slant33-blog

What are some critical things to remember when leading teams?

Steve Argue

I can only speak from what I’ve discovered with my teams, and hopefully it will inspire something for you. These are in no particular order to these since I believe each, in some way, informs the others.

A team is more than its individuals. There’s a tremendous difference between a group of people who individually divide up their work to accomplish a task and a group that works together toward something more. The former can produce excellent yet disjointed tasks that remain looking like a wall full of sticky notes. The latter evokes a budding art form that surprises everyone as it takes on a life of its own. One of the hardest things to do is encourage teams to move through individualistic (often brilliant) patterns into the realm where efforts and personalities create something that no one can create on his own. This process takes time and is certainly less efficient, requiring leadership that protects the process.

Process is more important than product. I don’t mean to be extreme (maybe I do). I’ve experienced too many teams complete tasks only to end up more unhealthy, more burned out, and more at odds with each other than when they began. Somehow the process got the product done but killed everyone in the meantime. I believe attention to the process nurtures transformation more than an end product. It’s where the members make meaning of their experiences and are challenged to reframe success beyond end results.

Often, this is where dysfunction is confronted—even the “beneficial” dysfunctions like workaholism, self-promotion, isolationism, or guilt/fear motivations. There are goals within the goal that surface as people get closer to a project, to each other, and to oneself. Leadership creates space for each person to reflect on how he is making sense of the project’s multiple layers, resisting internal and external pressures to merely produce. The end results, then, are celebration and formation, not merely checking something off the list and reinforcing dysfunction in the name of “efficiency” or worse, “ministry.”

Words, writing, and language matter. I get grief from my peers and teams for being a document guy. I like to write things down so my teams get the full context of my ideas. It’s through documents that others can interact with my ideas, improving them, making them better so an idea moves from becoming mine to ours. My goal is that, when our teams talk about research, ministry philosophy, or theological concepts, we all have a clear sense of what we mean and where we’re going together. Words, writing, and language become pathways toward dialogue rather than one-way orders or defensive walls. This requires great trust in each other to put an idea (and ego!) out there to be critiqued and changed, hoping and believing that dialogue is always better than monologue.

Reading, thinking, and discourse are crucial. My team also gives me a hard time for perpetually sending them articles I think will help them think about their interests. My hope is that they remember they’re part of a bigger conversation that’s happening around us. What’s fun is that I’m now receiving articles from my teammates. Maybe it’s payback, or maybe our team is developing the discipline of keeping an eye on this broader landscape of the conversation. And here’s my most hopeful secret—I believe they have something to add to the conversation. Watch for their articles. They’re coming…

Delegating is stupid. Go ahead and quote Jethro’s advice to Moses, but don’t use this as a support for delegation. Delegation often becomes a buzzword for leaders passing off things they don’t like to do, which is not encouraging to team members. True delegation (if we must use that term) is more about a leader admitting limitation, trusting others, and nurturing others’ callings. It is a posture of trust, not a posture of power. When you “delegate,” may you not only delegate task but also the authority that goes with it. May the receiver of delegation know that a new responsibility has been given to him because he is believed in and his contribution will help the team and his own next steps of personal growth. Any other sort of delegation that is shortsighted or last minute is stupid. If you doubt this, when you ask your teammates to do something, do they look up (pick me!), or look down (please don’t pick me)?

Teams can “lead” themselves. A final thought is that leaders of teams have a role, but there is a greater corrective, and that is when a team leads itself; when quality is shared; when everyone is supportive; when help is asked for; when challenge is done in love; when there is laughter along the way; when each person is changing for the better. Then, something’s happening. The best thing a leader can often do is use her power to clear the way (time, resource, encouragement, etc.) to let things happen and allow the team to become just that—a team.

As I reflect on my list, one common theme I see is that my crucials are not quick fixes. Most are process-oriented postures that challenge me to commit to the long haul, to resist short-term success, to patiently nurture space for individual and group transformation. It’s the team that matters. Not me.

Jim Hampton

As one who has led teams now for more than 25 years, I wish I could say that every team I’ve led has been a resounding success story, but I’d be lying. What I can say is that the longer I do this, the better I become at it. In the case of leading teams, experience really has been the best teacher.

That said, let me offer two suggestions I have found particularly helpful in leading ministry teams. (My focus will be on leading the team itself, rather than recruiting the team. Slant 33 did a series of articles on recruiting previously that can be found here.

Take time to build relationships with the other members of the team. Some of us are so task oriented that we too often see team members as extra appendages of our bodies. Just give them a task to do and set them loose is our thinking.

However, that is a terribly misguided notion. We have to remember that the members of our team are people; people who crave relationships and who often work best in the context of community support and encouragement. When we fail to truly get to know others (their families and life situations, their passions, their walks with God, their talents and abilities, etc.), then we end up treating them as objects to fulfill our needs rather than seeing them as people made in the image of God who have valuable things to offer the team and the kingdom. Relationships should always precede tasks.

Building relationships with the other members of the team also allows you to build trust. The more you know about them, the more you can trust them. Similarly, the more they know about you, the more they can trust you. I discovered that when your team members know you are for them, they are much more willing to assume your decisions are for the best, even if they don’t always understand the why behind them. Without this type of trust, you can easily be misperceived in your decisions and direction. As a colleague of mine is fond of saying, “An action uninterpreted is an action misunderstood.” When we build this type of relationship with our team members, we become better at communicating the actions we are taking as a leader and explaining why we are taking them.

When I was a local church youth pastor, we did many things to encourage the building of relationships. We had monthly sponsor meetings, where the focus of the first 30-45 minutes was simply food and fellowship. I found that during this time, people would talk about what was going on in their lives. It became a wonderful time as people shared with each other, often taking time to stop and pray with and for each other.

We also tried to offer an annual sponsor retreat each fall. It was a lot of work to get enough volunteers to cover all the Sunday school classes, small groups, and other youth ministry positions that would normally be needed during a weekend. But I found it incredibly fruitful when we could gather all of our youth ministry workers and spend a weekend playing together, dreaming together, and planning for the upcoming year. As part of our worship times together, our adult workers learned that their community was the body of youth workers, and they learned to lean on each other the rest of the year.

Put people in positions to succeed, and then empower them to do so. Most of the volunteers I’ve had on my teams are professional people who are very talented in their jobs. They are given huge responsibilities at work and expected to handle the jobs flawlessly. And the vast majority of the time, they succeed.

Why is it, then, that when it comes to giving people responsibilities for ministry, we too often default either to not giving them any real responsibility, or giving them responsibilities but never any real authority to carry the tasks out, insisting that they run everything through us?

