Your calendar is not getting any less full. Like me, I am sure your personal calendar is stuffed, your work calendar is jammed and then you have the calendar your mother in law expects you to follow… hers! Calendars dictate your time but also can tell you when you are free! I can't tell you how to manage your personal calendar but I could send you a template email to send to your mother in law (insert appropriate emoji). Your youth ministry calendar is the one that you have an opportunity to leverage.
There is a natural rhythm to the ministry you oversee. Most of the time it's dictated by school breaks, your personal life and adult leaders availability. Let's scrap that mind set for a second and look at the calendar with a different filter. Look at your calendar and ask yourself, when would I have the biggest opportunity to build relationally with students? Every church is different, schools have different calendars and there are certain variables in each context. You are in charge of the calendar for youth ministry. Are you leveraging it well? When do you kickoff certain ministries? Does it line up with a natural rhythm of school and family life for your students? Kickoffs and Ending Celebrations are momentum builders that set up the future. Natural calendars for families, school, etc are already in place. Build your ministry calendar to line up with those so you can maximize your time together. Are you planning activities during school breaks to make the most of relational time with your students? Every school break that lasts more than 1 day is an opportunity to schedule some hangout time and have fun with your students and their friends. Whether its sports, video games, board games, taco bell, movies, etc, you have an opportunity to build relational equity by giving your students something to go do!! Do your big weekends make sense for your students AND their families? There is nothing worse than planning an event that happens to fall at the same time as a massive school event, sports, or weekend where nearly every family at your church decides to go somewhere. Make sure you schedule your D-Now weekend or fall retreat when the majority of your students have no conflicts. Choose the week of summer camp when you know your athletes and marching band kids wont practice. Make your Kickoff to the school year before school starts so you can actually celebrate without a wave of anxiety creeping in, or kickoff well after school started so your students actually are optimistic about the school year. Do you just do the same thing or do you try new things and mix it up for your crew? Please, try new things out. Please, try and fail instead of relying on the same events or programs to get the job done. Your students need you to try, be creative and risk failing in order to get to a final product that is awesome! Try something new and fail, its all good!!! Your calendar can be the most freeing thing if you are strategic about it and intentional about when you do what you do. Have the students in mind first and your leaders will get on board. Cast vision well and pray like crazy for God to do some amazing things in the youth ministry you have the great privilege of overseeing for this season of your life!
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You are the authority on youth ministry at your church. Yes…YOU! It is your responsibility to walk alongside families and through the ups and downs of adolescence give them tools, resources, encouraging words, challenges, and opportunities to raise their teenager. One of the ways that is most effective is setting up parents to have the winning conversation with their child, instead of you! Most of the time we are thinking about events for our families to attend at our church on our time.
What if you didn't create another event that brought families to you and your church building? What if you gave parents or caring adults a kit to take the conversation to their home? Subscription boxes are all the rage right now in just about every area of life. Why not make a box for parents to take home and have an experience with their son or daughter that leads to a life giving, crucial conversation? You can do this! Its not difficult, it just takes some strategy, some thought, some fun and many hands to make all these boxes happen. What could come in the Mom/Daughter Box: -Two mugs- ones that you can design yourself with a sharpie then bake to make the mug design permanent -Sharpies -Hot chocolate -Hershey kisses or dove chocolate -Conversation guide- this is where you need to be strategic -Things to Remember -design the experience so the caring adult doesn't have to think about it! -set the stage for what you want to talk about. My recommendation is talking about identity. This world throws so many things at teenage girls and a lot of times it’s hard to cut through the lies and get to the truth of who God says that they are. Design the conversation and questions to focus around who God says that they are. What could come in the Dad/Son Box: -Make your own chili kit -Interactive type game(Fun for teenage boys) -we made up a game using a deck of cards where each suit required something different. -hearts = push ups -diamonds = sit ups -spades = questions to answer honestly -clubs = special challenges (random acts of silliness) -Conversation guide - Be strategic with this conversation -Things to Remember -design the experience so that it’s a win for the adult AND the teenage boy. -make the experience line up with the conversation My recommendation is talking about purity and pornography. Our teenage guys are inundated with sexually explicit media at every turn. It’s harder than ever to keep your mind focused on good wholesome things. The only way to combat this is to get caring people involved in their lives and actually talk about it. It’s an awkward conversation to talk about porn with a teenager but it needs to happen. The conversation shouldn't point towards shame but the freedom we have from this through Jesus. The pictures at the top of this post give you an excerpt from the conversation guides for each of these conversations, think of what this could look like for your church and your students. Give the caring adult that is bold enough to tackle these conversations everything. Think through the entire experience and make sure to give them step by step instructions, even if you think it’s obvious. Leave no detail out! The conversation is the most important part, but the experience will earn them the right to talk about the topic openly and honestly. Remember, if you are the only one having important conversations with your students then chances are in the long run you lose. Get parents involved and give them the keys to conversations that matter. Multi-site churches are becoming more and more common. It has become a great strategy to continue reaching more people with the Gospel. With any strategy, contextualizing for other departments look a lot different depending on where you work. For student ministry, the multi-site model is a different beast entirely. Churches don’t go multi-site because it makes student ministry easier. Student ministry is forced to adapt and figure out the best way to go after the beast that is Multi-site student ministry. There are many different models to go with when it comes to student ministry in a multi-site church. There is not one clear cut winner when it comes to a model of ministry but more of a “whatever works for your church” mentality. I do believe there is a way to use your staff, your resources and your time more effectively. In order to grow leaders and not robots, the team must own the ministry. Ownership won’t happen if all they are doing is what they are told to do. Robots don’t help the capital “C” church down the road. In order to grow leaders, the team must feel like they can make it all happen. There are so many tasks that need to happen on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis that it can be overwhelming and paralyzing. If you are on the student ministry team at a multi-site church, chances are you are still trying to figure out what the best way is to get everything done that needs to get done. One thing that I believe works to increase ownership, use resources more wisely and create more margin for the team is when you compartmentalize the main buckets of student ministry. You can use staff more effectively and allow their strengths to be utilized in a greater way. What if your team broke into smaller teams and focused on a specific area of ministry while the other group worked on an entirely different area of the ministry? Here is what I mean by that. If you have 4 people on staff for student ministry at your multi-site church, have 2 of your stronger writers focus on curriculum that all of your sites will implement and to other 2 staff members focus on a small group strategy. The same 2 staffers could then focus on events while the other 2 focus on leader development. This model of strategy is scalable and allow the voices of the team to be heard in specific areas of the ministry. Breaking down the areas of student ministry of focus will require the team to trust each other, and be ok if its not “exactly” like they would have done it. It will require having the entire team on the same page. It will require clarity on vision and direction. It will require humility from everyone to make it happen well. It will also, in my opinion, be a catalyst for your ministry! Focus groups within multi-site student ministry will allow ownership to take place, the ministry will get a better product in the end and each staff member will not have to do absolutely everything the ministry requires. Breaking down the various sections of student ministry allows the team to use their time more effectively, utilize resources better and give greater ownership which will all help the team grow in the leadership capacity. |
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