With the summer here, it’s time that I spend time working…ha ha not gonna happen, actually summer time (I feel) is busier than any other time during the year. You get into a rhythm during the school year because it’s just week after week after week of pumping stuff out, in the summer the structure kind of relaxes. Last week at this time I was getting ready to fly back from the Drive 08 Conference in Atlanta and while in the ATL Stephen Seipp asked me, “What are the few things you need to do in order to make youth ministry more effective and efficient?” Steve was basically offering his help with the things that distract me or interfere with the things that I do the best. Right off the bat I knew that the thing I needed to do the most is pray and be with God, so the fact that people offer their help is a huge thing, but I came up with 5 things that I need to do to be 5 times the leader and to have 5 times the youth ministry program that Church of the Nativity now has. So here they are in no particular order:
5 Things I Must Do After Spending Time With God
1. Connect with Teens: I need to connect with teens on a daily basis, whether it is face to face, phone, email or Facebook, I need to make sure I connect with them. That’s my ministry serving teens, and right now I’m lucky if some of them stop by after school, because if that doesn’t happen I don’t see them until Sunday… and that’s not relational youth ministry.
2. Connect with Parents: I need to connect with one or many parents (not involved in youth ministry) on a weekly basis, whether it is face to face, phone or email praising their kids, asking how I can serve them or getting to know them better. This isn’t a us vs. them, it’s us and them, it’s we. My job is to work with parents, to help them, support them, cheer them on to raise Godly youth.
3. Invest in Ministry Leaders: I need to meet and connect with my ministry leaders on a daily basis, getting to know their lives, giving them purpose in youth ministry, celebrating wins and giving them a piece of the vision. As the ministry grows I realize I might not be able to meet with everyone; however, I need to create a coaching culture, so that as ministry grows there are coaches and mentors for new and upcoming ministers.
4. Create, write and work on messages for programming: I will work on a weekly messages that pertain to the theme and address the issues that teens face on a daily basis. The purpose of message prep is to give students a teaching that will bring questions that they can carry into other areas of ministry. If I can’t invest time in motivating teens, if I can’t cast vision to the teens, then the Church will never grow.
5. Vision cast and create: Every day I will work on vision whether it is through my blog, email, podcast or working on specifying what God wants a current program or new program to look like. If I can’t communicate to people about the dreams I have and the way I feel God wants this ministry to grow, then it simply won’t happen.