Two years ago, I became a minimalist. Essentially, minimalism is about removing the nonessentials in life. And a minimalist is one who seeks to live with only the most necessary possessions and removes everything else.

Believe it or not, discarding the physical clutter from my life turned out to be one of the best life decisions I have ever made. As a result of removing the clutter, I found more time, money, and freedom to enjoy the things I truly love. And it has allowed me to intentionally promote the things in life that I most value.

At first, this principle applied only to the physical possessions in my life. But I soon began successfully applying this principle to other areas: goals, time commitments, spoken words, screen time, and social networking (just to name a few). Each time, I found the same lesson to be true. Paring down to only the essentials allows the things I most value to receive more of my time, energy, and resources.

I also found that the principles of minimalism apply to my job as a Pastor of Student Ministries. In youth ministry, too much “stuff” begins to clutter our ministry. We get involved doing so many different programs and tasks that we have no time, energy, or resources left for the most important. I am beginning to understand that in youth ministry, doing less can actually mean doing more.

Consider the reality that we all have a finite number of hours in a workweek, dollars to spend, volunteer hours, and facilities to utilize. Rather than spreading those resources thin by planning too many events, wouldn’t it be far wiser to concentrate our resources into doing just a few things and doing them very well? And in paring down to those essentials, we begin to elevate the most important aspects of our ministry.

To put this into practice, consider minimalizing some of these most common youth ministry activities so that the most valuable can really start to shine:

1. Outreach Events. Rather than doing 1-2 outreach events each month, try organizing just 1-2 each semester. You will find far greater success reaching students with 4 really good events than with 12 mediocre ones.
2. Retreats. Don’t plan more than 1 retreat each winter. It is far more effective to get a large percentage of students together on one weekend than it is to spread them out into smaller percentages over 4 retreats each year.
3. Social Causes. Community service is important to a youth ministry, but you don’t have to meet every need in the entire community. Rather than bouncing between unrelated community service projects, jump into 1-2 social causes completely with both feet and make a deeper impact.
4. Teaching Topics. You get to teach your students for less than 10% of their lifetime. They don’t need to understand every theological topic in your systematic theology book by the day they graduate. Instead, your students would be far better served if you taught on just the most important topics in their life on a recurring basis rather than always charting new ground each week.
5. Mentoring Relationships. Rather than feeling like you need to mentor every student in your ministry, choose 2-3 students to really mentor effectively. Then, surround yourself with quality adults who will also mentor 2-3 students. Trust me, if you allow others to do the ministry, you’ll find enough adults for every student who wants to be mentored.
6. Email Announcements. Refuse to send out e-mails or texts every week. Instead, pick your opportunities carefully. Spreading only your most important announcements this way will insure that they will always be received as the most important. (As a side note, this does not apply to social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. Always send announcements there on a regular basis.)
7. Weekly Programming. By the way, it wouldn’t hurt to take a week off once in a while either.

Remember, more is not always better. Sometimes, more is just more.

Joshua Becker is the Pastor of Student Ministries at Essex Alliance Church in Essex Junction, VT. He blogs regularly at Becoming Minimalist, a blog dedicated to inspiring others to minimalize their possessions and simplify their life. I think you’ll kinda like it.