margin | More Than Dodgeball

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: Three Opportunities To Embrace Right After Kickoff

Kickoff for the fall, there is nothing like it. Everyone is focused on getting plugged in, connected, signed up and registered. The summer dreams have come to an end, school is back in session and the thought, “Here we go again.” races through your mind.

For some of us the beginning of the year stresses us out and for others it excites us. There is so much to do, so much to get done and then BOOM! The year starts and we are off. It’s like a marathon where the anticipation before the race is killer; however, once you get moving you settle down.

Kickoff is a season that can race by; however, it’s also a season that needs to be embraced. On top of fun memories of moon bounces and wild games, it’s really a season when you can strengthen your foundation. It’s a season when you need to:

Recruit New Ministers – The best time to recruit other ministers is when the program is in full swing. That way potential volunteers can:

See the program in action.
Talk to actively serving ministers
Ask questions they might not have known to ask if inquiring during the summer

When you recruit new ministers right after kickoff you’ll have a positive excitement that will be contagious.

Invite More Teens – It makes sense to invite someone to an event before it happens; however, your ministry isn’t an event. While you want to build up hype and momentum before the program begins you’ll want to put more afterwards. By continuously inviting teens to your program your creating an open enrollment feeling. So many times we give up on a class or a program because we miss the first session. Ministry should be treated like any relationship, where you can step in at any time.

Build Margin – Once the year begins we feel our margin slip away; however, there is no better time. You should be letting your leaders loose, let them fail, succeed and problem solve. As the point person you should be able to take a step back, observe and take in the experience. As soon as the year gets going, slow down and find that pace because it’s going to be a long year.

Kickoff is not the end of summer and it isn’t just the beginning of your ministry year. It’s a mile marker that you should utilize to grow stronger. Look for the opportunities in every situation and continue to move forward.

What other opportunities do you see during kickoff?

Chris Wesley is the Director of Student Ministry at Church of the Nativity in Timonium, MD. You can read more great youth ministry articles and thoughts on his exceptional blog Marathon Youth Ministry.

Add Comment September 8, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts Youth Workers: You Have to Turn It Off

Interesting article in USA Today this past weekend about turning off – something youth workers are notoriously poor at doing consistently. Want to get more work done? Work less. Want to be fulfilled in your job? Make it part of your life and not all of it. Want to have longevity in ministry? Get away from it every once in a while. Here’s a clip from the article, be sure head there for the rest:

Do you take your smartphone to bed because you claim to use it as a nightlight, say it’s the only alarm clock you have, or need to make sure you don’t miss a critical text?

Here’s the problem with that thinking: Now that the phone is only an arm’s reach away, it’s easy to check a few e-mails, perhaps sending off a few responses so you have one fewer thing to do tomorrow.

You’ve just stepped onto a very slippery slope that will make it difficult not to be connected 24/7. You’ve become one of those millions of workers who fire off e-mails at midnight or reach for the smartphone before your first cup of coffee every morning.

You may claim that you have to work this way because your job — or your employer — demands it.

Make sure you read to the bottom of the article for some really practical volunteer team tips, too!

JG

1 View Comments June 1, 2012

Josh GriffinMore Posts 3 Ways to Keep Your Team Healthy and For a Long Time

Too many youth workers are running at full capacity with not enough margin to care for themselves or their team. Some of it is self-inflicted in our own brokenness, some of it is the product of a church culture skewed to an unhealthy extreme. Either way, we have a responsibilty as a church to make sure that we are healthy and balanced, not screaming down the path to burnout. If we’re not careful, we could model exactly what not to do to our team. If you want to keep your team and yourself healthy and for a long time – here are a few ideas mixed in with more questions than answers:

Training
Every individual is responsible for their personal growth, but the church culture should share in this pursuit. Does your church regularly offer and/or require volunteers to participate in training events? Is there access to plenty of resources to grow on their own? Is there a culture to share what you are learning with others? People who aren’t trained will eventually grow tired of trying without success, will be crushed under the weight of success, or quietly search for someone who will care for them AND care for what they do. Well-trained people stay longer.

