck of a lot of running around before reaching a goal.

Let me explain.

If you’re like me, you do student ministry for those great moments: When a student finally “gets it.” When small group conversation goes deep. When a teenager posts, “Best weekend ever!” on the Monday after the retreat. These are moments that make it all worth it!

But what about all the other in-between moments? The moments that aren’t so exceptional – that are normal. Average. Gray. Like when you have to clean up the youth room after everyone has evacuated. Or when you have to make a hundred phone calls to get the event planned (the one that get’s cancelled because of bad whether). Or when you have to dissect the copy machine because somewhere hidden deep inside of it is a stuck piece of paper… allegedly. What about all the undesirable, underrated and unexceptional tasks of youth ministry?

Now, I get that there are “soccer players” out there – that is, people who love the running around. But my general response is, “This is not what I signed up for!”

But I wonder if God can teach us all something about those gray times in between. Perhaps the exceptional times of discovery in ministry are not the moments we expect.

Oswald Chambers wrote: “It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. WE HAVE TO BE EXCEPTIONAL IN THE ORDINARY THINGS, to be holy in the mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.”

I am guilty of wanting five-minute fixes. Of asking for humility and success and patience… and wanting them all right now. To some extent, we are all tempted toward the big, grandiose occasions, when people point and say, “What a life-changing leader! What an incredible ministry!”

But what if our best leadership today was picking up after students? What if worship found it’s way into filling out finances? What if God was waiting to meet with us each day as we move between meetings?

And what if God’s most exceptional gifts to you today in your ministry were hidden in the common wrapping of everyday tasks?

Sam Townsend works on the Training and Programming Team at YouthWorks, where he helps develop materials to point teenagers toward Jesus. After the workday, Sam is a youth group leader, a seminary student and a conversationalist over half-price appetizers.

1 View Comments February 15, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: The Lasting Effects of Disapproval

I grew up in a church where disapproval was an often-used method of keeping us teens in line. If we got too rowdy during the church service, people would shoot disapproving looks our way till we quieted down. If we’d be too lacklustre in worshipping, we’d get ‘the look’ as well.

The youth leaders had the disapproval method down to a pat too. When they encountered us doing something we weren’t supposed to do (like smoking, using bad language or pda’s ), the disapproval would be clear from their faces, their words and their whole demeanor.

It worked. But it also had an unintentional result: we experienced not just disapproval over what we did, but also over who we were. At least, I did.

I wasn’t a bad kid as a teen. In all honesty, I was doing pretty well in terms of faith. I took it seriously, tried to read the Bible and pray, brought friends with me to youth group and everything.

Still, I always felt I wasn’t good enough. There always was this disapproval when I did mess up. I distinctly remember hearing the words ‘I’m disappointed in you, I never expected that from you’ a couple of times and it hurt me deeply.

It also reinforced a gospel of performance in me, something I struggled with even years later. The thought that even my best wasn’t good enough to please leaders whose opinion mattered to me, influenced my image of God, as I figured he’d feel the same way.

Disapproval isn’t necessarily wrong, as long as it’s aimed at the behavior and not the person. But too often, disapproval is our knee-jerk reaction as youth leaders when we’re confronted with ‘bad behavior’ from our students. Too often we show our disapproval, our disappointment even, before we show grace and try to understand the ‘why’.

No matter how shocked or disappointed we are at the behavior of our students (especially when it concerns those students we don’t expect it from!), our first reaction should be love and not judgment. Our first reaction should be to understand, not to be heard in our anger or frustration. Our first reaction should be to show kindness and mercy, not a desire to point out something students will already know in all likelihood anyway.

Disapproval can have lasting effects in the lives of our students. They’ll feel weighed, measured and found wanting.

On the other side, acceptance and unconditional love will have lasting effects as well. When we live out God’s mercy and love, we’re showing them a powerful image of God, one that may impact the rest of their lives.

Disapproval or love, judgment or understanding, which one will you choose?