It’s important that we give real responsibility to people, but we also have to know their level of handling a task. (This can only happen through truly knowing the other person, as mentioned above.) It is demeaning to a well-trained person not to give her real authority to determine how to do something, even if she does it differently than you would. Similarly, it can feel oppressive to give someone a task he is not equipped to handle. All of us have had someone volunteer to take on a specific task of ministry only to fail. I’m convinced that most of the time, their failures are really our failures because we failed to make sure we had the right people for the right job.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins refers to this as getting the right people on the bus. For those of us in youth ministry, it means we first have to know what our real needs are then work hard to find people with the right mix of gifts who can succeed in the ministry areas to which we assign them.

When we lead teams by these principles, we develop a group of people who are willing to give everything to ensure the ministry succeeds. They do this because they believe in you as the leader and the vision you’ve cast. They do it because they find the community that is present to be vitally important in helping them live out their Christian faith. And they do it because they like to be successful, and the team allows them to do that.

Leading teams can be tough, but it can also be one of the most rewarding things you’ll ever do if you get the right people doing the right jobs and learning to build deep relationships one with the other.

Dave Rahn

In Em Griffin’s IVP book from some years ago, Getting Together: A Guide for Good Groups, he summarized as succinctly as I ever heard how research on group dynamics collects around three factors that predict success and satisfaction. Whenever I think of leading teams, I run through my version of this mental checklist.

Where are we going? Ensuring there is a clear and commonly shared purpose, vision, and direction for any team is one of the most important elements to leading. A team imposes expectation of time and commitment on its members. Ultimately, everyone decides whether the cause is worth an investment.

The worst teams I’ve been part of have either been fuzzy about their reason for existence or their focus has shifted. Sometimes the change of direction is intentional. That’s fair, but team members need to have the opportunity to reevaluate their commitment when that takes place. At other times, teams simply get distracted by all of the other collateral causes they encounter while working on their main purpose. When that happens, the sense of dissatisfaction sneaks up on us a bit more slowly until we awaken one day to the realization that we “didn’t sign up for this.”

New coaches often bring changes in philosophy and direction to the teams they lead. They talk about how their squad has or has not bought in to the vision of what is now going to be attempted together. This psychological ownership of direction is a dynamic factor for those of us who lead teams. It should never be assumed, and we can’t work too hard at making sure that our purposes are clear and everyone is on board.

How do I fit? Teams are beautiful things when they work well. Their interdependence, coordination, synchronicity, and synergy introduce potential for accomplishment that simply can’t be matched by a collection of individual efforts. One of the important predictors of a team’s success is the degree to which every member of the team knows how she contributes to the common goal.

Sometimes these roles are identified formally. Bill always takes notes at our meetings. Jarrod translates our work for distribution through social media outlets. Nina pays attention to the calendar and ensures that our next steps are clear. But other roles emerge from within the dynamics of a group experience. We look to Tim for problem-solving analysis, and Joel supplies the right blend of humor and curiosity to keep things energized. It doesn’t matter much whether our team roles are formal or informal. What does matter is that every member realizes that the part he plays is necessary—not optional—as we co-labor toward a shared vision. Team leaders earn their keep by making sure everyone knows where he fits and feels valued for her contribution.

Are we tight? This last factor predicting team success is a little more slippery to get hold of. It testifies to a group’s cohesion, its members’ belief in each other, and the great sense of camaraderie that’s experienced together. Often it’s as simple as really liking being a member of this team. This factor should not be underestimated. It’s the glue that holds some teams together when challenges are particularly daunting. When it is not present, people begin to feel like belonging is no big deal.

Church softball or bowling teams all across the country are successful without ever posting winning records because they have created a sense of “we-ness” that is compelling to all sorts of non-athletes. When team members simply want to be part of whatever we’re doing simply because we’re doing it together, we’ve probably got a group that benefits from some good stickiness.

Leaders help make this happen by paying attention to the little things that pop up spontaneously to cement the group together. Shared experiences that supply vivid and colorful memories are particularly effective means to bind us together. We can plan for space to make them happen, like we do when we take team retreats. But we can’t always predict what amazing moments will take place or when. Good leaders notice the sparks that have the chance to fuel a fire of cohesion and fan them well.

Respond to this statement: The church has become consumeristic.

Steve Argue

Youth Ministries need warning labels. I’m serious. And these warning labels shouldn’t be like the auctioneer speed-talking heard at the end of cholesterol-reducing commercials that promise that you can eat ribs and still lose weight, or the fine print on leasing the car of your dreams that you can’t afford. It should be right in the middle, in plain sight for everyone to see and understand that the gospel we’re attempting to live into will mess everyone up.

For parents… Warning: Sending your child to youth group has the potential of derailing your family’s priorities and will challenge you to articulate your own faith to your kids.

For youth workers… Warning: Serving in this ministry is essential for your own spiritual formation. You need these students as much as they need you. Doubt, insecurity, struggle, and pain will disorganize your neat life should you dare to enter in.

For students… Warning: If you participate in this youth group, we’ll show how far the rabbit hole goes.

We have a problem, however. Youth ministries need people to legitimize their existence. As a result, most of our recruiting toward students rides on sound bites of “fun.” Most of our communication with parents comes out of spin-doctor techniques that seek to impress parents in order to pay for our retreats and, let’s be honest, our salaries. Most of our recruiting for youth worker volunteers markets to support-a-child techniques, where “If you just give five hours a week to this child, he will worship you, leave her life of crime, and not end up in hell.” And if you think I’m exaggerating about any of these points, check out the product tables at most youth ministry conferences.

Now, I recognize that the issues I’m pointing out have, in some way, been perpetuated by my own ministry practices. So I’m calling all youth ministry types to own the problem with me. How have we, likely through good intentions, perpetuated a consumeristic culture within our churches and youth ministries?

Is it possible that ministry has conditioned students, parents, families, adults to church shop and use Priceline.com techniques to find the best returns on their giving dollars? Again, if you think this a generalization, simply look at the work of Christian Smith (Souls in Transition) or Tim Clydesdale (The First Year Out) and recognize that most religiously oriented young people who have gone through their adolescent years have adapted an American form of religion that is fueled by consumerism, self-fulfillment, and individualism. It’s a hard question to ask, but could this be the fruit of our labor?

The response to this question isn’t regressing to just preaching the Bible, or talking more about sin and hell. But it isn’t blindly repeating what we’re doing either. Rather, I’ve been inspired by the works of James Fowler and Sharon Daloz Parks to recognize that faith isn’t merely something we possess, get, acquire, gain/lose, or consume.

