Throughout the gospels, Jesus modeled an intentionally prayerful life. As a leader, I try to follow this path because I have found out that when I stray from this, not only do I begin to lose my footing, I begin to lose focus of who God is. Prayer is times spent with God, worshiping, praising, confessing, and petitioning.

As I was taught by my fathers and mothers in the faith who blazed a trail before me, I seek to pray regularly for myself, my family, my mentors, my fellow leaders and members of the ministry, families in our community, fellow disciples, the lost, and those in influential positions. My core desire is to become more like Jesus and continue to build on the movement he initiated thousands of years ago.

I often pray that God will send more supportive people into the lives of those in our ministry. I pray that God will continue to create a loving community of disciples who embrace newcomers and help guide me on how to better care for those in our ministry. I seek to pray for this ministry with others. I have a group of people I rely on for support and insight, a prayer team made up of those outside of the ministry context who resonate with what we are trying to accomplish.

My prayer life overflows into the ministry, since during all of our meetings there are opportunities to share how God has been directing each person. I discuss the importance of prayer often, touching on issues ranging from the challenges of finding time to being open to what God is saying. The meetings also provide an opportunity for me to pray for individuals, as well as be prayed for. I write down every prayer request that is stated during each meeting, which I seek to go over each night as I close out the day.

On another level, fasting is also a large part of how I pray for the ministry. More specifically, the first weekend of each January and July are set apart for prayer and fasting for direction for the ministry. This has proven to be extremely fruitful and a source of encouragement, especially when times get tough.

I hope this will encourage you wherever you are. Early in my life as a disciple, I sensed that the discipline to be intentional about prayer was one thing, but the ability to come to God, open to whatever took place during that time, was quite another. On my journey, I constantly have to challenge myself to truly listen to God and have faith that he will be watching over those he brings into my path.

My prayer is that my fellow youth leaders and I would be leaders and people who are deeply rooted in Christ. The simple truth is that if we expect to effectively and faithfully lead and guide our students, we need to be people who continually secure our roots in Christ. We secure this foundation through a continual coming before Christ and asking that our hearts, minds, and lives be guided and directed by the Spirit. My guess is that every single student leader or pastor out there (who is honest) can share about times they have tried to minister to students when they themselves have neglected their own relationship with Christ and how frustrating and difficult that can be.

As youth leaders, we pray for our students’ families. I am a firm believer that parents are the number one influencers and shapers of students’ faith. Unfortunately, as I reflect on my local church, most of our students come from homes that are familiar with brokenness (divorce, abuse, neglect, etc.). Many of our students have also been raised in homes that lack any sort of Christian education or Christlike examples. Therefore, I encourage my youth staff to pray regularly for their students and their families.

We strive to pray for our students by name. Just this past week, our student ministry had the opportunity to get away from Kansas City and head out to the thriving metropolis of Pomona, Kansas (population 940), to go on a retreat. While I thoroughly enjoyed the speaker, the constantly lit fireplace, and the abnormally warm winter weather, the highlight of the retreat for me was a prayer time we had together Saturday night. After our small group time was wrapping up, I asked the students if they would allow me to pray for them by name. Even though we make it a discipline to pray for the students corporately, there is something powerful and special about praying for students by name, especially when they hear and participate in the prayer.

When we pray for our students by name, we are able to recall and recount their individual and unique stories and pray accordingly. As I began praying for Malachi, here is a student who hasn’t even turned thirteen yet. He has two solid parents who are deeply committed to raising him in the faith. My prayer for Malachi is that, as he navigates the seventh grade and begins his first year of ice hockey, he would seek to put Christ at the forefront of his life and strive to love others as Christ calls him to do. When he is faced with the challenge to join in the locker room talk, I pray that God would help him to speak words of love.

Sitting next to Malachi was Daniel. Daniel is almost eighteen and has had no more than a half dozen conversations with his father in his lifetime. Daniel’s life has been marked by instability and constant abandonment. He somehow ended up coming to the youth group when his sister attended a VBS at our church last summer. When I pray for Daniel, I pray that he would seek to know, love, and serve Christ. I also pray that Daniel knows he has a heavenly Father who loves him and is proud to call him son. Lastly, I pray that God would remind him that he is a heavenly Father who promises never to leave or forsake his children.

As youth leaders and pastors, it is important that we adopt the discipline and practice of prayer for ourselves, our youth staff, and our students. May we all strive to be leaders and ministers who make prayer the foundation of our ministries.

Jason is an associate pastor in Independence, Missouri, where he primarily works with youth and young adults. He thoroughly enjoys speaking and teaching God's Word and has done so at a handful of camps and retreats over the years. Jason always keeps his disc golf discs in the trunk of his car just in case the opportunity to play should suddenly arise. He occasionally jots down some of his thoughts at www.JayMcPherson.blogspot.com. Jason is married to Rachel, and they are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Inside this discipline, there are times for me to pray prayers of praise, proclamation, and petition. It is here that I pray for the people of the ministry I serve. These prayers, however, are never on behalf of the ministry itself (organization, programs, structure, budgets, etc.); they are only on behalf of the people in the scope of the ministry.

