The Importance of Purpose

Hey, long time no see! I had a couple of really busy weeks, and a cold I struggled to fight off, so I sort of dropped the blogging ball. But I’m back, and this week I want to talk about purpose in youth ministry.

I know, this is nothing new. It’s been about 15 years, believe it or not, since Rick Warren published his book, The Purpose Driven Church, and about 12 years since Doug Fields publish The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. Since then churches and youth ministries all over the world have attempted to be more purposeful in their ministries.

In case you’re not familiar with either of these books, here’s a very brief summary: Both Warren and Fields were pastors of Saddleback Church when they wrote these books, so the philosophy behind each is the same. They suggest that there are five biblical purposes to church: to worship God, to fellowship with one another, to reach out to the world, to disciple one another, and to minister to one another. Their thesis is that all ministry should exist to fulfill one of these purposes. If a ministry doesn’t exist to fulfill one of these purposes, it shouldn’t exist.

I love this approach to ministry for three reasons: First, it removes randomness from church life. For example, this weekend, we’re having a Mexican-themed birthday party for all our students who celebrate a birthday in October, November, or December. We’re not just having this party because it’s something to do; we’re having it because it helps us live out the biblical purpose of fellowship, because God has asked us to fellowship with one another, to love one another, to share our lives with one another.

Second, it provides a sense of balance to church life. Most of us focus naturally on only one or two of the biblical purposes. This approach to ministry reminds us that there’s more to ministry than giving Bible studies or preaching sermons. It reminds us that the role of the worship team is just as critical to the health of the church as the role of the Sabbath School teachers, and that the roles of the greeters or the potluck coordinators are just as important as the role of the community services director.

Finally, it provides a context for evaluating the effectiveness of a ministry. Periodically, it’s a good thing to review what ministries you’re doing to determine how effective they are. Here at New Haven Youth Ministries, I want to make sure that every ministry, every event, every project, and every meeting we hold exists to fulfill one of the biblical purposes. (Now, I should probably say here that I consider there to be four purposes, not five. For me, the four purposes are worship, fellowship, outreach–including evangelism and community service–and discipleship. I believe ministry–the fifth purpose for Warren and Fields–happens within the context of the other four, and is not a purpose in and of itself.) So, for example, every social event that we plan should help us to live out the biblical purpose of fellowship, and thus we plan it accordingly. When the event is over, we will sit down and ask, “How well did this event help us to live out the biblical purpose of fellowship?” If it scores high in our review, then we will plan to do it again next year. If it scores low, then we will scrap it, or we revise it and try it again.

I don’t share all this with you because it’s new, original, or cutting edge, because it’s obviously not. But just because something isn’t cutting edge doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. This is the direction in which New Haven Youth Ministries is moving, and I believe it will yield powerful, God-honoring results.

What about you? Have you experimented with this approach to ministry? Are you using a variation of it? If so, how have you adapted it to your context?

[Image by godserv]

Why I’m Spending So Much Time Preparing Control Documents

Catchy title, eh?

In a couple previous blogs, here and here, I wrote about the need for a youth ministry to have an infrastructure and systems to ensure sustainability. Well, control documents are a part of that needed infrastructure.

Perhaps I should first explain what control documents are, in case you’re not already aware of the term. Control documents are essentially management tools. They help those who serve in an organization to do their jobs both efficiently and effectively. Some examples of control documents that we’re currently developing are:

1. a youth directory with names, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, birthdays, etc.
2. job descriptions for myself, my adult leaders, and my student apprentice-leaders (we currently have job descriptions for Youth Sabbath School Teachers, Discipleship Coordinator, Outreach Coordinator, Social Events Coordinator, Worship Coordinator, and Mentors)
3. a youth leader’s lifestyle covenant
4. a youth ministries budget
5. event/project record forms
6. event/project application, parental permission, and medical release forms
7. an annual curriculum guide (I wrote about how I’m doing Sabbath School a little differently in a previous blog.)
8. an organizational flow chart

Many of these are lacking in a typical church youth ministry, and yet they are critical to a sustainable youth ministry. Maybe you’re thinking, “Man, I got into youth ministry to hang out with the kids and have fun! I don’t want to bother with all that stuff!” But the reality is that if you don’t bother with all this stuff, the fun will eventually run out, and you’ll be looking for another job. If you want to be in youth ministry long term (and I hope you do), take the time to develop and use control documents.

