Beyond excited to get my hands on Brian Berry’s first book - As For Me and My [Crazy] House. Looks so perfect for youth workers with growing families. As a father of 4, I can relate. Can I get an amen?

Serving in Christian ministry should be a life-building, life-giving, life-inspiring experience for leaders, spouses, and families. So why isn’t that always the case? In this book, youth pastor Brian Berry pours out his thoughts on why it’s so tough to build a healthy life, a healthy marriage, and a healthy family in the midst of ministry craziness. He focuses on the three best gifts you as a youth worker can bestow:

• The best gift you can give your marriage is a healthy self
• The best gift you can give your family is a healthy marriage
• The best gift you can give your community and ministry is a healthy family

JG

Have you ever really messed up? I mean, completely blown it. I have and I thought there is no way to recover from this one. I have finally figured out that it is okay to mess up and fail! Congratulations, you didn’t do it!

The great thing about failing is that it is not the end result. It is part of the process. Another element in life. For instance, Abraham Lincoln’s resume:

• 1831 – Lost his job
• 1832 – Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
• 1833 – Failed in business
• 1834 – Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
• 1835 – Sweetheart died
• 1836 – Had nervous breakdown
• 1838 – Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
• 1843 – Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
• 1846 – Elected to Congress (success)
• 1848 – Lost re-nomination
• 1849 – Rejected for land officer position
• 1854 – Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1856 – Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
• 1858 – Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1860 – Elected President (success)

Not great. Obviously not all those events were his fault but they could have caused him to quit trying.

So, if you feel like nothing is going right….then you are on the right track. It doesn’t matter if the failure is in marriage, work, ministry, or faith. You aren’t finished yet, so if you want to go from suck to success, you only need one step. Get back up and keep trying.

Jeremy Bloom is trying to figure out life, God, and family. Follow him on Twitter – @finding_jeremy or on his blog about youth ministry.

You wake up exhausted. Was that overnighter a dream? Where did your black eye come from? Why is your arm in a cast? Why are there 13 missed calls from various parents? What speeding ticket?

If you’re like us, after a big event or activity the last thing you want to do is re-live all the details. If nobody died, you probably count your blessings and move on to the next order of business (or should we say the next order of “busyness”?) And it’s the busyness of youth ministry that typically keeps youth workers from taking the time to evaluate our events and activities.

After all, you spent 2 months getting ready for summer camp…why spend one day debriefing it upon your return (that’s a rhetorical, sarcastic question)? So, after a big activity, get some rest and when your head does clear of sleep deprivation, here are a few ways to debrief like a professional event planner:

Gather the troops to celebrate
Have an evening after a big event already marked on the calendar to take time to celebrate what God did at your event. Make a sort of reunion feel to the night, including pictures, video, even a student testimony or screenshots from Facebook™ of people talking about the event. Make it known that debriefing will be part of the celebration. We reserve this type of nights for camps, retreats, mission trips etc. There’s probably no need to plan a special night just to celebrate a successful bowling outing.

Talk about “The Good”
Start with the highlights – this will get everyone centered on why you did the event in the first place and get the discussion going so it’s easier to share the lowlights. What did God do? What were the stories and celebrations from the event? What went flawlessly? What was surprising?

Talk about “The Bad”
Potential improvements are easy for some people to see – so work on creating a list of what wasn’t best and quickly think of how to improve them. Time is best spent creating a list of things that could be improved rather than focusing on solutions – it is much easier to attach someone with a particular skillset to a problem later. Start the debrief asking people to “speak the truth in love”.

Talk about “The Ugly”
Things happen. Stuff gets broken and things bomb. Only the worst offenders get on this list – don’t put things that could be easily fixed here, only stuff you swear you’ll never do again.

Send off apologies/thank yous
In the course of youth ministry events you may be required to apologize for something that happened. You may want to offer to fix a lamp that was broken. Or return something that was stolen. And for sure a quick thank you to everyone involved in the planning, pulling off and follow-through of the event will go a long ways in making sure the next one is even better.

Here’s hoping your next event, and the debrief afterward, go great!

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.