I suppose someone could say this question implies people rather than programs. However, too often I have heard prayers spoken that have more to do with the success of the person praying than with hope for and healing of people within the ministry.

Just last week I heard this prayer from a youth pastor: “…and God, help this ministry to grow in numbers so that the world may see our love for them.” What? The numerical growth of your ministry is directly related to how the world sees your love for them? Really? I think just maybe the “world” may know how much we love them by our faithfulness to serving them.

Too many people concern themselves with prayers that are, in the end, for them. So when a question like, How do you pray for your ministry? arises, it makes me want to strongly differentiate between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the people around us.

Most often, I find myself moved the most by praying prayers of confession as it relates to the people I serve. Here is an example of one of those prayers:

Heavenly Father, look upon our community of faith, which is the church of your Son, Jesus. Help us to proclaim his love by loving all our fellow creatures without exception. Under the kingdom reign of God, keep us faithful to Jesus’s mission. Forgive us for not always choosing to preach the gospel to the poor, blind, oppressed and brokenhearted. Amen.

Telling God the truth about my unfaithfulness in taking gospel action awakens one of the greatest gifts of Christian spirituality: forgiveness. It is within this forgiveness that I experience God’s mercy. It is God’s mercy that inspires me want to be more generous with others.

Do I pray for my ministry? No. Do I pray for those whom the ministry in which I serve touches? Yes. Does the question How do you pray for your ministry? really imply the people within? Perhaps. But perhaps we still could progress in our prayer practices with a strong distinction made between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the sake of others.

I wait a minute for all that to sink in, and then I continue, “What I mean by ‘I don’t care’ is that none of those things are gonna get you kicked out of this youth group, nor will they stop me or God from loving you, but… Not having a good, healthy, and righteous perspective on dating, sex, and sexuality could cause you to do that to yourself. My goal isn’t to lower the value of sex or sexuality so that you won’t do it. My goal is to raise the value you have for it and for yourself as a divinely created being so that maybe you won’t waste or misuse it like so many people do every day.”

From there we launch into a seven-week interactive series with topics including Levels of Intimacy, Progression of Interaction, Toxic Tendencies, Disposable Relationships, Love vs. Infatuation, and so on. At this psychological & spiritual level of discussion and with the right pacing, the truth of the matter is that there is no difference between how you teach middle schoolers and high schoolers. It’s when we move into group dialogue that I separate them by age because it allows middle schoolers to discuss where they are without pretending to know things they don’t, and it allows high schoolers the opportunity to discuss things without pretending notto know things they actually do. Basing our series on being real means we address what’s real for both groups, but we don’t force either group to function outside of what’s real for their seasons of life.

Throughout the years, I’ve led many youth group discussions on sex and dating. In the beginning, I took the typical just-don’t-do-it approach to promoting abstinence. It wasn’t until I was a touring facilitator with an organization called SHARE that I realized there was a different way to discuss these subjects with kids that really puts it in proper perspective.

See, the church has a way of making sex and sexuality a huge, monumental deal—almost more than the world does. We base kids’ salvation on it. They can be liars, cheaters, truants, unsaved, and though we say that stuff is bad, it’s really okay as long as they aren’t having sex. The truth of the matter is, sexuality is just a part of our human existence. When we discuss sex and sexuality in light of who we are as whole people, then kids can grapple with it from a healthy, holy, and manageable perspective. When we make it this enormous, all-encompassing thing, kids start to think that with one false move, all is lost and they’re going down like the Titanic with no hope of rescue.

Here’s an example of teaching it in perspective. One week of our series was titled The Want to be Wanted, in which we discussed from a biblical and psychological perspective every human’s innate desire to belong to someone. And of course, somewhere in that conversation comes the discussion about sex being the ultimate expression of belonging. In light of how normal being wanted is, it makes sense that we chase after it, but then it also makes sense how important it is not to romanticize it loosely.

Unfortunately, the space I have here won’t allow me to go further into this, but I hope you can see how this approach helps kids learn how wrongly their thoughts have been socialized by media and shifting cultural norms. But more importantly, it helps them also see all that is already right, normal, and common to every human walking the face of the earth. The sooner you approach these general ideas, the better (within reason) because then kids are empowered to manage their own development as opposed to you or their parents chasing them around, trying to prevent unfortunate consequences of youthful curiosity or naïveté.

I’ve had so many young people say to me, “I wish I knew that about myself in the seventh grade. It would’ve given me the power and security to accept some things and the confidence to reject other things as I got older.”

No kid has ever come to me and said, “I wish more church people just told me not to have sex.”

One of my favorite activities to engage adults in, to inform their sharing messages of dating and sexuality, is to get them to think back to their own early dating years. They are asked to think of an early, positive experience of touch in a dating experience—holding hands, a kiss, a slow dance, etc. We carefully dissect the experiences into their own mental photographic images of those moments, then how they would describe the facts of those moments, followed by their own emotions at the time.

That activity is immediately followed by asking parents and adults to write their own newspaper headlines for an article about dating and sexuality. Often, responses include Don’t Do It!, True Love Waits, and Protect Yourself or Protect Your Heart.