Faith is something we do. It is something that is dynamically changing as each person learns to navigate her/his connection with self, others, life, and God. It calls for all to be invited to participate within a community where everyone faiths together. One must make time. Value it above other things. Be willing to grow, even to change. All of these are the antithesis of consumerism.

Warning labels must also be placed all over the church too.

Podcasts… Warning: Thanks for listening to our messages, but it’s only part of the narrative our community proclaims. Only listening to this (without action on your part) will produce spiritual malnutrition.

Pews… Warning: If you sit here, you will likely be moved down one seat, across the world, or toward someone you don’t know or like.

As Annie Dillard puts it, “It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews” (An Expedition to the Pole).

Straw hats, flip flops, lattes, smart phones, retreat commercials, volunteer guilt trips, fun, convenient downloads. These are not bad things in and of themselves. But might they be symbolic for a consumer-laden faith we’re passing on? If so, what are we willing to do about it?

Maybe we have to reintroduce warning labels to stem consumeristic hegemony in our faith communities. Have more? Please share…

Lilly Lewin

Ya think? Our culture encourages us to buy, not to borrow. We are encouraged to buy our own rather than sharing something with others. We are encouraged to buy extra because we might run out.

We are trained to consider ourselves and our needs before the needs of others, unless the others happen to be on the other side of the world in a global crisis. Thus, we miss loving our neighbor next door or around the block, and we miss sharing our abundance or receiving the generosity of others.

How quickly we in church land get caught up in the mentality of the mall. We get caught up in spend and consume rather than the basics of the kingdom. Jesus invites us into a different kind of world, where the last shall be first and the least will be greatest. Jesus, and later Paul, invites us to get rid of the stuff that so easily weighs us down. Yet we’ve all seen it, and many of us have gotten sucked into the vortex of money=power=success, or bigger is better.

Bigger churches mean more givers and having bigger youth ministries. Bottoms in chairs equals success and might even get you a raise. In American church land we’ve been encouraged to consume—to find the best teaching, the best music, the best children’s ministry. As a youth pastor the first question I’m asked is, “How big is your group?” rather than, “How solid are your kids in serving the poor?” or, “How are your kids’ prayer lives?” We all know that’s not what God looks at. He doesn’t look at the outward appearance but at the heart. God’s kingdom invites us to give, serve, love, be thankful. And when we serve the least of these, we are actually serving him.

How did everything get to be about the Benjamins? How did church become about money, getting people to give more to the building fund, or even to missions, but not necessarily giving of themselves? We don’t want to actually get our hands dirty. Going downtown is too dangerous. These are excuses we’ve all heard.

In consumer land, we are successful if we have lots of stuff. And so it is in church. In church land we are honored for having more stuff, or if our church parking lots are filled with nice cars and SUVs. The people on the board tend to be the upwardly mobile and part of “the buck stops here” crowd. And just look at many of our church buildings. They have become bigger and better and filled with more choices, from Starbucks or fair-trade coffee and food courts, to WiFi and gyms; some churches are mini malls of activity. In consumer land, we’ve come to expect the best, so we expect our churches to be polished and to provide us with the coolest experiences possible. We expect world-class music, whether it’s from a choir or band. And shouldn’t our band sound at least as good as Crowder? Sadly, this all leads to performances rather than worship, but that’s another post.

We’ve created and become gourmet Christians. We choose churches based on our favorite flavors and our current appetites. We are used to choices in every other area, so when it comes to going to church, we can choose to worship on Saturday night at the mega church up the street because they have the best worship band; we can go to the fill-in-the-blank church on Sunday morning because their pastor is the best Bible teacher; and head off to the local Episcopal church on Sunday night to experience a Taizé or U2 Eucharist service. And we might add a small-group Bible study on Wednesday night because we need more food and fellowship.

As gourmets, we enjoy the flavors of the moment, but then we see only the great meal provided and miss out on the messiness of the preparation and cleanup that are the real life of a church community. As gourmets we don’t necessarily have to commit; we just consume.

Do we need more things? Do we need more to buy? Really? Why is it that selling everything and giving it to the poor seems like a nice idea but way too hard in 2010? Did Jesus really mean it? And as I pack to move, I sure have a lot of coats. What about that “have two coats, give one away” verse?

In consuming too much, we lose sight of being grateful and content with what we already have. We need more things to make us feel safe, current, relevant, and cool. I’m guilty. I like my iPhone a lot. I like to shop at the Gap over Goodwill. I wasn’t trained or encouraged to live simply. I battle having expensive taste with the knowledge that so many have very little. Compared to Warren Buffet, I’m nothing, but compared to 99.9% of the rest of the world, I’m a millionaire.

I admit that I need help. We all need help to get out of consumer land. Can we help ourselves and our church communities get into living in the kingdom? What if we thought smaller rather than bigger, better? What if we started with loving our neighbors next door and sharing our stuff with them—like the lawnmower or a ladder or even a vacuum cleaner? Could we borrow rather than buy the things we need? Especially items we only use once or twice a year? Could we adopt a family all year long, not just at Christmas? What if we started a thankful list, writing down things we’re grateful for and at the end of the week take time to read them all out loud, either on our own or as a family?

What if we encouraged each other to stay in the homes we have, rather than upgrading to larger ones, in order to help someone else who doesn’t have a home or who needs help with home improvements and cannot afford them? We can all spend less, serve more, and be grateful for what we do have, even the small things, and even if it’s not as great as the guys next door.

Brooklyn Lindsey

There seems to be a lot being said on the consumeristic nature of the church. I read a lot about being less consumeristic, both as an individual and as a church. I hear the more recent call of David Platt, Shane Claiborne, Zach Hunter, and others. I can’t shake the life and message that Mother Teresa gave to us. They all say in different words that our love for God should be manifested in how we respond to the “other” in our lives. Then there’s Jesus, the most compelling voice for us to turn away from the tendency to be consumerist and to love sacrificially.

But I work in a church, and I attend churches every week (including my own) where our goal is to provide comfort. It’s not included in our mission and vision, but it’s inherent in our conversations. We don’t want parking to be bothersome. We can’t have too many bodies in the hallway. We need to call the paper we hold a worship folder (not a bulletin). Our series need to appeal to our audience. The website should have a certain level of immediacy and up-to-date graphic design.

We do these things so people can be connected to the hope found in Christ—and I’d say that most of these things are good. At the same time, we tend a culture where if someone isn’t happy, they simply find a church that makes them happy. I struggle with this. I have struggled in churches, and I’ve left them. I am the consumer culture, and I’m a pastor.