The good news is that you don’t have to create all these documents from scratch. There are some awesome youth leaders out there who have been doing this for many years, have developed some great tools, and are willing to share those tools with you–for free! Doug Fields, who has been in youth ministry for over 20 years, has provided a variety of forms here. Mark DeVries, who has also been in youth ministry for over 20 years, has provided some excellent forms here. While your forms ultimately need to fit your specific context (so you can’t exactly cut-and-paste), most of the work is already done for you.

If you’d like to see specifically what we’ve done with our control documents and forms, email me, and I’ll send you copies.

What control documents or forms does your church’s youth ministry use? Anything I didn’t list above? Have you discovered other resources that have aided you in the administrative side of your youth ministry?

[image by Denis Vrublevski]

Book Review: Sustainable Youth Ministry

DeVries, Mark. Sustainable Youth Ministry. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Summary

DeVries shares a metaphor for youth ministry that I think encapsulates well the issue his book, Sustainable Youth Ministry, addresses. On pages 51-52, he writes:

Years of preparation made her movements effortless, her turns seamless, her leaps weightless. A dancer of unparalleled talent, she mesmerized the crowd with her skill, but even more with her passion. Her countenance proclaimed in no uncertain terms that she was made for this moment.

But she would finish much sooner than anyone expected. Coming down from an arching leap, she landed with a jolting crack, her foot driving its way through the rotting wood of the floor, her body twisted in pain, her leg bent in places it was not made to bend. She was pulled from the stage, wondering if she would ever dance again.

The master of ceremonies dismissively apologized, ‘Inexperience does this to a dancer.’

But no on repaired the floor.

And then, as if nothing had happened, the next performer was introduced. The crowd responded with a smattering of applause. But with no one attending to the dance floor, the audience knew that the new dancer would also find her performance ending prematurely with a disappointing, perhaps tragic, conclusion.

Sustainable Youth Ministry is about building or repairing that dance floor that is often quite decrepit in a typical youth ministry. DeVries notes that most churches search and search for the “next big thing,” the superstar youth pastor who will be an excellent communicator, a dynamic personality who the students love to be around,  a superb administrator, etc. The problem, he argues, is that without a sturdy dance floor (i.e., an infrastructure), even the greatest youth pastors will only last a couple years in a such a church before they burnout.

So, what is needed to provide sustainability to a youth ministry? I encourage you to buy the book. I don’t want to give everything away here. However, in the upcoming weeks, I will blog about what we are doing here at New Haven to build our infrastructure and change the culture of our youth ministry, much of which is taken from this book.

Critique

This book shifted my paradigm for youth ministry. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in youth ministry–whether you’re a youth pastor yourself, or a volunteer serving in a youth ministry, or the senior pastor at a church that has a youth ministry.

It may come across as dry to some. For the most part, DeVries doesn’t really break any new ground with new methods or ideas. In fact, what he has to bring to the table is very basic–almost common sense. And yet, despite how fundamental the topic of this book is, it is a much neglected one.

Have you read the book? What did you think of it? If you haven’t read it, what do you think of the premise of the book?

One of the Challenges of Youth Ministry

I’ve been in my current position as youth pastor of the New Haven SDA Church now for two months. Though I have about seven years of youth ministry experience (serving as academy chaplain, Bible teacher, youth pastor intern, etc.), this is the first time I’ve served strictly as a youth pastor, and it’s been eye-opening. While there are countless challenges in youth ministry, I’m beginning to understand one of the more significant challenges. I wish I could just tell you with a word or two what that challenge is, but I can’t. The best way I can explain it to you is to walk you through it.

So, imagine with me that the youth ministry in your church is sort of a church within the church. (Let me just add a disclaimer here that the youth ministry isn’t, and shouldn’t be seen as, a separate church, but for the sake of illustration, humor me for a moment.) Well, if that were the case, the youth  “church” here at New Haven would have a membership on the books of approximately 45-50 members. When you add parents (and you should, because a youth pastor is pastor not just to the students, but also to their parents), you’re looking at a membership of around 100-130. In the Adventist world, that’s a moderately-sized church. Weekly attendance, however, is closer to 70-80 right now (that’s including students, the parents of youth who attend their own Sabbath School, and the adults who help out in the youth room), which is pretty typical for a church these days.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post on Sabbath School, the youth pastor (me, in this case) is responsible for preparing an interactive “sermon” each week. There are also music teams and a drama team that need to be coordinated with a worship schedule, outreach projects that need to be planned and implemented, social events/activities that need to be planned and implemented, Friday night vespers, Youth Church, and the list goes on. Thankfully, I have a team to help me with all of this! (By the way, I’m not complaining; I love what I do!)