It is always fascinating to watch the room engage in a significant mood change. The smiles, laughter, and joy of reminiscing about long-ago loves quickly transforms into anxiety and fear about their young people having similar experiences.

Our challenge as the church, as adults and parents, is to confront young people’s expectations that we will default to NO regarding this topic. We need to surprise them by affirming that yes, we actually think love, dating, and sex are all pretty great…within moderation intended to honor the value and worth of each person involved.

Middle school years are challenging for parents. The young people in their lives are transforming before their very eyes from the sweet, innocent things they happily used to be. In the middle school years, we should be resourcing parents regarding:

How to have “the talk.” Most likely, parents have already checked this one off on their parenting task lists. We need to encourage them to pursue ongoing conversations about sexuality, especially related to basic theological concepts, like what it means to be “created in the image and likeness of God.” Recognize that your efforts in assisting parents in their formational role will also constitute formation for many of the adults as well.

How to discuss and monitor relationships/friendships. Offer parents tips and cues to engage their young people in conversations.

How to debrief sexual content from movies, television, and music. Again, assist parents in conducting conversations related to these areas rather than lectures.

In the high school years, young people are moving away from a theoretical understanding of dating and sexuality and getting closer to having more practical needs. Therefore, we should be resourcing parents in:

Being able to assist young people in determining appropriate boundaries for their young people. If parents find themselves being able even just to talk with one another, they can usually assist one another in determining a community standard about curfews and expectations regarding appropriate ages to group date, car date, etc. Youth ministers can be helpful in placing their conversations in the context of a covenant agreement that includes both discussion and prayer.

Being able to be an effective listener. Ask their adolescents to work toward determining what constitutes an appropriate relationship.

Modeling appropriate and respectful behaviors. Young people learn from the attitudes of their fathers, mothers, and other key adults regarding what is right and acceptable in relationships with the opposite sex. We need to watch ourselves because our young people are certainly watching us and the values we communicate with our actions and words.

For me as a senior in high school, my parents gave me a very special gift and a lesson. They took me and my steady girlfriend at the time on a double date. In a delightful and charming evening, I learned significant lessons in respect and chivalry as well as maintaining good conversation with the opposite sex. Instead of the images of adult relationships from television and movies influencing me in my formative years, I was blessed to have the memory of a special night to remind me of how dating adults can and should relate to one another.

It’s not that I’ve avoided the subject with high schoolers. I just don’t have many teaching opportunities with high schoolers (aside from speaking to them at large events, where sex and dating are never the topic). That’s because I have been hanging out in middle school ministry for thirty years.

But that disparity has given me plenty of opportunity to consider this particular Slant 33 question, especially since most advice and resources on sexuality in the youth ministry world are targeted to high schoolers. So I’ve spent a youth ministry lifetime modifying and filtering, adjusting and considering my audience.

Let’s start with what’s the same:

Sex (and dating) is a subject that cannot and should not be avoided. No matter how comfortable you are or aren’t, it’s pure irresponsibility as a youth worker to avoid this subject.

Wise and self-monitoring honesty is the best approach. Honesty is critical on this subject with so much misinformation, a subject that few adults are willing to be honest about with teenagers. But our honesty has to be tempered with wisdom (of what not to say) and self-monitoring.

Thanks to the dual, interconnected forces of the internet and a sex-obsessed culture, there’s not as much difference in how we should address this subject with middle schoolers as there was, say, twenty years ago. The primary differences could be summarized in two generalities:

Middle schoolers have less experience and less knowledge when it comes to sex. Even dating, to most middle schoolers, is a very different practice—for those who would say they have dated—than it is for their older brothers and sisters. As is true of so many factors in the teenage years, experience and understanding of sex and sexuality are a sliding scale (same with abstract thinking, worldview, independence, and a host of other issues). But, in general, most middle schoolers need conversations about what sex will be more than they need conversations about what it already is.

Middle schoolers are all over the board in their own sexual development. Sure, you could accurately say this about high schoolers too. But the plain fact is that 99% of high schoolers are post pubescent. When the subject of wet dreams comes up in my sixth-grade guys’ group, the majority of guys only have an idea (usually wrong, like “it’s when you pee in your sleep!”), and not actual experience. Of course, that personal experience, even for those eighth graders who have no interpersonal sexual experience, shifts dramatically as their sexuality awakens.

When I, as a middle school youth worker, combine the truths of the first two similarities with the second two differences, I’m left with this: When talking about sex with young teens, I am compelled by my calling to dive into—not avoid—honest conversations and teaching times but to do so with extreme sensitivity to age-appropriate developmental and experiential realities.

The best advice I ever received on the topic of teaching about sex and dating with teenagers came from Jim Hancock, co-author (with Kara Powell) of the exceptional youth ministry resource Good Sex 2.0. Jim says that, in his observation, youth workers often err in their approach to teaching about sex to teenagers in one of two extremes. Either they talk about sex as if it’s everything, or they talk about sex as if it’s nothing.

Sex is a big deal! It’s definitely not nothing. But it’s not everything. I’m committed—as awkward and uncomfortable as it might be at times—to teaching (and having conversations) in that tension.

