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

30Apr/100

Community Matters

Just recently, I had to have a sit down with one of our newer volunteer leaders.  The other volunteers were frustrated as they felt he was contributing anything to the team or the ministry.  So my purpose was to sit down and talk with him about what was going on.  What I found out was that very early on, when he decided to be a leader, he did not feel like he was apart of the "community" of leaders at Cedar Run.  He did not feel that the other leaders accepted him so he intentionally disengaged from them and never fully got on board.  I can not tell you if he was right or wrong, but it was his perception and we know that a person's perception is their reality.

What I ultimately got out of that meeting and left with was the fact that community matters.  As Youth Directors and Leaders, we all know the value of building community with your volunteer leaders and needs to be a vital part of your ministry.  If you do not understand ways to develop community with your volunteer leaders, check it out here, here and here.  Having effective leaders starts with the community that is developed between the leaders.  If a leader does not feel apart of the community, then he or she will not be as effective as he/she can be.  The above example is a perfect case in point.

I've outlined ways before, here are a few more ways you can engage your youth leadership team as a community:

  1. Go out and do fun things together.  Go out and play laser tag together or have dinner together.  Or go watch a minor league baseball game together. The point is to go do "friendship" things together so that leaders do not feel that all you, the Youth Director, care about is what they can do for the ministry.  By going out and having fun together, you are showing them that you want to be with them and that you genuinely like them.  That goes a long way to building a good leadership team.
  2. When you have leaders meeting, spend some time talking more than just "business".  Talk about how you all are doing personally and how you all can be praying for each other.  If all you do is sit around and talk "shop", then you are missing a great opportunity to be real with each other and get to really know each other.
  3. Make sure you are connecting with them individually.  Sometimes leaders will feel more a part of the group if they are connecting with the Head Leader, which is you.  So make sure you are taking time out to connect individually with all your leaders on a regular basis.

Although you can do a lot to build community in your ministry, I have also found out that community is a two-way street.  You may have all the above things in place, but like my leader example above, have leaders who still feel disengaged or not apart of the community.  The leaders have to take it upon themselves to want to be apart of community.  You cannot force community and make people want to hang out with each other.  They have to want it just as much.  So what I challenge all my leaders is that if they want to feel apart of the community, as a leader, have:

  • make an extra effort to engage with the other leaders
  • come to leader meetings and leader events so that you know what is going on in the ministry but also have the opportunity to get to know the leaders in a different setting.

These are just two action steps they can do.  But I believe that if they make the effort in these two areas, they will feel more apart of the leadership community.

The reality is community matters.  If your leadership team works together and functions as a community, there is going to be a great benefit to them and to the students.  If you all fail to build an effective community, then the leaders and students will suffer.

So, TAKE A MINUTE and...

  1. Examine your leadership team.  Are you building community within the group or are people feeling disengaged and not contributing?
  2. What can you do this week to build a community of leaders that are going to go after Christ and the youth at your Church together?


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22Feb/102

Planting Seeds

A few weeks ago one of my volunteer leaders called me up and started the conversation saying, "I hope you don't mind, but I went ahead and...". Now, I don't know about you but anytime that phrase or something like "I hope you are not mad at me, but" start a conversation, my mind always ventures to the worst case scenario. Like, "I hope you are not mad at me, but..."

  • I was hanging out with kids and we drank beer together.
  • I got arrested for dealing pot.
  • My girlfriend is pregnant or I am pregnant.
  • I let a kid drive my car and he totaled it. What do I do now?

Even though I have had comments close to these said to me before, I am thankful that I have never had these exact comments reiterated to me. Regardless, my mind, as weird as it is, always ventures to the worst case scenarios when someone begins a statement like the one above.

So, as I'm bracing for a terrible scenario to unfold, my leader floors me as he continues. He said that he went ahead and asked 2 sophomore high school students to start thinking about being leaders down the road! Now that is a conversation starter that I have rarely experienced with another volunteer leader but welcome with open arms. This is a volunteer leader who decided to take it upon himself to plant a few seeds with some youth he has been building relationships with. Don't we all wish we had leaders who did this all the time?