We often discuss church growth or student ministry growth. This is a topic of conversation for good reason, because we all are interested in building our student ministry. Here are a few reasons why your student ministry may never grow:

1. Lack of Prayer – This is the biggest part of growth. You must daily pray and ask God to build your student ministry. You must be praying for your ministry to grow. Do not expect any growth (or perhaps the wrong kind of growth) if you are not daily praying over your ministry. Bathe it in prayer, and trust God for the growth.
2. Lack of communicating clear vision – This is often times that the biggest problem with growth. You have to regularly communicate vision to the people. It must constantly be in front of the people. Then, you must live out the vision. “If your church does not know where it is supposed to be, then, they will attempt to go everywhere and eventually wind up nowhere.”
3. Leadership – Ultimately, it could be a reflection on YOU. Make sure you are a passionate leader. Make sure you are living the Word. Make sure that you are carrying out the vision and communicating it clearly to your people.
4. Selfishness – This can be a reflection upon leadership and the people. Sometimes, God may want to take the church in a place where you do not want to go, but you are still responsible for going in that direction. Do not be selfish and want the church to be what you want. Also, your people must not be selfish in trying to create the church that they want to have. It is not about us, but all about Him.
5. Energy – If you fill the leadership with energy-less people, you will create a energy-less congregation. Be energetic and passionate, and the congregation will follow suit. Create a load of energy every service for the people to desire to come back.

Let’s make sure that we are doing everything that we can to grow our ministry!

Josh Evans is the student pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in the Winston Salem, NC area. He has been a mentor and pastor to students for 4 years. You can connect further with Josh on his blog or send him a direct email at joshhevans@gmail.com.

You have a porn problem in your youth group whether you know it or not. High school, junior high, college—it’s present at every age. No longer do students have to go looking for porn, because in today’s age, porn comes looking for them. It might not be an easy topic for most students to talk about, and you may need to find a different way to communicate with students in your group, but it’s a topic that needs to be discussed.

Over the past couple months, we have both taken a week to meet with our junior high and high school small groups to discuss God’s view of porn, how to avoid and battle the temptation, and open the door to conversation. Here are some things we did right, and also some things that we learned from:

·     Make sure all your students are there—especially the ones you know need to hear it most. Both times we had this discussion, there were key students that needed to be there and didn’t show up. This could have been planned or not, but either way it’s important to encourage everyone to be there.

·     Don’t wait. If possible, start the conversation as early as possible. Make sure your students have a comfort level with you, and make sure they know they’re in a safe place. Once that’s established, you’re in the clear. The longer you wait, the more the struggle can root itself.

·     Let them know they’re not the only ones that struggle with it. One of the things I did when having this discussion was made all my guys put their heads down and raise their hand if porn was a struggle for them. 8 out of 9 raised their hand, so I told the group about it. That brings a huge relief factor for the guys, knowing they’re not alone.

·     Use Scripture, but don’t go overboard. You don’t want to hit your students over the head with Bible verses about how lust and porn are bad, but they do need to know what God says.

·     Encourage accountability. XXXchurch.com and their web accountability tool, X3Watch, are GREAT resources for your students. It encourages accountability with someone they trust, which is the best tool for overcoming the temptation of porn.

While it may seem like a daunting task, you can start the discussion to change the course of a student’s struggle with porn. Let God guide your words, and expect him to guide the discussion.

Matt Reynolds and Steven Orel are volunteer youth workers at Saddleback Church. They come from two different generations and work together to be a resource to other youth workers through their blog at GenToGenYM.com.

The old saying goes: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. My mom always used to say that the grass is green over there because there was a septic tank underneath it.

But fewer words could be truer in Youth Ministry and church life for that matter. The grass always seems to be greener in someone else’s church. The advent of Facebook™ and Twitter™ you get to read about another youth worker’s work and how many students stood and received Christ for the first time, and how many dollars the group donated to a charity. It can feel like a non-stop highlight reel of comparison and discouragement compared to the situation you may be facing at the moment.

So I’m not surprised when people make comments about how great it would be to have my job, or to run a ministry like this. Truth be told, it’s a ministry just like yours, full of students who are hurting and broken and who make poor decisions regularly. When I spend time with students, it is often dealing with tough issues just like you. I usually Tweet about and post about the good, but truth be told, its tough, and the grass is not as green as you think. The same goes for the big youth group across town from you that has awesome music, great media and kids getting saved and baptized weekly. That is not the whole story.