While there are many spontaneous moments in youth ministry, much of the design of our program is based on a detailed outline of what we’ve deemed important for each of our kids to get before they graduate out of the youth group. I learned a long time ago that knowing why you do something is as important as, if not more important than, what it is you actually do. Begin with the mission and let it inform the program. Programming not rooted in mission is like chaperoning recess. There might be benefits to it, but it’s really just a break from the regular class, and heaven forbid we let the place our kids learn how to navigate life be anywhere other than one that teaches kingdom principles.

Of course, to carry out any mission there need to be regular, all-community events like weekly Bible studies, camps, mission trips, informal and formal outings and conferences, but I’ve learned that it is the smaller, less magnified activities that allow the real-life application to happen. Things like, we require the youth to keep the youth room clean, give offerings to help fund special projects, cook their own contributions to the missions dinners, find scriptures in the Bible rather than depending on the screen projections, practice conflict resolution, and discuss current events in light of scripture. Why? 1. Because they can. 2. Because we have to provide them with ample opportunities to do and become what they are being taught.

Throughout the years, I’ve had run-ins with young adults who were part of the ministry, and they enthusiastically recall episodes and occasions when we did this or that. Some of the remembrances are around Bible study and high spiritual moments, but just as many are not. Inevitably, these funny and reflective moments turn the corner, and former students standing before me start to tell how it was in one of those moments that they truly discovered something that impacted and shaped their faith foundation. Something organic and in the moment that made all the difference despite all the programs set in place to accomplish that same resolve. Little did they know that things like “develop faith in community” and “create opportunities for life application” are written in the program’s mission.

As a young woman in ministry, I asked veteran youth pastors if I could see their ministry outlines. For whatever reason, many treated it like it was some highly guarded secret. Maybe it is, but I don’t mind sharing. Here’s the Roadside short outline.
Purpose/Mission: To nurture and release righteous, respectable, and responsible citizens of the kingdom into the world.
Projects & Programs: Weekly group, campus outreach, special events, service and mission works, cross-generational mentoring.
Points of Focus: Salvation, discipleship, worship, service, and community.
Plan: Consistent and transformingly good programs, activities, relationships, and teaching.
If you have more questions, I’d love to discuss it with you.

3) Our programming is about people. Programs are only as effective as they are devoted to the people they involve. Programs are merely portals into the hearts of students. Sunday school, small group, retreats, special events, etc., are about nothing more than connecting with people and guiding them into spiritual formation for the sake of the world.

So, to our question, how do mission statements and programs inform each other? First, your mission is the purpose for your programming and the kind of programing you shepherd. Therefore, the mission informs why you would program anything in the first place.

Second, your mission is what keeps your programs from drifting off into irrelevance and insignificance. It keeps you on track and informs your programs with measurable tools.

Third, your mission provides your team, whether volunteer or paid, with a reason to engage through the hard and challenging times of working with teens. When volunteers ask, “Why am I doing this” or, “Am I even making a difference?” or, “Why do I do this to myself?” they’ll have a reason that brings them back to sanity and courage.

Fourth, mission statements allow you to recruit fellow ministers to a purpose or vision rather than a glaring hole or gap in your ministry. Many youth workers recruit by making people feel guilty for not helping to meet the needs of the church. This does not last. Mission informs vision, and vision informs programming.

Finally, mission statements—to be frank—keep your boss off your back. Seriously, committing to a shared mission with your supervisor provides an opportunity for you and your team of ministers to keep your conversations on the things that really matter—people. Also, mission informs the budget for your programs, which can also be a reason for conflict at times, as I am sure you are already well aware of.

Mission statements are critical but only if they emerge out of God’s mission. God’s mission, to say it one way, is to make the world whole again. God invites us into God’s mission as agents of God’s love and restoration. As youth workers, one way we do this is through meaningful and relevant programs that are concerned with people. Programs embedded with God’s mission give us a reason to gather and guide students into spiritual formation for the sake of the world.

That church was similar to many out there: We had a mission statement and a vision statement, and while they both looked great on paper, that was about it. If you asked any of our church members, they probably wouldn't have been able to tell you much about the content of either statements, and our ministries were not necessarily connected to them.

Then we went through another process to come up with a core values statement. Not surprisingly, some folks were a bit skeptical of all the time and effort going into the process because they assumed we would end up with another well-crafted statement that didn't have any impact on our ministries. However, we kept trusting the process, and after a few months, came up with our core values statement: Centered in Jesus Christ, we grow in faith, celebrate community, and serve others with love. Pretty simple. Pretty straightforward. And to be honest, it wasn't a lot different from one of the other statements we already had. But this time, almost all the congregation had been involved, and there was a great sense of ownership.

Then we decided to make it count, to really live into the values. We publicized it extensively. We repeated it over and over and over again. We incorporated it into our sermons. We also met with everyone who led the various groups and ministries of our church and decided that, from this point forward, any new events, any big projects that seemed like great ideas, would have to be filtered through the core values statement. If the idea didn't help us grow in faith, celebrate community, or serve others with love, it didn't make the cut.