Coaching
Coaches identify unseen weaknesses, opportunities and motivations. To often people are left in isolation when they need the benefits of an actively engaged coach. When was the last time you nudged someone on your team toward an unseen opportunity? How often do you take time from the pace of ministry and poured into your players? You have so much wisdom, use it to pour into your team! People will in return value the coach and the coaching.

Protection
If you want to keep your team together and build youth ministry longevity, you have to protect your people. You may need to protect them from an overreacting parent or even from their own destructive behaviors. You have to protect them with sound policies that focus on caring for them and for your students. Some failure is part of the learning process and healthy, too much can drive someone away or disqualify them for good. Knowing how much to give someone, when to press and when to let up, is an art a leader must master to keep his or her people.

These are critically important for your volunteers – but they’re important for you, too! How are you being trained, coached and protected?

JG

2 View Comments May 12, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts A Few Resources That Might Help If You’re Stuck

Was just randomly looking through books and tools that might help HSM in our next season and landed on a few that I’m interested in and/or look promising for some situations I’m facing that you may soon, too. Here’s a few items I’m excited about checking out:

If you’re stuck trying to figure out the work of youth ministry … maybe check out Duffy Robbin’s recently expanded and updated book Youth Ministry Nuts and Bolts.

Youth ministry veteran and bestselling author, Duffy Robbins, offers an updated and revised edition of his book about the important, behind-the-scenes mechaincs of youth ministry. The tasks of budgeting, decision-making, time management, team ministry, staff relationships, conflict resolution, working with parents, and a range of other issues, are the things that keep a ministry together and functioning well. Nobody gets into youth ministry because they want to think about these things; but a lot of people get out of youth ministry because they didn’t think about them. All youth workers– whether paid or volunteer, full-time or part-time– will find Youth Ministry Nuts and Bolts to be a thoughtful, fun, practical guide to youth ministry administration.

If you’re stuck on how to help parents get more engaged in raising their students … I love Walt Mueller’s stuff and 99 Thoughts for Parents of Teenagers looks like a cheap/simple resource to get into their hands quickly.

If you’re the parent of a teenager, you need all the help you can get. How do you help your children make wise choices? How do you give your teenagers freedom to make their own choices while still providing a guiding hand? How do you invest your time and energy in ways that make an eternal difference in your children’s lives? Walt Mueller delivers the goods in 99 Thoughts for Parents of Teenagers, a no-holds-barred look at the good, bad, and ugly aspects of parenting teenagers. Drawing on his experience as a parent of four children who have passed through their teenage years, Walt shares wisdom, thoughts, insights, and suggestions for making the teenage years count.

If you’re stuck trying to communicate to students the same way … maybe you need to think about using some video curriculum for a while. What if you could bring in Doug Fields, Francis Chan and Max Lucado? I think this video teaching series from BlueFish looks awesome.

If you’re stuck trying to figure out teaching teenagers at all … I can’t recommend Doug Fields’ and Duffy Robbins’ book Speaking to Teenagers. A gamer-changer in helping you learn to be a better communicator:

Get ready for a crash course in effective communication. More than just a book on how to “do talks,” Speaking to Teenagers combines the experience and wisdom of two veteran youth ministry speakers, along with insightful research and practical tools, to help you develop messages that engage students with the love of Christ and the power of his Word. Whether you’re crafting a five-minute devotional or a 30-minute sermon, Speaking to Teenagers is essential to understanding and preparing great messages. Together, Doug Fields and Duffy Robbins show you how they craft their own messages and give you the tools to do it yourself. They’ll guide you, step-by-step, through the process of preparing and delivering meaningful messages that effectively communicate to your students.

If you’re stuck in a creative rut … maybe Les Christie can help. The book Awaken Your Creativity shows a ton of promise for helping you get unstuck from doing the same old thing.