Here is the honest truth; God has brought you to your church and your ministry for this moment. Don’t worry about what’s next or let your mind wander every day searching for. When your eyes and heart are on what others have, and what is happening down the road, you lose because you get discouraged, your students lose because you are distracted and say why bother and God loses because the person entrusted to lead Hid children is disheartened.

Here are two things to focus on:

Bloom where you’re planted
Just because you know that a ministry 3000 miles from you has great media, does not mean your students do. If you were to poll your students you will find that the thing that keeps them coming back is not an expensive youth room, free pizza, Xbox® Kinect™ or lasers – its relationships. Your students love coming to your group because they are known there, they matter there, and people care for them there, people pray for them there and people accept them there.

It may sometimes be a mess in your eyes, but you are called there, to share Jesus with your students, and it’s a blessing to be able to do that. Every church is messy. Accept the fact that pushy parents, apathetic teens and cranky facilities staff are a universal experience.

When you think about your group, think about the lives and stories that you have an opportunity to speak into and strive daily to show Jesus to each of them. We are blessed to work with a generation so hungry for significance and passionate about having a life that counts. They are just waiting for you to give them something / someone to live for.

Take a step forward today
Maybe you feel like you have nothing to add to the youth ministry landscape, when in fact you really do. There are thousands of youth pastors out there that are struggling, trying to figure out how to do ministry in a context just like yours. If you have been in youth ministry for more than two years, you have more to offer than you can imagine.

How can you share your experiences, good or bad so that other youth workers can benefit from it?

• Start a blog
• Write a guest post for someone else’s blog
• Submit a magazine article (easier than you think)
• Walk alongside a new Youth Worker in your area
• Speak at your local training event

 

These are simple ways for you to share the lessons that God has taught you through being in the trenches. People need to know the pitfalls; they need to know how to deal with tough situations like the ones that you experience all the time.

Make the grass under your feet green.

JG

1. Build a healthy relationship with them- When you recruit youth workers, choose people who you can have a relationship with. One of the coolest things about our youth leaders is that most of my wife and I’s closest friends serve in our student ministry. So, we have some strong relationships with the ones who are in there! If you want to keep youth leaders long-term, you need to have a relationship with them.
2. Listen to their feedback- I came from a small church where we had 30 students and a few youth leaders that I personally recruited. I basically started the youth group from scratch and the Lord blessed. Then, He moved me to a different church with about 75 students and about 25 youth leaders. They knew the system way better than I did. One thing that I tried to do and still do is listen to their feedback and ideas. Some youth pastors have a way of doing things, and they are not open to ideas from their youth leaders. This is something that turns people away from serving in your ministry so listen to their feedback, and do not be afraid to use their idea and give them the credit!
3. Show them that they are appreciated. I am reading a book right now called, “life in student ministry” by Tim Schmoyer, and he constantly is hitting me hard about praising your youth leaders! This is a great way to keep youth leaders with you. They must feel like their ministry is important to you. They must know that you appreciate them. Try your best to pay for their ministry stuff. Our budget cannot handle paying for every youth leader for every event, but we try to cut cost for leaders and be a blessing to them. If we had the budget to pay for every leader, I for sure would take that and apply it! Shower your leaders with gifts and blessings. We just had our Christmas party, and we got each leader a Christmas photo of their entire small group. It was not too expensive, and it means a lot to our leaders. They must know that they are appreciated if they are going to serve with you long-term.
4. Your heart must be fleshed out- Volunteer youth leaders do not want to serve in your ministry if they cannot see that you genuinely have a heart for your students! They must see your heart, passion, and enthusiasm for this ministry lived out!
5. Cast vision regularly- Vision is not something that you cast once a year! This is something that the leaders need to be reminded about over and over again! They must hear where you feel God wants to take the youth group. You must cast is regularly, and you must live out the goals and vision that you are casting!
6. Train them- Leader training is so important. This is something that we are working on, but we are going to try to improve even more on. Your leaders need training. We always have areas that need improvement, and you need to provide this for your leaders. They also need to be humble enough to be willing to go through some training.
7. Pray with them- There is nothing better than having a relationship with your youth leaders where you can drop down and pray with them. You both need this relationship! Ask them how you can pray for them and their families! They need to be assured that you are praying for them outside of youth group.
8. Model their job description- Many times we have a job description for youth leaders that we as the youth pastor hardly hold! The youth leaders need to see you living out the Christian life as well as the job description and standard that you hold them too.
9. Let them lead- Many times youth pastors want to do things themselves. We are human, and we struggle with being on an inward power trip thinking that we can do things better than the youth leaders. If you give them a responsibility, allow them the authority to carry it out.
10. Support them- You must support them from the pulpit of your church as well as from the pulpit of your student ministry. They must know that they are supported by their student pastor. Support them in front of the students and take their side on issues unless it is a moral problem on their part. They must feel supported.