And the difference with this approach was that every ministry began to own these core values. The youth ministry didn't need to come up with its own mission statement; we now had one because we were part of the greater church. This meant that we always found ways to incorporate the core values statement into our program and into the activities we did. When we met together prior to going on a mission trip, we were able to not only talk about how important it is to serve others but to connect the trip to all the specific elements of our statement.

This also helped communicate that what we were doing on mission trips wasn't just part of our youth ministry but was really a part of the ministry of the greater church. This aspect was really important to me because, after the youth graduate from our program, they know they can be a part of a faith community because they have that connection. Part of the problem of so many youth ministries is that they tend to be disconnected from the larger church, and the youth don't exactly know where to go after graduating from high school.

There are many ways that your programming can be directly connected to your mission statement, and it's important that the connection is made. It also makes you think a lot harder about the different events and activities that might get added to your program and helps give you a framework for deciding what's important, what's worth investing in, and what will contribute most to the spiritual formation of your youth.

From the very beginning, the Church of the Nazarene has invested in me. As a child, a teenager, and even now as a young minister, by giving me a voice and allowing me to pour back into the group that kindled a flame for Christ in the first place. How do I honor the people who have selflessly offered me hope and inspired me to take risks for the kingdom? How do I make this a priority when I’m involved in and support other major groups?

Supporting a denomination means…

Knowing who you are. We are Christ followers. We owe our lives to Jesus. God has also used the places where we worship as catalysts for life change. For this, we owe our utmost respect, regardless of the ups and downs our churches face.

Telling the story. Our denominational stories are important. They are rich with people who have sacrificed much to share the good news of Jesus with others. I have a few favorites when it comes to telling our denomination’s story. Find yours and tell it often.

Get involved. Find ways to take your youth to denominational meetings or events. If they are awful and lack leadership, look in the mirror. Your calling awaits. With humility, consider others better than yourself and begin to ask how you can give back. Chances are you’ll receive much more than you expect, and your students will find a heritage deeper than their Facebook accounts.

Pray. Look at the needs of your denomination. Consider the direction and the way the Spirit is moving and pray for God’s will to be done. I pray for our students who attended a denominational event of ours last summer. I pray for thousands of them every day and ask God to use their lives as they make life decisions, go to college, marry, get jobs, and change the world. They are a part of our future as they live out their lives in faith now. We should be praying. We should be looking for ways to intercede on behalf of those closest to us in addition to those we pray for in other areas.

Be gracious. I support our denomination by not judging or belittling others who believe different things. I think it honors our tradition to love in this way. Don’t make a fool of yourself, be a jerk, or live exclusively. Share your heart, your life, and the message of Christ. You’ll serve your people, and you’ll set an example for all believers to follow.

Know the lingo. You’re hardly a Christian if you don’t have a plethora of acronyms in your vocabulary. I’m kidding! But it’s important to be able to speak your denomination’s language at the appropriate times and be able to translate it for others. Assuming that everyone you meet knows what it means to be involved in NYI, NMI, and NCM after you’ve graduated from MVNU—is just ridiculous. Know your stuff, but share it in ways people can understand. If you’re in a strong denominational circle, say what you need to say together using whatever acronyms and verbage suit your fancy. If it’s a part of your tribal language, go with it when it doesn’t exclude those around you.

Count it a blessing. Not everyone has the support of large, connected groups of people as they serve the Lord. Thank God for it because it’s a great source of strength.

I love our denomination. Yeah, there may be things I don’t like about it, but there are things I don’t like about my own house—which I chose, furnished, and currently live in (and I still want to live there and call it home). I hope I serve and support my denomination well over the years and set an example for others to follow.

I have friends who pick Catholic teams in the NCAA basketball brackets, even if Notre Dame is facing Duke, Boston College is up against Kentucky, or Xavier against Ohio State. (That’s all right; I have other friends who will pick Michigan over Gonzaga because a Wolverine should beat a Bulldog, or they prefer the team colors… Yes, I have weird friends.)

But man, as Catholics, we seem to sweat Catholic identity about everything. Sometimes I wonder if Lutherans are sweating Lutheran identity as much, beyond my own perceived conclusion that it involves, “Hey, we are not Catholic!” A Google search indicates that there are about seven times the hits for “Catholic identity” over “Lutheran identity” as well as “Baptist identity.” All this in a time when the church should be more engaged in confronting moralistic therapeutic deism, that mutant watered-down faith that sloppily meshes our doctrine together in a statement more about us as people and not about our unique understandings of our relationship with the Lord and the church.

There are some things I do to continue to imbue my own ministry with Catholic identity (beyond cheering, “Go, Irish!”), and I suggest they may be applicable for you no matter your denomination.

Follow the news. What is the major source of news in your denomination? I have come to follow a few select websites because I am aware of the influence they bear in denominational leadership. Also, I utilize Google Alerts to monitor what is happening in my denomination.

Collaborate denominationally beyond your own church community. Whatever your denomination’s structure, find ways to actively engage in the programming, training, and discussions occurring beyond the boundaries of your individual church’s reach. It is important not only for you but also your volunteers and young people that we recognize that we are part of something much larger than us.

