56.3 miles of Youth Ministry to Boston

I plan on running in the Baltimore Half Marathon (http://www.thebaltimoremarathon.com/) this October, I’m looking it to be a stepping stone for me as I try to reach my goal of qualifying for Boston. I’ve never really had a successful long race because I’ve either gotten injured mid race or not been able to finish. So in order to help me reach my goal, I plan on making the Baltimore Half a step towards being in shape to running a qualifying time for Boston (Maybe at next year’s National Marathon in DC http://www.nationalmarathon.com/). But before I run the 13.1 miles this October I plan on running the Survivor 7 Harbor Run in June and the Annapolis 10 miler in August. So my goal is to run a qualifying time for Boston… all the races beforehand are how I plan to get there. Great!
With four weeks of program left, I’m trying to get my thoughts, feelings and ideas together for next year. On top of that I’ve been putting together surveys and questionnaires for leaders and parents. This time of year is pretty exciting for me because we get to spend most of it planning, writing and putting together the future. I like to spend the majority of my time vision casting, goal setting and just dreaming of what can be. Just as I set goals for myself in running I plan on doing that with Youth Ministry. Three goals I have set for next year are doubling our ministers and developing a more aggressive approach for evangelization.

Doubling Ministers
Right now in our Youth Ministry program we have about 35-40 adult ministers actively involved. A huge improvement from last year when we only had 25 active adult ministers. A large part of this is due to the help of a few ministers who stepped up to take leadership roles. In reality I only manage 5 ministers and then in turn they manage the other 30-35. I would like to see us double this number over the next year, I know this seems like a steep goal but it is definitely doable. Some of the steps to make this happen is instill an invest and invite culture within the ministers, help them understand the value of replacing themselves, creating apprenticeships and giving them a clear understanding of how this ministry needs to grow. There are other steps needed to be taken and before we move towards this goal it would be important to identify these steps and make sure they are clear.

Approach for Evangelization
A few weeks back I looked at the amount of teenagers registered at our church and the number came to an overwhelming 900+. Then I guesstimated the number of teens who regularly attend our programs and saw that 5% of 900+ attend Resurrection, Uprising, HABITS, and Small Groups combined (we don’t have numbers for teens in ministry yet). To me this is an unhealthy percentage; however, I don’t know if this is going to grow by focusing solely on these 900+ teens. While I desire to get these registered teens more involved in the programs I am more concerned about getting the many thousands of teens that don’t go to church or even believe in Christ connected. I don’t know what the plan is, Dare2Share (dare2share.org) has a great strategy, but I don’t know if we are there yet, I guess I’m not there yet. Our church is 2 miles from the mall, many different high schools and middle schools surround us, it’s not like we are short on people in our community. I wonder if it’s my fear of inviting teens to an environment I’m not too sure is irresistible, comfortable and engaging to developing a relationship with Christ.

I hope to tackle these two issues with my leaders over the next few months. Hopefully in the next year we can see these two goals reached. The first goal is tangible, there is a number. The second goal needs to be a little more concrete. So maybe I should give myself a number. So here it is: Next year I want the percentage of teens in our programs to reach 20%. How will this work? Well I believe when teens from the outside start coming in, the teens inside the church who don’t engage in our activities will. So as I train for Boston, I hope to also Double my Ministers and Have a Healthy Evangelization Strategy that leads to exponential growth.