Not A Mega Church? Building a Youth Ministry that Lasts no matter what size Church you are!

7Jul/101

POLL: What makes up a successful event?

Yesterday we had another fellowship dinner for our college and young adults.  As I have been trying to build relationships and a program for this demographic at our church this summer, I have learned many lessons as I know that it will take time for this to get started and fully developed the way I feel like the Lord wants it.

Our dinner consisted of a meal together, a game a catch-phrase and some teaching and discussion.  I tried to create a good environment with some nice comfortable chairs placed around the dinner tables for people to lounge around in before and after the meal.  I also had music playing in the background.

As Mark, my supervisor and Associate Pastor, and I processed the night, it made me think about what I considered to be a successful ministry event.  What has to happen for it to be pleasing and acceptable for my standards?  Overall, I viewed the night as a success.  Even though there were not as many college and young adults as I would have liked (my goal was 20 and we got 12), I was pleased.  The reason why I was please was because people had fun together, we had 2 new young adults come out and they connected with others pretty seamlessly and Christ was proclaimed.

What about you?  What makes up a successful event for you?  Take the poll and post a comment.

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8Jun/100

Summer Idea: Partner with Other Ministries or Churches

Last year I posted about the benefits of partnering with other ministries and Churches (click here to read it).  Partnering with others has benefited our ministry greatly over the years.

As summer is fast approaching, it is not too late to be planning activities. In particular, it is not too late to be planning activities with other Churches or ministries.  Here are 3 reasons why you should partner with other ministries over the summer:

  • It provides a critical mass. As you know summer is filled with camps, summer school, vacations and other activities that take students away. That means typical "Youth Group" and youth group events are much smaller than usual.  By partnering with other ministries, you are opening up the door for more students to come out to whatever you choose to do.  Having that critical mass definitely provides a more exciting environment for all the students who do come out.
  • It promotes the body of Christ. The Body of Christ is not just limited to your Church or ministry.  It includes all believers.  By joining forces with another ministry over the summer for some events (please note, not all events, just a few), it shows your students that God is bigger than just your group.  It can open up opportunities for them to meet new friends and even see people from their school that they didn't know were believers or not. By combining groups occasionally during the summer, this promotes fellowship, unity and accountability in the body of Christ.
  • It gives you a break. By partnering with others, it provides an opportunity for you to not have full ownership of an event or program.  You can actually have a break from programming and planning!  For example, you can rotate your meeting around to different Churches or sites where that particular Youth Leadership Team provides all the programming and resources for the night.  If that happens, all you have to do is to show up and bring students.  If you can do this, you get a break and can focus on some other things that need to be addressed that week.

I believe partnering with other ministries and Churches over the summer is a huge win-win for everyone involved.  Who knows, if it turns out to be a success, this might pave the way for future partnerships over the course of the year.

So right now, TAKE A MINUTE and think about this idea of partnering with other Churches this summer.  Are there any opportunities for you to do that?  If so, target a few Churches and give them a call to try to organize.  At the very least, you might be able to develop relationships with some new youth pastors because of it.

Also, if you have a thought or idea that you have seen work in regards to this topic, post a comment so we can all benefit!

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22Jan/105

Are you Super Bowl Planning yet?

As I have said in a few different posts, our Super Bowl Party is probably one of our biggest outreach events we put on ever year.  In fact, we have built a solid reputation around the NW corner of Fairfax County, VA as one of the best Super Bowl parties around in which we draw an average of 125 people a year. Considering that we are a small to medium size church, we are very pleased by the turnout.

With less than 3 weeks until the Super Sunday, we are at full speed in preparation for this big outreach event.

The question I have for everyone is do you do a Super Bowl Party and do you use it as an opportunity to reach out to your community and non-believing teens?  Whether you do or not, I believe that a Super Bowl Outreach event is one of the most effective opportunities we have at reaching out to non-believers all year.  If for no other reason than everyone watches the Super Bowl, we have the perfect chance to bring students into the church.  Whether students like football or not, the fact is that they are going to watch it (if for no other reason than the ads) and we can use it to our advantage to introduce students to our ministry.  After all, the Super Bowl has such a festive ora about it that you want to watch it and want to watch with your friends.  So why not give students a fun place to hang, eat great food and enjoy the game/ads together?

This is the exact reason why I have always done Super Bowl Parties.  It was only once I came to Cedar Run over 6 years ago that we changed our philosophy to where we have gone from an "in-house" party to an outreach focused one.  Even though we are less than 3 weeks away, you can still make an effective one happen.

