What All Teams Need

on February 2nd, 2008

A few weeks ago Pastor Rick suggested that all of the teams within a church compete for the same 4 resources:

  • money
  • staff
  • space
  • schedule

I’ve been mulling this over in my mind the last few days. Within a sub-team like student ministries, there’s an internal pull for each of these things as well. What will get budget? Who will get volunteers, who will get featured in the bulletin, who gets the best room, what do we text to students during the week? Often times, as youth workers we have to concede some fights and let another ministry have a better room, to give someone else the best date on the calendar and bump our event to the following week. We also have to think in terms of our own specific ministry and carefully calculate what needs to be given the most resources.

Lots of possible lessons in this realization. The biggest one for me is balance. As a student ministry focused on the purposes, we have to balance the resources of the church within two contexts – within the student ministry itself and within the larger vision of the church.

 JG


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Rick at 3:37pm February 2

I think you are spot on with your thoughts here. Most youth ministries have this strange separatist vibe that almost feels like a para-church. I think that it is always crucial to help our teens remember that we are part of the family. We may have our own bedroom, but it is still apart of the house after all.

The minutiae of administry forces us to take a posture of servanthood sometimes. Besides…what could be more Jesus-like than surrendering our rights to space, funds or recognition to champion others?

RG

Rick at 3:39pm February 2

ps…Kelley says “Hi”.

Sean at 10:01pm February 2

This post made me think… how powerful would a movement be that needed no money, staff, space and was a part of people’s schedules already. Not sure exactly what this is, and this was classified as “teams within a church”. I think that members on a mission within their families, jobs and neighborhoods would eliminate the need for more program competition. Snap! Back to reality and off to church tomorrow and Young Life on Monday. Maybe one day.