Define differences. Early in my career, I found myself as a Catholic youth minister in Freeborn County, Minnesota, which understood itself at that time to be the “most Lutheran county in the United States.” It became important to help young people articulate not only the differences but the belief behind it.

Once I was offering a True Love Waits (started by the Baptists) retreat weekend in Bountiful, Utah, where the young people were immersed in Mormon culture. Young people appreciated the opportunity to redefine CTR: Choose the Right into Choose the Rite as they engaged in making decision to wait for sexual activity until marriage.

Never assume with parents. In 1 Peter 3:15, we are reminded to “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” Yet we usually do not imagine that we should be doing that in house as well. The research indicates that the cultural religion of moralist therapeutic deism is being passed along, in part, generationally. We need to be able to pass along the richness of our faith tradition not only to the next generation, but we must continue to remind or re-educate parents about the depth of faith into which they were baptized and sought baptism and/or confirmation for their young people.

One thing is for sure. We have all got to improve our efforts to assist young people in being able to articulate what it is they believe as well as what it is the church they call home to their faith believes. That is true for denominations as much as it is true for non-affiliated churches.

As a denomination in the United States, Catholics are blessed with many organizations and structures that are designed to serve and enhance youth ministry. Yet, even if we were not, I would hope to find ways to collaborate with my brothers and sisters in Catholic youth ministry, seeking them out and gathering with them locally as well as within the national non-denominational conferences around the country and via internet connections.

Oh yeah, and, "Go, Irish!"

The leadership from the denomination I am part of sees itself as a resource for its churches. Functionally it does not carry a hierarchical role; decision making is largely made on the local and district levels. But our denomination, rooted in the Anabaptist tradition, still has a distinct and strong influence in our congregation. One of the primary reasons for this is that the denominational headquarters is located in our city, and many of the national staff are active in our congregation. For that reason, it seems that most people serving our congregation also find their way into being asked to also serve the denomination.

I have served as a youth leader and Sunday school teacher for our congregation for four years. This has brought many opportunities for me to participate in district, regional, and national conferences and events with our students. Recently I was also asked to serve on the national youth advisory board. This has given me the chance to meet high school students from all over the United States who are part of our denomination.

I worked as a youth minister and volunteer in many other churches before joining my current denomination. I suspect my experience is like many other denominational settings, where it takes time to learn the culture and language of the group and not feel like an outsider among those who have been part of it for so many years.

Here are some of the efforts I work toward to support my denomination as a youth leader:

Participate in denominational events. This seems like a given, but it is surprising how many of our churches choose not to participate in denominational youth events. I can understand why, since such events often feel stuck in styles and traditions from the past, with leaders trying to relive camp experiences from when they were young. But we have decided to keep supporting and owning these events. Otherwise, we feel it would subtly communicate to our teens that church should cater to each person’s style and wishes and that if it doesn’t, they should find one that will. That consumer-driven message is destructive to our churches and our own personal growth.

Encourage people in denominational leadership. Many of the people I know in denominational leadership have been there a long time. They are often busy planning, traveling, and serving churches. It is difficult for them to be consistently involved in a local congregation. For this reason, many are not able to have regular interaction with youth and are a bit intimidated and insecure about the events they plan. They wonder if they are personally and professionally relevant to today’s teenager. They have tough jobs! For many, it is much more administration than relationships (perhaps not what they expected). They desperately need the support and help of those of us actively serving students. They also have people trying to schmooze them to gain opportunities and power in the denomination. Your efforts to encourage, serve, and support with no strings attached will carry profound meaning.

Share concerns and ideas together. Denominational leaders become lightning rods for complaints. Pastors and congregants with an agenda or grievance seek them out to unload their problems. I can only imagine that after a while, everything must sound like grumbling. If you don’t like what is happening, offer ideas (and your time) to help make it better. If the regional youth conference was bad, volunteer to lead part of it, or submit a list of ideas that your teens come up with to make it better. Show ownership and initiative with a sense of positive energy.

Explore your denomination’s story with your students. Why are you part of your denomination? What about your denomination’s roots and traditions are meaningful and resonate with you? Take time to explore with your students why your church follows the traditions of your denomination and heritage. Focus on the positives of your unique identity as a part of Christ’s church. Tell the stories of those who have given shape to your denomination.

My congregation is a peace-church rooted in the Anabaptist tradition. We continue to take time to tell the stories of those who helped forge the way of this tradition and dialogue about how their stories have meaning for us today. I even gave students the assignment to study and present some of these stories to the entire congregation. We are also inviting some of the older members of our congregation to share with our youth group their personal experiences and how they continue to find meaning in our tradition.

One year during the winter season, we hosted Christmas Karaoke. It was a themed party where those in our ministry came together to celebrate the incarnation and partake in some traditional Mexican drinks & desserts. As the evening progressed, an XBox 360 transformed the living room into a virtual Karaoke club. After the order by which everyone would sing was set, it was fun to see students choosing to sing contemporary songs, while others chose to bring back some old school jams. This brought up some great interaction between everyone, and a true bonding experience took place in just a few short an hours.