Here are some ideas:

  1. Give students reasons to come.  The fact is, your Super Bowl party needs to be more than just football.  Even though most people watch the Super Bowl, you have to set yourself apart from the other parties that are going on.  At Cedar Run, we offer a variety of things other than just football. For instance, we offer tons of free homemade food, plenty of activities (this year we are finalizing details to have some teen appropriate inflatables) and we have give-aways.  By doing more than just showing the Super Bowl, you are opening up your doors to more people and giving students a reason to come to your party.
  2. Do your own half-time show. Unfortunately, we learned the hard way on this one.  When the "wardrobe malfunction" happened, we were watching along with the rest of the world.  It was at this point that we decided that we could use this opportunity to further set our party apart from others by doing our very own half-time show.  Each year is different as we try to keep it fresh and new, but basically this is where we do a little mini youth group.  We will play a mixer or a game, show a quick funny video and then conclude with a testimony and "This is Cedar Run" video.  We do all this so that we give students an opportunity to see that Cedar Run offers so much more on a weekly basis.  Doing our half-time show has been a huge hit.
  3. Share Christ. Ultimately, we did not just want to be another Super Bowl Party where you watched the game and ate lots of food.  We wanted to stand apart by giving our students something provokative and life-changing to think about.  Therefore, at the end of our half-time show, we have a a few students stand up and share about Christ's impact on their lives.

Even though you have less than 3 weeks to get organized, your Super Bowl Party can be a success.  If you have to start small this year and implement a few new ideas, NO PROBLEM.  Plan for long term success, not just short term.  We didn't just throw a Super Bowl Party and get 125 students immediately. We had to work to get that number, building upon our numbers each year.

So, are you planning yet for your Super Bowl Party?  If you are not, it is still not too late!!!

TAKE A MINUTE and...

  1. Start planning.  Think of some unique things you could offer that would not only attract your students, but other non-believing students as well.  If it is just one or two simple ones, implement them and start working on it so you can get the word out.
  2. Think of some students who might be good at sharing their testimony.  Set it up that during half-time, you turn the TV off and give at least 1 student an opportunity to share about Christ.
  3. Create a Facebook page for it!  We did ours over a week ago and the word is starting to spread like a wild-fire.  Facebook is a great promotional tool.

If you have a thought or comment on how you have done Super Bowl Parties before, post them up so that all of us can benefit from the different and creative ideas.

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11Dec/091

Taking Risks

I'm currently reading "Sustainable Youth Ministry" by Mark DeVries. It seems like the "IT" book out there amongst my Youth Ministry buddies, so I figured that I would give it a shot.  As I'm reading the book, there was a great line in it that I wanted to focus on.  Mark DeVries says "Here's the irony: Sustainable youth ministries fail all the time; they thrive in a culture of experimentation, innovation and creativity." (p. 23). Here is why I love this sentence.

In some of the blogs I look at, there seems to be this sense that they need to create a new type of Youth Pastor.  This Pastor needs to look and act differently than other Youth Pastors, although, in all honesty, I don't know quite what that is.  Regardless of what kind of Youth Pastor you are, I do not believe this helps or hinders what kind of impact you can have as it is power of Christ who changes hearts, not me.

I don't think what we need is to recreate the Youth Pastor position with certain types of men and women.  Rather, I believe what we need to do is to be men and women who take risks.  That is why I love DeVries comment here.  Even the best, most "sustainable youth ministries fail".  You can and will likely fail from time to time.  And, the great thing is that is OK.  I have failed so many times that I stopped counting within the first month I started full-time ministry which is now over 12 years ago.  Failing is part of the game.

But what Mark goes on to say is that we can thrive when we institute  a culture of experimentation, innovation and creation.  Basically, we thrive when we risk.  I believe that it is when we take risks by trying something new or by developing a relationship with that hard to reach student, real, impacting ministry happens.  When you take risk, you will fail, but what you are communicating to your leaders and your youth is that you are willing to try something new to reach students for Christ.  We need to stretch our boarders and become a little bit uncomfortable by risking something for Christ.  When ministry becomes safe and easy, I believe we limit our effectiveness and the potential impact of the Christ in the lives of our students.  We need to experiment, innovate and create.  To me, that means we need to risk more.