My point is that youth pastors are essentially expected to run a moderately-sized church. The difference, however, between a youth pastor and the senior pastor of a moderately-sized church is that an infrastructure is most likely already in place at the senior pastor’s church before he/she even arrives. In Adventist churches, at least, there are probably elected elders, deacons, deaconesses, and a church board already in place. If not, there is a system designed to put leaders into these positions in a somewhat timely manner. While these leaders may not have much, if any, training, they have a general idea of what’s expected of them, because of a precedent that has been established.

Theoretically, the average moderately-sized Adventist church could run itself in the absence of a pastor. In fact, many churches do run themselves for extended periods of time without a pastor at the helm. They can do this because there are systems and an infrastructure in place that ensure the sustainability of the church.

This is not the case in youth ministry. In most cases, when the old youth pastor leaves a church, and a new one arrives, the new youth pastor essentially starts from scratch. Why? Because there is no infrastructure in place in most youth ministry programs to ensure sustainability. This, I have found, is one of the more significant challenges of youth ministry.

One of my goals as youth pastor at New Haven is to build an infrastructure that will ensure the sustainability of youth ministry here. It’s not a flashy goal, I know, but it’s desperately needed here, and at any other church that cares about its youth.

You may be wondering exactly what I mean when I refer to a youth ministry infrastructure. Next week, I will blog a book review on Mark DeVries book, Sustainable Youth Ministry, which describes the kind of infrastructure a youth ministry needs to be sustainable. It is an absolute must-read for anyone who takes (or wants to take) youth ministry seriously, including senior pastors. In that blog, I will also talk a little about what I am working on right now.

What do you think of all this? What systems do you think need to be in place in order to ensure the youth ministry at your church doesn’t have to crash and reboot every time a new youth pastor or volunteer youth leader comes on board?

[image by Swedish National Heritage Board]

Book Review: A New Kind of Youth Ministry

Folmsbee, Chris. A New Kind of Youth Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007.

Summary

A New Kind of Youth Ministry is about re-culturing your youth ministry to be more biblical and more relevant. Folmsbee writes, “I’ve tried to rethink many of the customs, beliefs, and precedents of modern youth ministry. I’m not suggesting we need to change our style of ministry merely because it is old, but because of the rapid pace of cultural change around us. I believe what we’ve been doing for the last several decades is no longer effective, and will grow less and less effective in the coming days” (9).

He suggests re-culturing eight areas of youth ministry: evangelism, discipleship, service/outreach, student leadership, mission, leadership, teaching, and the personal development of the youth leader.

Critique

Folmsbee is a huge fan of the Emergent movement. I know that some people may not want to bother with this book after hearing that, and, truth be told, I admit that I am myself a bit skeptical of the Emergent movement. Nevertheless, I still highly recommend this book, not only to youth pastors, but to all pastors.

My only real issue with the book is that Folmsbee occasionally brands his ideas as new ideas when, in fact, they aren’t. For example, in the chapter on evangelism he condemns friendship evangelism, and suggests that we should practice what he has coined “dynamic evangelism” instead. Friendship evangelism, he suggests, is when you become friends with someone based on an agenda to bring them to Christ. If the person doesn’t accept Christ after a certain period of time, you abandon the friendship. Dynamic evangelism, on the other hand, is unconditional. Even if your friend never accepts Christ, you keep on loving him/her. Well, dynamic evangelism, based on this description, is the way many Christians practice friendship evangelism. He just gave it a more dramatic name.

There are times when Folmsbee’s Emergent biases come to the surface, but for the most part he is simply re-thinking the way we do youth ministry and, to some extent, ministry in general. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but every chapter was thought-provoking at minimum.

Have you read A New Kind of Youth Ministry? What did you think of it?

The Strength of a Sabbath School Series

Okay, it’s been a while. I’m bad at this, I admit. However, I am still committed to doing this blogging thing. I’ve set up a schedule, so hopefully that will help. Anyway…

This last Sabbath we launched a new Sabbath School series in our Youth division here at New Haven. The series is called, “Walking with Jesus: Step by Step,” and is loosely based on the book, Steps to Christ, by Ellen White. If you’re not familiar with the book, we’re looking at what it means practically to be in a relationship with Jesus. I am super excited about this series for several reasons.