In the end, events such as this serve to provide informal opportunities for people to connect and learn from each other. Seemingly random conversations are sparked as the night passes by. Relationships are then strengthened over time. It is not unusual to see a student take the initiative to add a retiree as a friend on Facebook that night. In the coming weeks friendships will begin to take shape as we continue to provide opportunities to spend time together in community.

Building off my previous Slant 33 post, I view myself as a facilitator, whether that is through the formal mentoring program we run, the small groups we offer, or the community building events we host. I am trying to be someone who is known for connecting those people who need to know each other.

I think a small step in the direction of intergenerational ministry has been the movement toward integrated teaching and curriculum. Many churches are moving toward presenting the same teaching content across all of their segmented ministries. Churches introduce a teaching series or curriculum that presents the same topic or Bible text to be studied across all ages in Sunday school, small groups, and taught in worship gatherings. While I do think this is a beneficial approach in creating shared vision and experience, I wonder if it really helps foster much conversation or connection across multiple ages.

On the more extreme end of intergenerational ministry are family-centered or family-integrated churches with a focus on the role of parents discipling their children. This growing movement denounces any age-segmented gatherings or classes and spurred a documentary called Divided the Movie, which attempts to build a case about how age-separated ministries, especially youth ministries, are unbiblical. Though thought provoking, the negativity of this film seemed unhelpful and divisive. I think peer groups for learning and community still (and may always) have a valid place in the church. Moreover, most churches will not be able to see a bridge between their current structures and a completely family-centered intergenerational approach.

Intergenerational ministry must flow out of the fabric of the values of a congregation. It must be a culture. It cannot just be a program to help retain and indoctrinate younger attenders.

In my congregation, intergenerational ministry’s strongest showing is through the unstructured support provided by adults–especially non-parents–toward the children and youth. When I attend a play or a recital for one of the youth from my church, I always see other adults who are there to show support. These are not youth leaders or teachers–they are friends and mentors who want to show their support and care. Intergenerational life is natural to us. Time after time I have heard graduating seniors remark that they feel overwhelmingly supported and accepted by their church family.

This unstructured support and relationships flows into structured involvement. New teenagers are given the opportunity to choose a mentor from the congregation. Structure is provided for the ongoing relationship, but it almost always flows out of a connection with an adult that has been growing for years prior. Many of the leadership groups of the church, including our recent pastoral search committee, have teenagers as equal members serving on them. Every Sunday, children and youth are involved in the service lighting candles, reading Scripture, sharing joys and concerns, and ushering. It is a blessing to see a congregation that has worked to develop an environment where people of every age feel they are an equal part of something bigger than themselves.

For many of us in North America, these ideas seem strange or idealistic. If you are like me, many of your experiences with intergenerational church ministry has felt awkward or forced. Youth’s involvement in church services and ministry often comes across as a token showcase of talents, accomplishments, or piety to sooth parental angst. The importance of intergenerational ministry is more than just reaching youth or creating another category of programs. It is vital to helping people grow and thrive in their faith for the long haul.

We haven’t found that silver bullet. While small groups, mentoring, justice work, leadership, and a host of other youth ministry programs are important, the reality is that kids, ministry programs, and spiritual development are far more complicated than just one silver bullet.

But here’s one thing that stands out in our sticky faith research as critically important to students’ faith development: intergenerational relationships. As we have empirically studied students as well as networked with churches across the country, we think the future of youth ministry is intergenerational.

We need to make an important distinction. There is a difference between multigenerational ministry and intergenerational ministry. Multigenerational is when folks of different ages are in the same meeting space. But just being in the same space doesn’t mean relationships are being built. Intergenerational ministry happens when folks start sharing verbally with each other and ultimately share life together.

Some churches are taking baby steps toward intergenerational ministry, like pairing high school seniors with senior adults in senior-to-senior mentoring programs, or creating annual intergenerational traditions.

Other churches are taking medium steps, like planning intergenerational mission trips, empowering parents to help their kids connect with other adults, or changing their job titles to reflect a renewed commitment to connecting teenagers with the overall church (i.e., replacing the term high school pastor with the term minister of student integration).

Still other churches are taking large leaps and cancelling youth Sunday school (especially if they also have a youth midweek meeting) and integrating teenagers into the overall life of the church. They are championing what my good friend and colleague Dr. Chap Clark calls 5:1 ministry. In 5:1 ministry, every teenager is surrounded by five adults who pray for them, support them in tangible ways, and communicate that they are on that teenager’s team.

As meaningful as these steps are for the teenagers involved, what’s been as encouraging is to hear how churches are transformed as adults rub shoulders with children and teenagers. As one youth leader told me, “We knew moving toward intergenerational ministry would be good for our students. What’s surprised us is how valuable it’s been for our church.”

¹The College Transition Project is a culmination of six years of study of 500 youth group kids as they transition to college, including two three-year longitudinal studies and two interview studies. The goals of this research are to offer help to parents, leaders and churches in building a faith that lasts, or sticky faith. See StickyFaith.org for more details.

How many times did someone walk into the youth facility and see me playing some sort of game or immediately start shooting at them with a Nerf gun? How many times did I communicate poorly, get back from a trip late, and drive the church van through a huge puddle or over a dead dog in Mexico? The answer to those questions is a lot, but that was part of my job, right?