But, I want to caution you as you take risks.  Ministry is a lot like Football.  In football you have basics - score the most points, tackle and block.  If you tackle and block effectively and score more points than your opponent, you will be victorious by the time the clock hits 0:00.  In the same way, ministry has its basics.  Two of them are to speak the Truth of Christ and build relationships (both what Christ modeled throughout his ministry).   If you speak the Truth of Christ and build relationships, you will help students come to know Christ in a real, tangible way.

Therefore, in your desire to risk, experiment, innovate and create, we should never change the non-negotiables.  Our strategy to speak the Truth and build those relationships will and should change over time (as the strategy in football changes). But we should never change the non-negotiables.  When you change the non-negotiables, you go from taking risks for Christ to taking risks with presenting an inaccurate picture of who Christ really is.

So, this week, TAKE A MINUTE and...

  • RISK!!!  Think through ways you can experiment, innovate and create in your youth program.  Is it doing something new programmatically like doing a drama to present the Truth instead of your standard talk?  Or is it changing your format and getting rid of games so you can put in more community building time?  Regardless of what it may be, think through some ways you can risk for Christ without eliminating the non-negotiables.  Then, DO THEM and see how the Lord blesses you because of it.

Thoughts, comments or RISKS you have taken in ministry.  Post them so we can be encouraging each other.

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2Nov/090

Have you ever tried…

a Dance Party?10959_559839041229_31803648_33165810_2478424_n

On Friday night, we transformed our 5th Quarter event into a Dance Party.  It was an event unlike any other we have done and as Katie said, "this was the best 5th Quarter ever".

What we did:

  • We bought tons of blacklights and blacklight bulbs and transformed the high school room into a big dance floor.
  • We made over 50 t-shirts.  They were white with neon green lettering saying "5th Quarter" across the chest and then below it "It's always overtime at Cedar Run".
  • We hung up a few rolls of black paper on the walls so that students could write on them.
  • We also provided tons of highlighters for students to write on the black paper and on the t-shirts.
  • Lastly, we had one of our leaders be the DJ, mixing music and keeping everyone rocking

Now, we didn't abandon the other components of 5th Quarter as we still had a fire pit for s'mores and are other regular things.  But it became clear, that once the dance party started, that became was the main attraction.  I felt bad for the parents helping with the food because they just sat around most of the night because everyone was in the dance room.

How is this helpful to our ministry?

Now, doing a dance party can be quite controversial as dancing in christian circles is not always encouraged.  But, at Cedar Run, we are a non-denominational small-to-medium sized church with not lots of tradition.  Because of this, we have done some very impromptu dance parties throughout the years so we thought this would be something we would like to try.  But, in order to do this, I felt that there had to be some good benefits to doing this.  Here are the benefits we felt we could gain by doing this:

  • It was a way to draw students into our Church.  As I have posted before, 5th Quarter has been a great bridge event.  Because of this, we already have a solid reputation around the area and felt that we could have a big draw.
  • The t-shirts are a good promotion tool as the students will likely wear those shirts again, spurring possible questions like, "Where did you get that shirt" or "You had a dance party at a Church"???
  • The word about Cedar Run would expand.  So far, the excitement that we generated from the dance party was something we haven't generated since the Super Bowl Bash.  It gets people talking and hopefully helps the students realize that there is something for them at Cedar Run.
  • It was a good opportunity to promote other things we were doing at Cedar Run.  Our latest Sunday night series is on "Tough Choices".  We figured that if more non-Christians were going to come to 5th Quarter on Friday night, this would be a great series to promote for them to come to.  So, as students were leaving, the leaders and I passed out our fliers for Sunday night.  Students got to see that we weren't a place in which you just had fun at.  We were a place where we talked about tough choices students face.

The one thing I have always loved about Cedar Run is that they give us the freedom to try new things.  They allow us to be creative in our efforts to draw students (as long as it is safe).  If all we ever did was Sunday School and then Sunday night Youth Group, then I feel that we would have missed opportunities to draw new students into our program.  That is the purpose of these "bridge events".  A dance party is neither traditional or a new idea.  But, it is something we wanted to try and I am glad we did.

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24Jul/090

Follow Up after Trips

I just got back from one of our best, if not the best, youth mission trip we have ever done at Cedar Run. I saw God do some amazing things as He pushed and challenged our students in their faith, in how they view others and the blessings they have been given.  And, I saw Him bring together students who did not know each other well.   It was a great experience.

