Every week I'd wheel a cart full of candy, tape, and ping pong balls through the checkout line, and every week the cashier gave me the same look. It's hard to blame her. Youth ministry doesn't always look professional from the outside, the odd hours, the games, the mountain of supplies for camp. It's not like most other careers. But that doesn't mean there's no room for professionalism in it.
So how do we make youth ministry more professional? It's not about dressing differently or cutting the games that make it fun. There are plenty of us who know our parishes need youth ministry, but can we actually articulate why? Do we think about what we'll do when teens show up? Do we have a plan for how the ministry will grow over 2, 3, or even 5 years?
Too many of us get stuck in the busyness of ministry and never stop to answer those questions. We keep doing what we did last year, or the year before that, without ever deciding if it's actually working. That's not sustainable, and it's not really professional either. It's just momentum.
A strategic plan doesn't need to be a multiple page document. It can be something simple that answers a few questions like:
Having a plan doesn't just help you grow the ministry. It gives you something to stand on when things get busy, so you're making decisions instead of just reacting to whatever comes at you. It also helps you advocate for the ministry, to a pastor, to a finance council, to parents who want to know what they're signing their kid up for.
At M2GO we offer vision board templates to help you get started. You can also sit down with your team, your coworkers, or invite members of parish council to help you work through it. It doesn't need to happen all at once, and it doesn't need to be perfect the first time. Start with one question, sit with it for a week if you need to, and build from there.
Being professional was never about the cart, or the odd hours, or how put-together things look on the surface. It's about knowing why you're doing what you're doing, and being able to say so.