I have more questions than answers. I don’t know how to have meaningful conversations about this, conversations that yield change. I would say that I love to speak justice language, as long as it means I can still have an iPhone, iPod, and YouVersion Bible. As long as we can still have passion-like worship services, AC, and coffee in the foyer. This is me being honest.

Can you tell I’m confused?

My husband and I did our internships in a large Nazarene church in Campinas, Brazil. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Over a thousand people gathered each Sunday. It was a large building with good pastors and good people helping out. But the thing that spoke to me most was how they shared the gospel without a parking lot. They didn’t purchase surrounding buildings to be able to tear them down and create space for cars. They simply expected that the church—if it’s truly the church—would find a way to worship regardless of the amount of land they could acquire. It spoke to this heart, just beginning in ministry, and I’ve wrestled with it ever since.

Nearly three years ago, Pastor Craig Groeschel posted a blog in a series on the future of the church, titled More Missional, Less Consumeristic.

He states, You might ask, “What is a Consumer-Christian?” In our church, it is the person who “church shops” for a church that meets his needs. Church is all about them. When the church doesn’t work for them anymore, they shop for another one.

He later goes on to share what the church will be like (or should be like): The future church will be made up of believers who:
• Are sick of living in material comfort while millions starve to death.
• Make money to give more than to consume.
• Believe in the power of prayer and fasting.
• Are willing to suffer for the cause of Christ.
• Will be engaged in missions both locally and internationally.
• See it as their role to lead people to Christ.
• See it as their role to help people in need.

I read things like this knowing that other cases are being made every day to be a kingdom church, not a “me” church.

I want to respond to this “future church” and say with my whole heart that I am a part of it. It’s just taking me some time to figure out how that can happen.

There isn’t much closure for me here. This sacrificial and others-minded life grows up as we walk with Christ, and it infuses purpose in the here and now, even if my current here and now seems a little bit far from the future I hope for. But isn’t that the very essence of our walk with Christ?

Christians should be known for their ability to become. We should be known for the ability to assess our situation in the light of Christ and respond.

Maybe not having an answer is a good answer as long as we are obeying the call of Christ that’s spoken through the Word of God, reinforced in the light of tradition, shared in the body of Christ as we celebrate and pray and reason together with the intellect that God has given to us all. And there’s even room for God to come in and speak to us unexpectedly, to illuminate our understanding with his Holy Spirit. Wow, thank God for the help we have!

The church is consumeristic. But we are also forgiven, growing, becoming, and being sent every day to change and respond to God in our world. Little steps are good steps. Big steps are good steps. Responding to Christ with total abandonment is good. Regardless of where we are, God is there with us, helping us and giving us peace when we don’t have answers.

Lord, I cry out to you as a young pastor who knows little of what you want for the church. My prayer is that you would help us be a church that loves, that will continue to serve those who are far from you as well as those who walk close to you. Help us grow in our knowledge of who you are so we can better understand who we are. Forgive us when our consumer hearts consume us. Replace those desires with your desires and we’ll respond in your strength. Help us think of others in our language, in the use of our time, in our planning, in our spending, and in our giving. We want to be transformed.

Suggested Reading: Freedom of Simplicity (Richard Foster)

What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where God can be experienced?

Sarah Arthur

I find this to be an intriguing question. It’s rather like asking, “What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where wind can be experienced?”

On the one hand, we can’t force the wind to show up. Growing up sailing on the Great Lakes, I learned the truth of Jesus’ statement, “The wind blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8). Our boat could be cruising along for hours at six knots in a steady breeze, and then suddenly the wind would die—bam. And we’d be stuck out there, bobbing around, trying to start the motor.

On the other hand, there are certain places and times when the wind has been known to show up. On the Little Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan, for instance, sailors on a sunny summer day usually can count on a phenomenon known as the afternoon thermal. As the sun climbs higher in the sky, it warms up the air over the coastland. But the air over Lake Michigan stays cool because of the chilly waters. So as the warm overland air begins to expand and rise, it creates a draft that pulls the cooler air inland, generating a steady breeze all afternoon. Then as the sun begins to set, the overland air cools off again and stops rising, which no longer creates a draft—and experienced sailors know to make their way home because the wind will die [1].

Now, obviously, this isn’t always the case. Some afternoons all you get is a flat calm. A sailor could stand on the dock for hours hollering, “Blow, wind! Blow!” and nothing would happen. Or he could hook up an industrial fan, point it at the mainsail, and still not get very far. Other days he might watch the barometer fall and know that a dangerous storm is on its way. Too much wind from the east, and he could end up in Wisconsin. But while he can’t manufacture or create the right environment for the right amount of wind coming from the right direction at the right time, he himself can be present and ready to sail at the times and places such a wind has been known to show up.

Which brings me back to the original question: What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where God can be experienced? Well, like the wind, the Holy Spirit is going to do whatever the Holy Spirit pleases. I can create the most amazing mission trip, complete with powerful devotions, mind-blowing intercultural encounters, and profound group bonding, but unless the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst, not much lasting formation will happen. Or I could fail to plan adequately for the youth retreat at my house next weekend, and the Holy Spirit might move in mighty ways in spite of me.

Even so, over the centuries Christians have identified certain circumstances, events, and experiences in which God has been known to show up. Worship, for instance. The sacraments, in particular. Prayer, serving the poor, Bible study. And many other spiritual practices, such as confession, simplicity, tithing, Sabbath-keeping, and fasting. (Notice how sub-woofers are not on the list.) Does God show up every time? Perhaps not in ways we can grasp. Perhaps we feel like we’re left standing on the dock, staring at calm waters, wondering if we somehow misunderstood the forecast.

Or maybe, like Elijah on the mountaintop, we find the flat calm to be just where God meets us.

[1] For visual learners: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/kids/seabreeze.gif

Chris Folmsbee

The environment is where students engage the narrative and mission of God at deeper levels. Healthy and effective environments that develop story-formed students are keenly aware of three transformative elements: time, space, and matter.

When I talk about time, I’m not referring to the starting and ending times of your program. It isn’t just about minutes and hours but a pacing that cultivates a peace-filled, calm, and reflective atmosphere. What I mean is that whatever your program (environment) is, it should have a tempo that doesn’t work to impose learning but instead invites learning.

An environment that’s aware of time composes a sense of calm, stillness, and harmony that infuses all that it does. The environment isn’t in a hurry to make story-formed students. Rather, it remembers that transformational youth ministry is about a process, not a product. An environment that is aware of time also leaves room for students to observe and reflect on what’s happening, what they’re learning, and how they may practice it.