Josh Evans is the student pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in the Winston Salem, NC area. He has been a mentor and pastor to students for 4 years. You can connect further with Josh on his blog or send him a direct email at joshhevans@gmail.com.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with the Youth Pastor whom I replaced after he was terminated after having an inappropriate relationship with a volunteer. I had not seen him in two and a half years since the week before his dismissal and it was a bit like seeing a ghost. Churches tend to make people in situations like that disappear under the guise of it being best for everyone. Truth be told I had not made any effort to see him, nor contact him until last week. Much of this lack of effort came out of my frustration with him for the harm it caused to our students, leaders and church. I was a volunteer leader in the ministry and have been journeying with our students through the process ever since.

As we sat down for lunch, I was encouraged to hear of the restoration process for him, working through the issues, for his family as they worked to build back what was lost. As we chatted I asked him, what advice he would give myself and other youth workers to avoid getting to the place that he did and here is what he said.

Don’t Give Your Students Everything: He did not have kids himself and in many ways him and his wife treated students and leaders as their own. Loved and cared for them, but what he realized is that he had given too much to the students, too much of himself, too much emotion, time and energy that his marriage and relationship at home got what little was left.

Protect Your Home: It’s so easy for your home to become a second ministry space where students can hang out. He said that making sure it was not youth room 2.0 and not prioritizing it as a family space first was a big mistake. The home is an intimate space, be mindful of that before allowing students especially of the opposite sex to be in your home when your spouse isn’t even if its in a group setting.

Keep Healthy Boundaries: He mentioned that in the midst of the relationship that ultimately ended his ministry he had kept very healthy boundaries with everyone else. He had noted the areas where there had been break downs in boundaries and made sure that they would not be repeated with others. Maintaining an open door policy in meeting with female students in the office, not meeting after hours or in private, not driving students alone were all areas where he had let his guard down and allowed for this to happen.

It Could Happen To You: This was the most powerful thing that came up in our conversation and it was a reality that I had come to recently, that anyone of us could end up there. At first I was so mad that he would do this, to his family, to the church, to the youth ministry that I had given 10 years of service to. But as I have moved into a ministry role myself, the reality is that each of us is a few poor choices away from being there too. For him it was little steps, letting firm boundaries become blurry, entering into an emotional relationship that eventually led to a physical one. When things are rough at home and people are showering you with affirmation and coveting your time at the church, it begins there.

He said it wasn’t until he was knee deep in the situation that he realized fully what had happened and that there was no way out, lying about it delayed his world crashing in for a short time. I often wondered how it went on so long, and he said he never thought it would just go away, but this held off the implosion that was to come for a season. He was a great Youth Pastor, loves Jesus, and never intended to throw away what he felt was his calling in life. Will he ever serve in ministry again? Not sure. But he is a constant reminder of how human we are, how sin can grab ahold of us, and how every day we have the opportunity to serve God in Youth Ministry and that we could just as easily throw it all away with a few poor choices.

Geoff Stewart is the Pastor of Jr & Sr High School for Journey Student Ministries at Peace Portal Alliance Church and regularly contributes GUEST POSTS to MTDB. Be sure to check out his Twitter stream for awesome ministry goodness. Want to get in on the fun and write up a guest post yourself? See how right here.