Rachel Blom is Dutch of origin, American at heart and ultimately heaven bound, but currently residing in the south of Germany. She’s an author and speaker and a veteran youth ministry enthusiast. Find her at Youth Leaders Academy where she blogs on everything youth ministry or on Twitter.

-GS

Add Comment February 14, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts GUEST POST: Don’t Miss The Point

For the better part of 2012, I met on and off with 3 other youth pastors to plan a huge New Year’s Eve party for the teens in our area. All of our ministries are mostly relational and relatively low “flash”, but we wanted to pull all the stops out on this one. Live DJ. Giveaways. The band ‘We As Human’ in concert. Midnight balloon drop. The works. I can’t tell you how many times I cast the vision to others in the community: “We want to start of 2013 focused on Christ”, “No one else is doing anything like this around here”, or even “I know where I was on New Year’s Eve when I was 17 and I don’t want our teens there either!”

Overall, the consensus among everyone involved was that it was a rousing success. Some things turned out better than expected and some worse…BUT, one thing stuck out to me as the defining moment of the night. And it wasn’t the band, DJ, or even the moment the clock struck twelve. After the band finished, I took about 5 minutes and shared the Gospel. I knew many of the kids there were saved and members of the various youth groups in attendance, but we always felt that this was a perfect time to share Christ with someone who may never set foot in our churches otherwise.

The next day, as I was sifting through the response cards, I found one in particular from a girl who had earlier sought me out to tell me she accepted Christ that night. This is what the card said:

Her simple response totally re-calibrated how I evaluated that night. Even though I fought it the whole way, near the end I got lost in the logistics of throwing a bash like this and was rating it’s success on technical execution and attendance. As I reread her words, I felt God whisper a reminder into my gut: Our first priority is sharing the love of Jesus as effectively as we know how. Quite frankly, the rest can be swept up with the streamers.

Ben Suggs is the Minister to Teens at Freedom Family Church in Liberty, NC and you can follow him on Twitter here

-GS

Add Comment February 14, 2013

Chris WesleyMore Posts Embracing Administrative Duties

I hate planning for trips, events and program because it’s calling me to embrace administrative duties that I’m not good at doing. I’d rather be on a mountain, hanging out at a burger joint or shooting a basketball with a group of teens, than figuring out the cheapest way to feed them on a Sunday night. When you started out in youth ministry you probably had dreams of hanging with students, mentoring and walking with them in faith. While you should be doing that, as you become more seasoned there is a pull to manage and lead from an administrative standpoint. You might feel like fighting that urge and grow guilty when you are stuck behind a desk. However, it’s prudent to embrace the administrative side of youth ministry because it will help you as a leader:

Extend Your Capacity
Solve Big Picture Problems
Fuel A Movement

So, how do you embrace your administrative duties? How can you grow as a leader? Remember to:

Study Outside Systems: To lead a ministry takes more than just being relational. As a leader you need to study successful models. This means learning how to do customer service from Chick-fil-a or how to sell an idea like Apple. Business models, school systems and looking at other ministries will help you discover principles and practices that will help your ministry grow stronger.

Craft Your Communication Skills: Communicating clearly and consistently might come naturally to some; however, for others it takes practice and work. Whether it’s developing email templates or reviewing a talk. As a youth minister if you aren’t communicating to others effectively, than you won’t lead them effectively either.

Prepare, Prepare And Prepare: You need to prepare for meetings to make them worth people’s time. You need to prepare for messages so that you can cast vision. You need to build in margin into your schedule so that you are not always flying by the seat of your pants. A prepared individual is confident and able to roll with the punches youth ministry can literally (Middle Schoolers can get nasty) and figuratively bring.

The administrative side of youth ministry is definitely not as attractive as sitting with a teen in the trenches. The tendency is to fight these responsibilities; however, if neglected they can harm you in the long run. As the youth pastor of your church you are not only called to lead individual students but also the young church. To do this effectively you need to pour into your leaders. You need to organize systems and sometimes that means embracing administrative duties.

What administrative duty do you struggle to embrace the most?

Chris Wesley (@chrisrwesley)