As I have posted before, mission trips are just one of the 4 different types of summer camping: outreach, discipleship, mission trips and high adventure trips.  I believe that there is no right or wrong choice; it just depends on what your intention is and where you want to take your students.  The bigger question that we need to ask ourselves comes after you get back from the trip. That question is how do you capitalize on what God did during that trip?  No matter what kind of trip you go on, you usually come back with students who grew in their faith and are now in closer community with each other.  So, what do you do with them so that you can build off of the momentum and encourage them in Christ while inspiring others to do likewise?  Here are a few suggestions that came to mind.

How do you capitalize?

For starters, you could do a Post-Trip Gathering.  Young Life does a great job with this.  After every summer camp they go to, within 3 weeks, they do a Post-Trip Gathering in which they have invite everyone who went (and their parents) to a dessert or cook.  Then, they show a slide show or video of the trip and then have a few students share about how that experience changed their life.  It is a fantastic way to reinvigorate the students as they reflect on the memories they made and hear about how real life change happened during that time away.  This can be the perfect prelude to introducing a summer time Bible study or inviting the to come back to Church to hear about your latest message sequence.

Another idea is to create a month long Discipleship Follow Up. Often times, students come back from trips on a spiritual high, but return to the realities of the world where they can be spiritually discouraged and crushed – a clear momentum killer.  When they return from a trip, even though they are on these highs, many times they are not equipped or prepared for the realities of the world.  A great way to counter this is to have something already planned out where you can continue to bring the students together and unite and encourage them in Christ.  There are many different ways you can go about this.  Some examples are to invite them to Church, a small group Bible Study, a study designed just for those who are coming back from camp, etc.  By doing this, students can stay on fire for the Lord by getting spiritually fed.  Even though the realities of their lives will impact them to some degree, they will know that there is Truth waiting for them just right around the corner.

You could also build off of the momentum and excitement of the camp trip by spending time at each Sunday morning or at your evening program talking about it. For instance, you can have 1 person each week for a month share about their experience and how it impacted their life.  This way you are indirectly promoting your trip for next year by showing others that life change does happen and that those who didn’t go on the trip missed out on a unique experience.  It also keeps the memories and experiences fresh in their minds and encourages everyone that they can impact and help others for Christ in the local community.

The last and maybe most important key here is to include everyone. This past year, I was very pleased to take 22 students with us on our mission trip.  Although that is a solid number, that represents just about 25% of our total youth program.  If you truly want to capitalize on a powerful experience, you have to include everyone in your group and make them feel that they are still important and can contribute to the youth program in some way.

TAKE A MINUTE and…

  1. Recall past post-camp experiences.  What made that time a success in building  off the camp trip and what were some misses that prevented you from in building from your experience?
  2. What can you do this summer to help capitalize and build upon so this coming year can be one of your best trips ever?

Know this, it’s not too late!  Even if you already did you trip earlier in the summer, you can still capitalize on this trip.  If you don’t have a follow up strategy for your trip already, come up with one so you can build upon this and bring more students into a more mature relationship with Christ.

Questions, thoughts or experiences?  Feel free to post them so we can be encouraging each other.

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23Apr/090

Quality, Not Quantity

“I can’t believe that just happened!” “I can’t believe you all just did that!” Have you ever heard students say that at one of your youth events? I hope you have. When your students express this, they have just experienced the “wow factor”. The Wow Factor is anything (an event, skit or happening) that leaves your students saying, “WOW!” and completely amazed at what they just experienced.

Fun, social events have been apart of youth ministry ever since I can remember. The reasons why Youth Pastors do these events are for a variety of reasons. It could be to build community within the youth group or to reach out to new students or something entirely different. Whatever the case may be, these events normally draw a lot of students because they are fun and usually non-threatening.

In today’s culture, there is not much that our youth have not seen or experienced. Whether it is something they saw on YouTube or MTV, they are exposed to so much. But, as much as they have been exposed to, very rarely will they expect to be wowed, inspired or thrilled like that at a church. After all, what happens on those videos or shows should never happen at Church, right? Yes, but not entirely. This is where a great and awesome opportunity lies for youth ministry.

When I started out in youth ministry, I felt that I had to have as many fun, social events as possible. Whether it was going bowling, playing laser tag, water parks or fun day trips into Washington DC, I felt that the more activities we did the better it was for our program. If we could do more “fun” events, more people would come and want to come to our church on Sundays. Boy, was I wrong! No matter how many times we went bowling or played paintball, there just seemed to be something missing. No matter what we did or how often we did these fun events, we weren’t drawing as many students as I thought we should.