Space isn’t a buffer zone but a sacred, aesthetically intriguing, and astonishing physical or mental “room” in which to contemplate and consider the wonder, beauty, and creativity of God’s narrative and mission. Environments of space cultivate the opportunity for students to encounter God in meaningful ways. These spaces are sacred.

The space you cultivate doesn’t have to be about method as much as it is about mission. Maybe this involves a dimly lit room with a wonderful ambiance, lighted candles, and beautiful art and icons. Or maybe space involves freedom from those things that distract our minds and hold us captive. At times I’ve felt free in the strangest places: my car, my office, my living room, a movie theater, a coffee house, etc.

Matter isn’t the theme but the cooperating substance of an environment. Matter is the content that evokes the imagination, imparts for a recreated life, and inspires toward transformation. Matter is critical. There must be some material that transforms the lives of our students. There must be a basis for the program. It might be purely relational; it might be about leadership development; it might be about formation or any combination of the many issues we deal with in youth ministry. Whatever the reason for gathering, there must be content that helps our students imagine what a life with God could look like.

The matter involved in our environments must be matter that motivates and stirs within our students a passion for the narrative and mission of God. Typically, matter that accomplishes these purposes is experiential in nature and seeks to help students learn, not help teachers look or feel good. It is comprised of times of reflection, permission to ask questions, continuous dialogue, and situations in which to attempt to practice what’s being learned.

Creating healthy and imaginative environments of time, space, and matter is vital to your youth ministry. Without these, programming will be insufficient and will quickly become obsolete.

This idea of creating environments where God can be experienced and these elements of time, space, and matter are fleshed out in more detail in my book Story, Signs, and Sacred Rhythms (Zondervan, 2010).

Andy Root

This is a really interesting question. I want to start by answering in a controversial way. So here we go. Ready? We can’t. We can’t create such environments. God can’t be found by the effort of human beings; God can only be experienced through God’s own action, through God’s own choice to make Godself known.

To think that we can create or build some landing pads that will guarantee God’s arrival is idolatry; it’s to cage the freedom and otherness of God. To say it crassly, too often it feels like we use our programs as treats to lead God (and young people) to the ministries we’ve built, like I lead my dogs to the basement.

God moves where and when God chooses to move. There is nothing we can do about this. God shows up when God shows up. And sometimes, maybe often, God shows up in places we wouldn’t have expected (“The Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”). How often in our ministries has God arrived in times and places that you never could have planned? God is not dependent on us to act—sure, we’re invited into God’s action, asked to be faithful to God’s people as we yearn for God to move, but no silver bullet in ministry can guarantee it. There is no money-back guarantee that any environment we construct will bring the presence of God.

When we ignore this reality, we can easily fall into assuming that it’s our efforts or talents that bring God’s presence. Then we assume that we can concoct a youth group recipe that will promise the arrival of God. But so often this makes God not an agent who acts and moves in and through our ministries but an object we can’t quite control but can—with the right actions on our part—predict like the weather.

This position, that somehow we can create such environments, makes us quick-fix, new, catchy-idea addicts. We can be fooled into thinking it’s our job to bring God’s presence, and therefore, we have the great burden of always looking for the next big thing, next catchy idea that can do this for us. We want a kit that comes with directions for creating environments where God is experienced. This shifts all the focus onto our actions instead of God’s. But the God of Israel is a God who moves, who chooses to act in a personal way, to be called Father, to address and be addressed by God’s people. We can trust that God will act with and for us, but we can’t force this encounter; we can’t create artificial environments where this can happen.

And I think that’s much of our problem in youth ministry. When we get so caught up in creating this environment, when we work so hard at it through our own effort, it becomes clear to young people that it is artificial. So they either come to youth group and experience an artificial God in our artificial environment and then leave it behind to reenter their lives; or they simply avoid us, aware that our youth group environment is a fake soundstage pretending to be a place to experience God.

And so we fall into the trap of giving our attention (and money) over to those who think they have some secret recipe, instead of seeking dialogue partners and ideas that will help us not bring God’s action but have the eyes to see it.

To me, this is why being able to think theologically in youth ministry is more important than being able to think programmatically. The programmatic element is important, don’t get me wrong, but just because you have great programs that create great environments doesn’t mean that God will “show up.”

A theologically minded youth worker seeks the activity of God, seeking to create programs where God is moving, not the other way around. The first step is not to create something but to see something, to see God moving and seek to participate. It is then that we build our environment or our programs. When we see that the Lord is in this place and we did not know it, we build our memorial, we build a structure, a program that witnesses to the action of God. So to create an environment of experiencing God is to continue to invite young people to look, to strain their eyes to see where and how God is moving not in youth group environment but in the world, in their world.

In the Old Testament, in places like Bethel, when God appears, it is a shock. Environments are created not to bring God but after God has shown up. After experiencing God, then we build our memorials.

So maybe the point isn’t to create such environments to experience God but to invite young people to be interpreters, making the youth group the place of shared interpretation, the place where we articulate where and how we have experienced the action of God in our lives. When we create the environment, we ask young people to be passive consumers of what we’ve created. But when we invite them to be interpreters, to go into the world and seek God, then both God and young people are the active agents.

So to answer the question directly: How do we create environment where God can be experienced? By inviting young people to interpret where God is moving in the world, in the church, and in their lives, we experience God by together seeking for God. We the youth workers create this environment by not making the environment our sole concern but by making God’s action our focus.

How should we be rethinking short-term missions?

Danny Kwon

I will admit it. I am a short-term mission trip junkie. I love going on short-term misson trips, and I love going on them with the students in our youth group. Whether it’s fixing up homes in our own state of Pennsylvania, building a home hundreds of miles away, doing evangelism in Mexico, building a school in Kenya, or running a youth camp in Kazakhstan, I can honestly say that every short-term mission trips I have taken with our youth group students has been a blessing. We have made short-term mission trips the focus of our summers in our youth group.

In all this, there has been some great rethinking about short-term missions over the years by many leaders and churches that I have been happy to see. I am thankful that leaders are speaking out against short-term missions arrogance, where short-term mission trip participants go with a savior and superior mentality, as if they know everything and are the only ones who can save the world. Rather, more and more leaders are understanding and teaching how short-term missions participants need to be humble, culturally sensitive, open to learning; need to understand the importance of supporting the local, long-term missionaries and need to understand that often the greatest benefactors of the short-term mission trips are the participants.