First, there is something magical about a series. The traditional approach to Sabbath School in the Seventh-day Adventist Church is to divide the year into quarters (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, etc.), and spend 13 weeks studying a specific topic. The curriculum for the youth division is slightly different, in that it is designed to cover the span of the Great Controversy (from the fall of Lucifer to the New Earth, following the Crisis of the Ages series by Ellen White) in four years. While neither of these approaches is necessarily bad, I find them to be too predictable and routine. What’s magical about a variety of shorter Sabbath School series is that they provide an element of surprise and intrigue every few weeks or so.

The series we recently launched will actually go for 9 weeks, but it is the longest series we will do. Most series will be 3 to 5 weeks in length. I do have a long-term curriculum plan, but by dividing the curriculum into short series, I believe we add freshness to the material.

Second, doing shorter series allows for more marketing. The image below is the poster we did for our current series, and we will do a new poster for every series.

With a new poster going up every few weeks, it lets the students know that it’s not the same-old-same-old in Sabbath School every week. It also gives us something to which to invite the students. We’re not just inviting them to Sabbath School; we’re inviting them to deepen their relationship with Jesus, or to learn what stewardship is really all about, or to find out what the Bible has to say about sex, or to prepare for last day events, or whatever.

Finally, it keeps me fresh. As a youth pastor, I am not considered a preaching pastor. (In reality, I probably preach as much if not more than the other pastors on staff, but I don’t preach much from the pulpit on Sabbath mornings.) My “sermon” each week is the Sabbath School lesson (though, don’t worry, I don’t actually preach the lessons; I was a teacher before I became a pastor). Many of my students hang out in the foyer during the service, leave, or are in the sanctuary but talking to/texting their friends during the service. So, for some of them, the only message they hear on Sabbath is in Sabbath School, where the group is smaller, safer and more interactive. So, why wouldn’t I give the Sabbath School lesson as much attention as I would give a Sabbath morning sermon?

Instead of following a curriculum that was planned four years ago by a guy in Washington who knows nothing about my students or their current spiritual condition, I choose to write my own curriculum. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the standard youth Sabbath School curriculum. I would recommend it to a volunteer teacher who works 50-60 hours a week, and doesn’t have the time or the training to write his/her own lesson plans. But I’m not a volunteer. I have the time and the training to write fresh, relevant and biblical lessons that meet the students where they are. In fact, as a salaried youth pastor, I believe that’s partly what I’m paid to do.

What about you? What are your thoughts? What has been your experience with using series, whether in your preaching or in your teaching?

Effective vs. Efficient

Okay, so I’m not doing a very good job of being consistent with my posts. I need to take the advice of my friend and just write, instead of waiting to write that elusive mind-blowing blog entry.

Anyway, a while back I did a personal devotional study of Jesus’ life and ministry. Through this study, I discovered something–that Jesus was more concerned with being an effective Disciple-maker than an efficient Disciple-maker.

Consider the following chronology:

• Jesus met His first disciples shortly after His baptism and temptation in the wilderness. He simply asked them to follow Him (John 1:35-51). This was approximately the fall of A.D. 27.

• Jesus began His Galilean ministry, which lasted about sixteen months. It was during this period that Jesus officially called the Twelve, so that 1) they might be with Him, and 2) He might send them out to preach and to drive out demons (Mark 3:13-19). This ministry began approximately in the fall of A.D. 28, at least a year after He met His first disciples.

• Jesus began explicitly predicting His death, and began teaching some of His harder discipleship lessons. He also began His final journey down to Jerusalem (Mark 8:27-10:52). This started around the spring of A.D. 30.

• Jesus washed His disciples feet at the Last Supper, was crucified, resurrected, and then commissioned His disciples to make disciples of all nations (John 13:1-17; Matt 26:17-28:20). This all happened in the spring/summer of A.D. 31.

When I look at these events with dates attached, I am impressed by Jesus’ patience. I mean, He had only three and a half years to ignite a movement that would turn the world upside down, but He waited an entire year before He put His disciples to work, and two and a half years before He started teaching the “testing truths!” (It’s also interesting to note that He puts them to work doing ministry before He starts introducing the testing truths.) Jesus was obviously more concerned with being effective than with being efficient.

I have to ask myself: Is that what I’m most concerned with as a youth pastor? One of my goals at my new church is to develop a youth equipping system to train and equip youth to do ministry. A lot of the equipping tracks that I’ve seen are designed to take someone from newbie to lay pastor (I’m exaggerating . . . sort of) in about a year and a half or so. Tempting, but maybe my goal shouldn’t be to disciple as many young people as fast as I can. Maybe my goal should be to disciple students as thoroughly as I can with the time that I am given (which, for a youth pastor, is about four years or less).