This conversation encouraged me for a few reasons:

  1. The leader took initiative. Not only was he actively involved with these students, but when he saw something in them, he encouraged them and planted a seed. How do you think those students felt that this leader believed in them so much that he asked them to be a leader?
  2. If you were to ask me for some future leaders amongst our current students, I do not know that they would be students I would have picked out first and foremost. This is not to say these are bad students, I just do not know them! Had this leader not done this and planted the seeds, I do not know if these students would have ever been asked to think about being a leader down the road.  Our leadership potential pool just got bigger because of this volunteer leader.

Seed planting is a big part of what we do in youth ministry.  As you know, we spend countless hours with students in hopes that God impacts their lives and they become fully devoted followers of Christ. It is called seed planting because unfortunately for most of us we can pour our lives into students all throughout their adolescent lives and often see little or no fruit for our work. Do not get me wrong, there are definitely times when we see fruit from our efforts, but with the many hours we invest in the lives of students, the fruit seeing is very little compared to the seeding.  Hopefully, one day we will see the fruit of your work by getting a thank you note in the mail or a facebook message saying how much of an impact we made in their lives. So, although we may not see the fruit while we spend time with them, we plant seeds in hopes that God uses our time with them to bring them to Him one day.

Planting seeds is not just limited to instilling Christlike principles into the lives of students.  Planting seeds also means to give students the vision for a ministry to others.  Students at this stage in their lives are looking for direction and a path to follow.  They will either choose a right direction or a wrong one.  By identifying and affirming leadership traits in students, you are encouraging them to make an eternal impact in the lives of others. But, as with building into students, we may never see some students in leadership roles. Keep the end in mind and allow God's timing to take place. Whether God chooses to use them now or down the road, continue to build into them and pray that God uses them in a mighty way.  At the very least you are increasing your potential leader pool for future use.

Just because God may choose to use these students in leadership later does not mean you cannot help them develop and fine tune those qualities while they are still in your youth program.  As I have stated before, working at small to medium size churches, volunteer leaders are not necessarily easy to find. Because of that, you have to get creative in who can help you lead.  So, by encouraging students in their leadership ability, you are not only planting the seeds for future leadership but you can give them an opportunity to demonstrate and test their budding leadership potential in some way while they are still in your youth program. For instance, they could:

  • Give a message to the youth or share a testimony
  • Be apart of a ministry team like a welcome or program team
  • Help out with a younger age group like the middle school or children's ministry

Seed planting is vital in our ministry as it gives students a path to take and affirms qualities in their own lives that can have an eternal impact.  So the question is, are you currently planting seeds? Not just building into students and sharing Christ with them but giving them a vision for an eternal impact they can help make in the lives of others?

TAKE A MINUTE and...

  1. Continue to invest your life into students.  Write down the students you are currently planting seeds in.  Think through how you are encouraging them in Christ and in leadership.
  2. Identify a few other students who you or another leader can start planting leadership seeds into.
  3. Encourage your leaders to be planting seeds in the lives of students they are reaching out to.

If you have a thought or comment about how you have seen seed planting work effectively, post a comment below so we can all benefit.


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19Nov/090

Volunteer Leaders that make an Impact

What causes a volunteer leader to have an impact?  Is it time commitment, number of students they are reaching, how well they lead a skit?  Does it have anything to do with the Youth Pastor?  Should he/she micromanage each leader and make sure they are doing x,y and z?  Are the Youth Directors ultimately responsible for the kind of impacts leaders have?

The reason why I am asking this is because this week, we have lost 2 volunteer leaders.  There were different reasons for both leaving, but what it came down to is that they left because they were not making an impact.

I believe that a volunteer leader that makes an impact is someone who is building relationships with students and speaking the Truth of Christ into their lives. Whether that is through 1-on-1 contact work, a small group or through another way, it does not matter to me.  What matters is that students are being invested in and that Christ is being poured into their lives.

What about you?  What do you think?

TAKE A MINUTE and...

  1. Think through what it means for YOU to have a impacting Volunteer Leader.
  2. Then, share it with the rest of us so we can all be encourage and challenged :)

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