Similarly, I am glad to see that many leaders are considering and practicing pre- and post-trip training and debriefing, to equip students before trips and enable long-term spiritual growth and fruits after the trips are completed. Like we say in our youth group, the mission trip begins when we get home. Thus, we want to make sure that missions becomes a lifestyle and not just an activity that has happened for a few days in the summer.

For the past few summers, some other thoughts have crossed my mind as I consider how our youth group and perhaps other groups could be rethinking short-term missions.

First, rethinking the cost of short-term missions. Because the economy has affected everyone, the cost of the mission trips has increased. Even the trips within our state cost money for travel, accommodations, and materials. For our group, rethinking this has meant that these past two summers, we teamed up with urban churches and created urban-suburban partnerships. In doing so, we created mission trip opportunities for our youth group students and adults that were a week long, but we met at church each morning and returned home each night. Sure, we lost some of the bonding of sleeping overnight at a location together. However, many students who could not afford to go on an overnight/out-of-state/out-of-country mission trip could now go and have a powerful short-term missions experience.

Second, rethinking the purpose of short-term mission trips. In 1996, members from our church built a church in a rural location in Vera Cruz, Mexico, after the son of one our families tragically died during a mission trip there. While it still remains a tragedy in our church history, God has used it for his good and glory. The family decided that the savings they planned to use for their son’s college education would be used to build a church in his memory. That church has become a center for refuge during the winter months in Mexico, when great flooding hits the area. Moreover, 11 other churches have been planted in the area. Our primary ministry over the years has been to encourage the local church there, as well as do Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the local children. However, in recent years, the local economy has also grown. The church has done its own VBS ministry in the few years we could not go back. And the local, rural area has given way to modernization. In all this, with the indigenous church and economy flourishing, I have begun to think during our recent trips, What is our purpose for coming here now?

Chap Clark and Kara Powell, in their book, Deep Justice in a Broken World, helped me consider this question even more deeply and how it relates to our short-term mission trips. I want to be clear that I am not saying that VBS is not an important ministry. However, what Chap and Kara are talking about is youth ministries that are “willing to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, until the systems that perpetuates brokenness are fixed.” They talk about the idea of not just doing service but really asking the why questions of injustice and then doing something about that. Moreover, they are asking ministries to consider more than just service that helps others but rather, having a goal of justice that removes obstacles so people can eventually help themselves.

For our groups, this has meant rethinking our short-term missions to go to areas where there is a “greater” need for VBS ministry, such as Haiti. Moreover, we have worked with local missionaries in Kenya and Tanzania to build schools so that long-term change and benefit can be provided for these areas. Even building homes with Habitat for Humanity has been a powerful ministry for our group in trying to help alleviate the perpetual cycle of brokenness for some people. Our urban-suburban partnerships have been developed so that continual, long-term relationships and partnerships would be nurtured rather than just a one-time summer service trip.

Finally, we have strategically been to and are planning more short-term trips to places where “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” and trips to “the ends of the earth,” where the gospel is rare. Ultimately, we are trying to rethink so that we are not making repeated trips to the same places and doing the same things but are considering short-term mission trips where we can contribute to working on helping to fix the systems that perpetuate brokenness.

Helpful Resources:
Bleed Out: Stories of Christlike Compassion

Brooklyn Lindsey

Writing this slant puts the pressure on because change is what we need as we continue to pack students up with money and medical release forms for weeklong trips to serve, but change requires movement and work and a lot of intentionality.

We jump in with willing hearts and a desire to make missions a lifestyle but quickly get pulled away by the loudest things in our ministry to douse water on fires, answer phone calls from people who have the solution to all of our fundraising needs, and attend meetings that may or may not have much to do with the method and praxis of our youth ministries.

Changing the way we do short-term missions can be difficult because we’ve grown accustomed to getting by with the basics; because we know that in serving, there is power, and someone’s life is going to get changed by it regardless.

However, it’s hard to ignore the findings that say we may be off on this assumption. The work that Fuller Youth Institute did in collaboration with The Global Learning Center and Bethel College (at summits that convened with experts on short-term missions) tells us that short-term service trips might not be producing the spiritual and relational growth spurt we might expect for the long term1.

The research2, as cited in Deep Justice and Short-Term Missions curriculum, sheds some light.

• The explosive growth in the number of short-term mission trips among both kids and adults has not been accompanied by similarly explosive growth in the number of career missionaries. • It’s not clear whether participation in service trips causes participants to give more money to alleviate poverty once life returns to “normal.” • Participating in service trips does not seem to reduce participants’ tendencies toward materialism.

My husband, a thinker and a problem solver, has said on many occasions, “Why not take the $10,000 that we raise to fly us all to Mexico and send it to the locals to build 10 houses instead of us going to build one?” We raise money to travel and do work that locals could be doing, and it would benefit a lot more in need.

This thought was solidified as I read the study3 done by Dr. Kurt Ver Beek from Calvin College (after Hurricane Mitch in 1998), also noted in Deep Justice, that tells us that those receiving new homes, while overwhelmed and appreciative, would rather the money be sent in order for more homes to be built.

At the same time, youth ministers know that short-term missions are a valuable tool that help us—by way of experiential learning and cross-cultural interaction (even if it’s at an assisted living center across the street)—make a deeper and more formative impression of God’s kingdom on the hearts of our students.

So what do we do? A good start would be to use well-researched and practical help that’s been provided through others who think about missions more than we do.

I’ve been using the Justice Mission curriculum with teenagers since I was 21 years old. I’ve immersed myself in the words of Jesus and am convinced that God requires us to walk humbly, seek justice, and love mercy.

So when we are encouraged to do a better job by way of walking with students long before a trip happens, doing a better job of reflection and interaction during a trip, and making efforts to extend our debrief into our “normal” lives for ongoing transformation, we have a difficult time actually doing it.

Isn’t our problem just that? We often listen, subscribe, and hope, but we leave the concepts sitting on a shelf, lost in the past.

The apostle Paul had this same struggle. He often wished to do other things but never could seem to do them. The things he wanted to do he left alone and often did the things he didn’t want to do. Wow. Isn’t that all of us?

Where do we start? Where do I start?

We have to start with the question of why. I learned in college while studying for ministry that we must always ask, Why do you do what you do when you do it? What’s the objective? What are we after?

Why are we involving our teenagers in service and justice work? Our answer to this question will help us plan in advance for a short-term trip. It will help us teach these lessons throughout the year as a foundation for the experience we hope will have the impact.

The second and equal starting point is investing this understanding of why in our parents. Most of the time, students who come from families who understand what it means to serve tend to understand it themselves. Let’s start conversations with our parents.