I’m a huge fan of doing things that are fun and helping shape memories. I think, as a whole, I did a pretty good job with all of that, and I regret few things I ever did (except driving over that dog). But I also know that, had I been slightly more aware of people’s perceptions of me and how I could have a greater impact if I came across a bit more professionally, I would have changed a lot.

For example, on Tuesdays each week at my current church, we have an all-church-staff chapel. In the life of our staff, this is a pretty important meeting because it’s usually the only time we ever all get together. I make sure on Tuesdays that I do three things. 1. I get there early. One of the major problems with youth workers is that there is a general perception that we always fly by the seat of our pants. Since my church staff members only see me in this type of setting one time a week, I want their perception to be that I am punctual. 2. I sit near the front. This sounds silly, but in general, I think most people expect the youth workers to sit in the back (after sneaking in late) and text during the whole meeting. Sitting near the front shows people that I am engaged. 3. I dress appropriately. Since this is the only time most people see me during the week, I try not to give the perception that flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt is my everyday attire.

Here are a couple other ways you can gain credibility in your own church:

Be consistent. This is especially important if you are younger because oftentimes the church expects you to be scatterbrained and hit or miss in your leadership style. Make every effort to maintain a solid demeanor, appearance, and attitude in all situations.

Promote expertise. Notice I don’t say be the expert. We need to expose our congregations to good research, practices, and ideas. But we don’t need to be the experts ourselves. Just know what books, speakers, and resources to let people know about. Be the conduit for good information and expertise in youth ministry. Your credibility will jump if people know you will either be able to answer a question or refer them to a source that can help.

Define your role. If you allow others to define your role and pigeonhole you, you will have difficulty overcoming their perceptions about what you do and how much you have to offer. For example, most of us were hired as youth pastors. But the reality is that a big part of our job is ministering to the family as well. Make sure to shape and define your role in a way that gives people a broader perspective of what it is you do. Then, when they have a family question, you might actually be asked what you think.

Communicate well and often. Parents are busy and don’t always read email. If you want them to know something important, you are going to have to reach them in multiple ways. A quick, two-sentence email about a major change sent at 11:59 p.m. the night before a trip isn’t a good way to get parents to think you know what you are doing.

Spend time interacting with the whole church. Early in my ministry, I got in trouble for being a “blur in the parking lot.” What I mean by this is that my goal was to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible with as few interactions as possible along the way. If it was a student I stopped to talk, but if it was an adult, I moved quickly. If you want to gain credibility in the church, you have to spend time with the church.

There’s obviously a ton more that could be said about gaining credibility. I’m grateful that there are two other columns here. My thoughts may be overly simple, but I can only speak from my own experience.

Aristotle argues there are three components of ethos: intelligence (mental habits); virtue (moral habits); good will (emotional habits).

Intelligence. What the older generation wants to know is that the young youth worker is competent. Essentially, do young leaders have the knowledge to figure out how to lead a youth ministry theologically and practically? How to gain intelligence?

Read. This is how I delegate my reading: 70% Christian (Bible, commentaries, theology books, ministry blogs) and 30% secular (adolescent research, New York Times, leadership resources). I also love reading biographies about the dead guys. There is so much to be learned from the guys who went before us.

Listen. Shut your mouth and listen. Listen and learn from other perspectives before giving your two cents. Spend time with others in your community who are way smarter than you and ask them questions about their success.

Education. I think it is huge if youth pastors are seminary trained and have a four-year degree in business. A business degree teaches you how to manage people, and a seminary education will teach you how to think theologically. If your church is willing to pay for an education, do it.

Go to conferences. Youth ministry conferences will teach you the how-to’s and force you to be around experienced and educated youth pastors.

Virtue. The older generation wants to know if you have a strong moral compass in order to make it in ministry without burning or flaking out. One of the top reasons youth pastors don’t make it is moral failure. Character is everything. Character includes such things as self-discipline, modesty, teamwork, integrity, purity, work ethic, loyalty, honesty, courage, tenacity, intelligence, consideration for others, and determination.

Study Scripture on character. Let Scripture transform your character. Be patient, humble, and respectful toward authority (Matthew 25, Luke 8, 2 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 4, and 2 Corinthians 4).

Find older leaders to mentor you. The goal is to illustrate the Paul and young Timothy relationship (1 Timothy 4:12). Ask older and wiser adults to speak into your life. Surround yourself with older adults who have successfully managed work, health, marriage, raising kids, money, and ministry.

Good Will. Having good will means having a good work ethic. The older generation believes high productivity is associated with credibility. The goal is to be known as the church staff member who will always get it done and is trustworthy. Suggestions on how to demonstrate a great work ethic:

Work really hard, especially in the small and insignificant tasks.
Show up early.
Return every phone call and email.
Get excited and think positive when you work.
Set deadlines.
Volunteer for the tough assignments no one else wants.
Every day write down the top three to four tasks you need to get done that day.
Don’t multi-task. Multi-tasking increases your chances of losing focus.

Gaining credibility in the church takes time. Don’t feel discouraged when you are criticized for being young, idealistic, inexperienced, or passionate. