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?