Finally, it would be good to dust off our social justice shelves. Find the resources that are rich in helping us. They are there, waiting for us to customize and use to incorporate justice learning and lifestyle before we even think about painting a house or reading books to kids.

May we have grace as we grow on this journey, and may we always help each other along the way, regardless of where each youth ministry finds itself. There’s always room to grow.

Further Reading:
The Justice Mission
Deep Justice: Journeys
Deep Justice In a Broken World
The Kingdom Experiment
The Kingdom Experiment: Youth Edition
The Revolution

1. Brad Griffin, Kara Powell. Deep Justice Journeys. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2009.

2. Robert J. Priest, Terry Dischinger, Steve Rasmussen, C.M. Brown, “Researching the Short-Term Mission Movement,” Missiology Volume 34, no. 4, October 2006, 482-483. Volume 34, number 4, October 2006, 431-450.

3. Kurt Ver Beek, “The Impact of Short-Term Missions: A Case Study of House Construction in Honduras After Hurricane Mitch,”

Claire Smith

There’s a fine line we walk when it comes to short-term missions. That line is between selfless serving and self-gratification; between overbearing and/or subtle patronizing ways of relating and relationships of mutuality as equal members of God’s creation; between seeking a lesson for youth to learn how privileged they are and finding an opportunity to live out God’s love; between a romanticized trip and being a part of what God is doing in the world.

I find it alarming when people think a good incentive to get others to participate in short-term missions is that you get more out of it than you give. When this is the primary lesson with which we return, it’s called self-gratification. Similarly, but in some ways differently, we can fail to see the people to whom we go as equally valued creatures of God who may need our support and empathy rather than our pity. Oddly enough, those less fortunate materially can make us feel superior and better about ourselves, often at the subconscious level. Thus, we return with the story that begins, “Imagine, they did not even have…”

It is no wonder parents and youth workers use short-term missions as a way to teach students how privileged they are so they can better appreciate what they have. There is also the romantic glow that surrounds short-term mission and prevents us from seeing ourselves as laborers together with Christ—God’s servants. In these cases, mission is about us and not about God and God’s people. In other words, we have de-centered God.

There is a way, however, in which we can go on short-term missions (call it a different name, maybe) to witness to God’s love and join in what God is already doing. We then share, learn, value, dwell with God and God’s people, seeing ourselves as God’s servants.

Mission begins with God. It is about God and God’s people. Mission is characteristic of who we are as Christians rather than periodic activities for self-centered reasons. Here is my definition of mission: Mission is the witness of God’s people to God’s love as seen in Jesus Christ as they respond to God calling and sending them out in the power of the Holy Spirit to participate in God’s mission.

This means that who we are, what we say, and what we do individually and collectively in our congregations and youth groups should always reflect the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of God through loving God and others, reconciliation, right relations with God and people, forgiveness, and newness. Furthermore, we witness in and through the enablement that comes from the Holy Spirit and not in our own strength. Jesus, by his own confession, did and said nothing on his own (John 5:30). Can you see why God has to be at the center of mission?

Rethinking short-term missions, therefore, begins with questioning and challenging our understanding of mission to see if it lines up with Jesus’ statement: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). It means studying the life of Jesus Christ so that we understand our pattern. If we engage in short-term mission, it should be a natural part of who we are as a congregation, as a youth group. We’ve already been witnessing at home. We are now extending our call to witness to God’s love further afield. If we are not witnessing at home, why are we bothering to go somewhere else?

Why do you want to do short-term missions? Is that an appropriate name?

Reference: Smith, Claire. “Mission: Avoiding Fragmentation, Living in Love.” Loving God, Loving Neighbor: Ministry With Searching Youth. Sondra Matthaei, ed. Xlibris, 2008, 127-144.

What is the difference between empowering people and encouraging people?

Danny Kwon

The question of empowering people versus encouraging people cuts to the heart of my ministry philosophy and how I wish our ministry would function as far as it concerns our leaders, volunteers, and student leaders. People always say I am a great encourager. However, I have found that true encouragement can be found in empowering others. My studies in organizational leadership from the corporate world have helped me refine how I practice empowerment in the church.

In quoting W.A. Randolph, Fred Luthans, a scholar in organizational behavior, states the definition of empowerment as “recognizing and releasing into the organization the power that people have in their wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation.” Another scholar defined it as “releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized.” These definitions of empowerment from the corporate world help one begin to understand what empowerment is all about and why and how we need to empower people in the church. For me, this ultimately means that I am nurturing ways in which others can lead within our ministry and use their God-given gifts for the church.

There are other vital elements of empowerment from the corporate world that can be applied to the church and relate to nurturing others to lead. For example, trust is a key issue in relation to empowerment. Those who write about empowerment in the corporate world note that trust is a two-way street where managers and employees have to believe in each other. They also discuss trust in reference to releasing the power within an individual. In doing so, they state how management must ensure individuals that they will be trusted within the empowerment process.

Finally, trust also comes from the sharing of vital information that equips employees to be informed to make important organizational decisions and lead themselves. Within a youth or any ministry setting, it is the difference between a ministry being just (youth) pastor centered and having other leaders, such as volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders who are empowered in trust to lead and execute the ministry as shepherds also, rather than being spectators.

When trust is practiced with those we empower, we are also breeding loyalty to organization. As one business executive put it, empowerment is an act of trust that functions positively to breed loyalty in an organization. Perhaps then, engagement is a more precise definition of the loyalty that results from empowerment. Nancy Lockwood, another scholar, notes in relation to this that “employees who are highly involved in their work processes, such as conceiving, designing, and implementing workplace and process changes, are more engaged.”

Many ministries have issues with retaining effective volunteers. Perhaps empowerment can be one way to breed a loyalty of effective volunteers. It has surely helped in our ministry. We have volunteers who serve over the long haul because they feel a real sense of loyalty because they are empowered leaders.

Finally, organizational design is also a key element of empowerment. If an organization is to nurture empowerment, then it must provide the framework for it to flourish. Ministries that are more vertical or top-down in nature do not promote empowerment. However, horizontal organizations and leadership structures speak to ways that an organization can promote empowerment. Hence, as far as ministry in a local church, this means that ministries must be led by more than just the head youth pastor or lead pastor. Rather, leadership must be spread among different avenues and people.

Similarly, ministries can be designed to foster empowerment in their organizational design so that volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders will be vital parts of the leadership of the ministries. Ultimately, this may be challenging to some leaders who have been engrained in a top-down leadership structure. However, if this is not done, the empowerment of others will never be nurtured, and the gifts and talents of many will not be utilized.

Helpful Resources:
Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry

Lilly Lewin

I had coffee with a good friend this week who is an assistant pastor at a church. Recently their staff team went on a “retreat” together. As soon as they got in the van, the senior pastor began to cast the vision for the fall and upcoming year. Sadly, the tasks and goals lists just kept coming. There was little praise or encouragement for the year just finished, and there was no dialogue about problems and hurdles for the upcoming year.

My friend thought they’d get a chance to reconnect personally, get encouraged, and have some fun. He was expecting a year-in-review, some honest dialogue about what they’d been doing, and perhaps a little empowerment to get them going on the next things. But the entire weekend was task oriented, not relationship based.

The sad thing about most ministries is that we are too often asked to do our jobs and just “git ’er done”…with very little encouragement, much less the money or people power to do it well. What we really could use is a large glass of encouragement and gallon of empowerment; the freedom to do our jobs and do them well without being micromanaged. (And it would also be nice to have some time to recover in order to keep going!)

How does one empower someone else? Easy, really—help her see that she has power to begin with or give him true power without using it to control him. Know the gifts people have and allow them to use those gifts in ways that they will succeed.

Too often we encourage people—students, friends, our own kids—but we don’t help them attain what we’ve encouraged them to do or be. We don’t help them get the tools they need to do the tasks at hand. We cheerlead, but we don’t set them free to engage on their own terms. We encourage without empowering.

So, what does it mean to empower? Giving power and authority, enabling someone to do something in a positive way.

In order to empower someone, we often have to give up or give away our own power or status. We have to decrease so others can increase. It means letting someone else lead, teach, create.

And to encourage? Giving someone the courage and confidence, the hope to go forward. Sometimes it’s a real pat on the back; sometimes it’s a verbal blessing; sometimes it’s listening and actually hearing someone’s story.

What do I really want? Both! Don’t you? Please encourage me, and then empower me to do it well! Give me the tools I need to get the job done. Enable me to have the time, space, and tools to succeed. Give me honest feedback. And provide me with the resources I need to do well. Set me free to try and fail. And then encourage me to get up and try again.

Why doesn’t this happen more often on church staff? The reasons are simple and sad.

• When we get power, we never want to give it away.
• Others are a threat to our power and want to take it for themselves.
• The design of most churches is to be an expression of one person’s vision, held accountable by a group that doesn’t understand the real inner workings and problems of a church staff.
• What we really want is to have enough people and therefore enough money. If what I do doesn’t obviously lead to more dollars, what I do doesn’t matter.

While this is reality in many places, we all know it’s not kingdom living. Maybe you and I can’t change the system overnight, but this can and must change. What can we do?

• Change the definitions and lose the fear of power and giving it away. • Learn and practice taking the time to listen to each other and give good feedback to those we work with.
• Model the behavior we seek. Encourage others and give away power.
• Help others to see their gifts and allow them to use them!
• Help our students, our communities, and ourselves see our mission and use our gifts outside the church building—being the church in the real world.
• Build a real support system outside the church staff where we can get authentic feedback, courage, and hope.

Let’s choose to encourage and empower others as we long to be encouraged and empowered ourselves.

Andy Root

Empowering and encouraging seem indelibly connected to me. I think the core to encouragement is really seeing another, hearing another, and acting with and for another. I think we all feel encouraged when this happens.

And I think this kind of encouragement has rich theological significance. Being seen, heard, and acted with is what makes us human because we confess that God sees us, hears us, and acts with and for us. God does this within Godself first. As Trinity, God sees self, hears self, and acts with and for self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Encouragement is central to love; and at the core of Godself is the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. But the love of encouragement always sends, and sending is empowering.

You’re a bad parent, even if you love your kids, if you don’t send them out into the world. We prosecute people who say they love their kids so much they locked them in the basement and never let them out into the world, never empowered them to be selves. Love always empowers to be sent into the world.

But this sending (to give it circular flavor) has to be connected to encouragement. You’re also a bad parent if you say, “I don’t give a darn what you do, just go out and have fun,” giving no support or encouragement in being sent.

So God’s love, as Trinity, sees, hears, and acts then sends. When God sees, hears, and acts God sends—first Godself and then, through Godself, us. Swept up into the love of God, encouraged, we are empowered to participate in God’s movement in the world.

And we see this most clearly in the second person of the Trinity being sent into the world as fully divine and fully human. Jesus is empowered by the loving encouragement of the Father to go into the world. He is sent to be human so humanity might know that God always see, hears, and acts and, in knowing, might participate in God’s own love, also being sent (empowered) to love and encourage those in the world, to witness to God’s action.

This means that God, through and in Jesus, encourages us to be human. God encourages us to face our questions, to be honest about our limits, to seek God within our human journey as we are sent and empowered by the Spirit to encourage others. So then in ministry, we empower people by encouraging them to be human, to live honesty in search of God—not in perfection but in their questions and doubts. The God of the cross empowers us by comforting and encouraging us that God is with and for us in our deepest sufferings and longings. We encourage and empower people in our ministry when we invite them to be human and, in their humanity, to search for a God who will send them into the world to love it, through the empowerment of the Spirit.

This is the problem with disconnecting encouragement and empowerment. To tease them apart can lead to spiritual abuse. Without encouragement, you don’t really care about the humanity of your adult leader, just that he or she is empowered to do the tasks you have for them—if you’re honest, to make you look more successful. So you can try and try to empower them, but if they never feel encouraged, never feel seen, heard, and acted with, then they can never really do ministry. Because, in the end, you’re inviting leaders to be sent into the lives of young people, to empower young people by encouraging them, by being with and for them as God—as Trinity—is with and for us.

But you also can’t encourage adult leaders without sending them, without empowering them. How often do we tell adult leaders that they’re super important to what we do and then never give them any leadership, never allow them to take ownership? To have really encouraged them is to give them the ministry, to trust that their empowerment to be human with and for young people, to go and encourage young people, will be the fullness of the ministry of the Trinity.

Leadership. Teams

What are some critical things to remember when leading teams?

Steve Argue

Jim Hampton

Dave Rahn

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Culture. Consumeristic Church

Respond to this statement: The church has become consumeristic.

Steve Argue

Lilly Lewin

Brooklyn Lindsey

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Theology.God Environments

What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where God can be experienced?

Sarah Arthur

Chris Folmsbee

Andy Root

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Justice.Short-Term Missions

How should we be rethinking short-term missions?

Danny Kwon

Brooklyn Lindsey

Claire Smith

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Leadership.Empowerment vs. Encouragement

What is the difference between empowering people and encouraging people?

Danny Kwon

Lilly Lewin

Andy Root

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