We’ve done volunteer meetings lots of different ways from in person , to online, over Facebook™ but there is something about meeting face to face that is my favorite by far. When we meet with our team here is are some core values around our time meeting together.

Consistency: Commit to meeting regularly that that you can keep tabs on how your leaders are and what God is doing in their groups. Consistency is key to having leaders committing to be a part the meetings.

Prepared: Our volunteers give up a lot of time as it is, so when we ask them to come to an extra meeting, you better believe we are going to be prepared for it. I have heard of groups that send out an agenda with questions before hand so that any leader that misses the meeting can still provide feedback.

Eat Together: There is something awesome about breaking bread together and enjoying a meal with your team. We make a point to grill up some steaks with our volunteers. Our hope is that it conveys a small part of our appreciation for what they do.

Learn Together: Whether a training video, or some sort of short lesson leadership, having our whole team together is a great opportunity to learn to lead better together.

Discuss, pray: A part of every meeting is a chance to discuss issues and utilize the collective experience of the group for dealing with issues that students are dealing with. Every meeting also has a time where we can pray for one another as well our students and seek the Lord for guidance and protection for our team.

Hand out the calendar/resources: Each meeting we try and make sure that our team leaves with the tools they need to lead in the next coming weeks as well as an idea of what is coming down the pipe so they are not caught off guard by an event or change of program.

Value Their Time: The meetings are not longer than they need to be, as we know that our volunteers have family, friends and homework to take care of. We value their time that they give and take only what we need to have an effective meeting.

JG

The worst part of summer camp? The crash! You squirrel kids away for a week, take away all their technology, and pump them full of nothing but Jesus and they conclude that week connected, hopeful, and holy.

A few weeks later….the camp-drug has been filtered out of their systems and the camp high is crash landing.

Conferences for youth workers can sometimes have the same aftermath. We attend; we spend a week away from ‘normal’. We take the wise counsel offered by Kurt, Josh, and other trusted youth workers to glean the most from our week ‘in the bubble.’ We go home. And after a few weeks of board meetings, parent confrontations, and pastoral smack-downs, our camp high has waned.

How do we make the conference experience more than a camp high?

1. Reflect. Journal. Blog. As God reveals truths to you, write them down. On days when you question His existence, those notes will be important to you!
2. Buy a CD or DVD from the sessions that impacted you most. On dark days, pull those out and revisit what was most inspiring to you.
3. Grab some downloads of sessions you wanted to catch, but had to miss because of scheduling (or napping!) Consider this your ‘nicotine patch’. Schedule some time every month to listen to a new session. Not only do you get continuing education year round, it’s sure to remind you what was best about the conference you attended as it sharpens you personally and professionally.
4. Continue the relationships you built through that week. (Yes, you should be building relationships throughout the week.) We’ve all watched those camp friendships go by the wayside a few weeks after camp has concluded. But with so many ways to stay connected, there’s no longer excuse for that. Maintain those relationships – maintain community.

I’ll confess. I’ve been in youth ministry for 23 years. (Yes….old.) I’ve been to at least 23 conferences. No one – NO ONE – does it like Simply Youth Ministry Conference. They embrace core values that really set them apart from every other educational experience I’ve ever had as a youth worker. That’s probably because they so skillfully intertwine education with relationship. I left that conference feeling valued, known, and understood. I left with ideas, tips, and truths that I am still applying today (3 years later.) I left with friendships that are deep and life-changing for me. I had never known a true connection with other youth workers until SYMC. (I’m going to blog some of those stories over the next two months!) After two decades of bouncing from conference to conference based largely on the quality of the brochure, I left with a commitment to return to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference annually.

Conferences no longer should be solely about playing a better game or building a better Bible study. You can get more than that. You can grab a year-long lifeline that pushes amazing education and training while embracing you, friending you, knowing you, and loving you. Go register….right now!

Darren is a veteran youth pastor (that’s code for old and in it for a long time) and co-founder of Millennial Influence – a resource for parents & youth pastors, including Mi Podcast – a weekly podcast for parents of teenagers. Check out his blog at http://everyonescalledtoyouthministry.com/