That is when I realized I had the wrong approach to events. Instead of doing more events, I had to do less. Instead of doing the standard events, I had to become more creative. I began to completely change my philosophy of event planning.

The Question We Ask

In evaluating why we, at Cedar Run, do events and how we do them, a friend asked me this question, “What makes this event Cedar Run?” For example, bowling. Anyone can go bowling. But, what makes this bowling outing a Cedar Run event? How are we going to separate ourselves from what everyone else is doing? As I mentioned earlier, there is not much that our students have not experienced. Our youth can go bowling anytime. What are we going to do and offer that makes Cedar Run’s bowling outing different and more appealing to them?

Asking this question made me reflect on Christ and his ministry. No matter where he was or what he was doing, people were always drawn to him. He had that “it” quality about him. Other people were teaching about God as well, but whenever Christ came around, people knew that something great was going to be spoken or that something awesome was going to happen. In the same way, there has to be that “it” quality about our events. There has to be a separation between our events and the events of others.

One example at Cedar Run is our Super Bowl Bash. Most youth programs have a Super Bowl Party. But, ours is a bit different. Our Super Bowl Bash has grown in popularity each year because it is not just another Super Bowl Party. Anyone can watch the Super Bowl with friends. But, what we offer is something for everyone, even those who aren’t football fans. Some of the things we offer are:

  • A free event
  • Tons of food – home made by parents
  • A variety of games such as board games for quiet and reserved students and video games for energetic middle school boys – remember, something for everyone.
  • A root beer keg

Now, these may not seem like “WOW” type features to this event. But, what makes this event distinctly Cedar Run and a “WOW” event is our Half-Time show. Now, in all honesty, we stumbled upon the Half-Time show because of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Before them, we used to watch the nationally televised musicians perform during this time. But that wardrobe mal-function inspired us to look differently at this time. That is when we came up with our very own Half-Time Show.

Our Half-Time Show consists of two components: fun and serious. For the fun, we go all out and have mixers, games and raffles. This time is all led by our Program Team (volunteer leaders and students) that works hard at creating a “WOW” effect. They want to create an experience that the students have never experienced before. They are very creative and have a lot of fun with it. Each year, the fun component gets better and better as the students have a great time. To see a clip of a video they did for our half-time show, look at this video.

But, the fun component is secondary to our serious time. During this time, we take a few minutes and share about our Church and what we are about. Then, we have a few students share about how Christ has made an impact in their life. Our Super Bowl Bash is an outreach event, so we want to leave students not only feeling that this was a great event because of the fun they had, but also that this wowed them because they saw how Christ could change their life. For some of these students, this may be the only opportunity they have to hear about Christ. It is our hope that after they leave the church on Super Bowl Sunday they will be encouraged to come to Church so they can hear more about Christ and his potential impact on their lives.

Quality, Not Quantity

As I began to ask the question as what makes each event a Cedar Run event, I made another discovery. We have started to do less fun events. This wasn’t because I was getting lazy and didn’t want to do them anymore. Rather, I found out that by increasing the QUALITY of the events, the QUANTITY went down. Our leaders would take that extra step to make the event that we were doing special. Whether it was a video, surprise raffle of an iPod or an impromptu dance party, it became clear that we wanted to do better events. Therefore, we put more time and energy in doing a few excellent events rather than trying to come up with monthly events that are just ordinary events.

The students have really responded to this. We also discovered that even though the number of events we did decreased, the number of students who started coming started to increase dramatically. Again, anyone can go bowling or watch the Super Bowl, but when we started taking that extra step, Cedar Run events became more than just other events. It is known now that when Cedar Run does an event, something special (or crazy) is going to happen. They have become “Can’t Miss” events.

We do other events throughout the year and as long as we are taking that extra step and glorifying God with our creativeness, God has truly blessed us and provided us a clear avenue to reach teens for Christ. He can do the same for you as well.

TAKE A MINUTE and…

  1. Make a list of all the events you are doing. Write down the purpose of each event and estimate the number of students who come out to those events.
  2. Based on your list, are there events that need to be eliminated because they lack a clear purpose or strong attendance? What events can be modified to make this event distinctive to your church or ministry?
  3. Incorporate your leaders and some key students and begin to plan out some WOW events.

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