You know how tough it can be to come up with new and inventive student ministry ideas every school year. It can be infinitely more grueling to be that creative on a weekly basis! Whether you’re developing a new message, a unique way to get students talking and interacting, or something different for the weekend retreat, most of us find ourselves tapped for creative ideas after a little while. Take comfort: You’re not alone, and you’re not necessarily out of creative steam. Everyone hits a block at some point, but you can find a way to tap into the creativity God placed within you. Les Christie has been doing youth ministry for decades, and he’s not out of ideas yet! This practical book will help you explore the stumbling blocks, the tricks of the trade, and the catalysts to creativity.

JG

Josh GriffinMore Posts Book Review: Stuff Christians Like

Thoroughly enjoying Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff. I’ve been a fan of his writing for a while, although originally dismissing his blog since it was an obvious knockoff of Stuff White People Like. That aside, Jon manages to take some fun and largely overdue shots at the Christian subculture that are welcome and highly entertaining. If you’ve never read “Treating Youth Ministers Like Silver Medal Ministers” or “The Mandatory Youth Minister Goatee“, you should immediately. The book is largely a collection of his blog posts so if you’re a fan you’ll love it for sure (and if not be sure to check out his blog here). Good, entertaining read making fun of us. Love it.

JG

Add Comment April 25, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts Book Review: Rework

Was able to read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson over the last couple weeks. The book isn’t really that long, but my time for reading has been short the past month. Rework is a call for us to work differently – what you think you know about getting things done isn’t the right way at all. It is an invitation, permission even, to break all of the rules. Don’t have meetings. Don’t pull an all-nighter. Plans are at best guessing. The premise of the book is really that old school thinking is what holds you back, not stuff to live by. Ironically, it is really a new set of rules, albeit far more minimalistic than ever before.

The book is fantastic, especially since I never met a rule I didn’t want to break. It could have been titled, “Out of the Box”, “Think Different” or “Break The Rules” and they all would have applied. Need your thinking challenged? Need a nudge out of the box? Get this book.

JG

1 View Comments March 15, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts GUEST POST: 6 Essential Resources For Sermon Preparation

I am a youth pastor who oversees and teaches 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students. And anytime I prepare to teach a passage of the Bible to them, these are some of the first books I grab. Here’s why these are some of my essentials for teaching:

The ESV Study Bible — I use this because it has a very comprehensive section of notes which helps me keep my message on track with the Biblical context. Plus, it gives me other ideas of points I may have missed.
The IVP Bible Background Commentaries — I use these because they unpack the cultural background of everything that happens in a passage. So when you read, for example, in Ruth 4 that the kinsman-redeemer took off his sandal and gave it to Baoz, you get 150 words or more on the cultural meaning of this action at the time it was written. This is indispensable for knowing what’s going on and for helping contextualize it for a younger audience.
The Illustrated Guide To Bible Customs & Cultures — I use this because it has pictures. And it’s not as heady as the IVP Commentaries.
Zondervan’s Teen Study Bible — I’ll check in here to see if there are any teen-friendly explanations/illustrations of a certain part of Scripture. When they do, it’s usually pretty helpful for my audience (and is often something I hadn’t originally thought of).
The Student Bible — The one pictured above is the same Bible I used when I was a student in a youth ministry. The publisher put in some short student-friendly thoughts, but this Bible also has my notes and markings from when I was a student. It helps me remember what was important to me when I was the same age as my audience.
The Message//Remix — I don’t teach from this translation, but I read it as I prepare to pick up any other nuance I may have missed in the previous resources.

I pull these books off the shelf each week as I prepare to teach my students the truths of God’s Word. And for me, I’ve found them to be essential teaching tools in youth ministry.

Sean Kahlich is the Mid-High Youth Minister at The Kirk of the Hills — check out his youth ministry blog called Awaiting Epiteleo.

2 View Comments February 26, 2011

Josh GriffinMore Posts The Next Christians Live Webcast Today with Gabe Lyons

Watch live streaming video from waterbrookmultnomah at livestream.com

Today (at 2pm EST) there will be a live web streaming session with Gabe Lyons about his book The Next Christians. I think the people he is writing about are in your youth group now, or will be soon. Might be interesting to watch it today.

JG