Don’t Stand In The Way, Facilitate The Win

This past Thursday there was a win that I want to share with you all.  This new teen has started coming to Uprising (Our High School Ministry) because one of our regulars invited him.  This past Thursday the new teen brought one of his friends.  When they got there they noticed that the regular student wasn’t there so they called him and made sure he came.  It was a win because the new teen and the regular had formed accountability to bring one another and a friend to church.
What’s awesome about this situation is that I feel as if it’s all God and that I had little to do with it; however, I could have stood in the way.  Often times the reason we don’t see life change, the reason we don’t see wins is because we don’t facilitate an environment for that to happen.  So how do we facilitate an environment of wins?
It’s going to differ from ministry to ministry; but, for our ministry we at our mission to be consistent, irresistible and authentic.

• Consistent: We reassure students that we’ll be there.  If they miss a week and come back the following, we’ll be there.  We want them to meet with the same small group so that they can build lasting relationships.  Our structure is consistent (we do change things up) because you can expect to worship, pray together, share life and grow with one another.
• Irresistible:  One thing on my heart is a healthy adult to teen ratio.  I would love if our small groups had 8 teens with two adults, if our overall ratio was 1:4, when a teen gets undivided attention you can give them so much.  We want our space to look irresistible; unfortunately, this is controlled by finances, but then again it’s only money.  We want to make sure the teens walk into a clean, welcoming building.
• Authentic:  I don’t need perfect adults in my ministry, I just want healthy ones.  Ones that admit their flaws; however, know that the answer always resides in Christ.  I want to deliver hard truth to the students, I don’t want to give them anything sugar coated; however, I want what we tell them and teach them to be relevant and appropriate.  When a teen can see that you are sharing with them your heart, they’ll want to find the reason behind your authenticity, which comes (hopefully) from Christ.

There are so many different ways we can make a win happen.  I’m not even sure if last Thursdays win was because of the consistency, irresistibility and authenticity of our programs, but we definitely didn’t stand in the way.  However, I know we still need to work on all three, in fact I don’t know if we can ever do all three perfectly (isn’t that heaven?).  So that’s how we are trying to facilitate the wins in ministry, but in order for our missions to grow I think it’s important to share.
How are you facilitating a win?