Give Your Ministry a Fresh Perspective

Last week a few people from staff attended a church conference.  The majority of the group who went were hired within the last year making it a unique group.  Our hope was that they would learn from some of the same models the rest of the staff had learned.  In turn what they came back with were a slew of questions, which lead to an amazing discussion.  Their findings gave our youth ministry a fresh perspective.

It’s easy for your ministry to become stale, especially if you’ve been serving in the same place for a long time.  You no longer have a fresh perspective, which is dangerous.  After a while it’s easy to develop blinders and lose sight of what it is you need to do.  Youth ministry is constantly changing and if you cannot lead it with a fresh perspective you’ll find how you do it becoming irrelevant.

If you want to keep your ministry moving and meaningful you need to:

• Recruit Outside Eyes:  There are two ways you can go about doing this.  THE FIRST is by sitting down with your new (Less than a year) volunteers and asking them to breakdown your ministry.  THE SECOND is by inviting a fellow youth worker to come in and be a fly on the wall.  Doing either is a humbling experience; however, the feedback you will receive is priceless.  When someone isn’t as emotionally as invested as you are they can see problems you might have missed.

• Change Your Role: Serving in a different capacity will enable you to see your ministry from a different angle.  If you are constantly speaking, take a night off and observe your ministry from the back of a room.  Instead of leading your groups of teens ask another leader if you can sit in on their group.  Give yourself a fresh perspective by taking notes on what you see, and run them by your volunteers.

• Visit Other Ministries: Step out of your comfort zone and visit another youth ministry (Get permission first).  Observe, do not question, what it is they are doing.  Watch how they greet students, approach a subject and lead worship.  See if you can find time to sit down with the youth pastor to pick his or her brain.  Discover the transferable principles that might help you strengthen your ministry.

A healthy ministry means knowing what needs to go, what needs to be tweaked and what needs more fuel (To learn more about what areas might need a new perspective read this).  The only way you are going stay on top of what your ministry needs is by gaining a fresh perspective.  Don’t be afraid to ask.

Have you ever taken one of these steps? If so what was your experience? Please comment.