But is it wrong to strive for efficiency? Is it possible to be both efficient and effective? I mean, after all, while Jesus certainly took a very patient discipleship approach, to take a band of misfits and turn them into a world-changing force for God in only three and a half years seems both effective and efficient.

So, I guess my goal should simply be to disciple my students. If some are preaching, leading out in worship, or leading small groups in a year, I’ll praise God! If it takes others three and a half years, or five years, or even ten years–long after they’ve left our youth program–so be it. And I’ll still praise God even then!

What do you think? Do you use (or want to use) an equipping/discipleship track at your church or in your ministry? How is the track designed? To be efficient? Effective? Both? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

[Image by marctbyrne]

Forms on Google Docs

I’m a fan of Google Docs, but I haven’t found many others who are. While in the Seminary, I often tried to take advantage of the online collaborative software with the numerous group projects that were assigned there. Sometimes it worked out; most of the time it didn’t.

When I first started using Google Docs, the only type of template available was a word processing template. Now you can use spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings. Most recently, I took advantage of the Google Docs form option, and I was pretty impressed with the result.

I just started as the youth pastor at the New Haven SDA Church in Overland Park, KS, and in a simple effort to get to know my youth better, I’m administering a youth ministries survey. With this survey, I am able to gather basic information about each youth, including areas of ministry in which each youth wishes to get involved. I handed out paper copies of the survey as a part of the Sabbath School classes for the last two weeks, but I also decided to put the survey online for youth who don’t regularly attend Sabbath School. The forms option on Google Docs turned out to be the perfect way to do this.

It’s actually very user-friendly. The forms can be as complicated as you want them to be. The form I created for this online survey has seven pages. Users answer a few basic questions on the first page; and then, based on their response to the question, “Are you baptized?”, they are automatically directed to subsequent pages. For example, if they answer, “Yes,” they are automatically sent to the last page, which contains the final question of the survey. However, if they answer, “No,” they are automatically sent to a page that asks, “Do you want to be baptized?” If they answer, “Yes,” to that question, they are sent to another page that asks, “Are you currently studying with someone in preparation for baptism?” There are subsequent questions on subsequent pages, but I will not get into all the details here.

I posted the online survey on our youth group’s new Facebook page, Youth Ministries @ New Haven SDA Church, and it works seamlessly. The coolest part about it is that when someone completes the form, the results are sent to an online spreadsheet database that I am able to access to see how youth have responded.

My wife used to work for a bank that hired professional web developers for thousands of dollars to create online forms like the one I created for free, with no training whatsoever, and it only took about a half-hour. Thank you, Google.

Have you ever used Google Docs? What was your experience with it? Have you created online forms using another type of software? How did that work out for you?

[Image by Google]

Giving Blogging a Try

For the longest time, I had absolutely no interest in blogging whatsoever. For one, I thought, I’m not an expert of anything, so who would want to read what I write, and if they did, what good would it do them? Furthermore, when would I find time to write.

Then a couple friends started to blog, and I read what they had to say. They aren’t experts any more than I am (except that they have more experience than me), but I learned a lot, and continue to learn a lot from their blogs. I started to realize that it’s not about being an expert, it’s about dialogue. Just reading about what other people are learning–what they’re trying, what’s working for them, and what’s not working for them–and entering into dialogue with them has been a huge blessing to me. So, even though I’m not an expert, maybe this blog will be a blessing to someone somewhere. At least that’s my prayer.

And the time? Well, I think blogging may be a worthwhile investment. I graduated from the Seminary last month, but I don’t want the learning to stop. I don’t want to get stuck in a rut in ministry. Blogging may be a simple remedy to the temptation to just get by. It will sharpen my thinking, will allow me to dialogue with others who share my passions, and will, to some extent, force me to keep learning. I mean, I can’t exactly blog if I have nothing to write about.

So, what will this blog be about? For the most part, it will be about youth ministry. I’m a youth pastor now, and, as far as I’m concerned, always will be a youth pastor. It has been my passion ever since God first called me to ministry years ago. I’ll blog about youth ministry books I read, methods with which I experiment, materials I use, etc.

I don’t know how consistently I will blog, but I’m hoping to post something once a week. We’ll see.

[Image by loungerie]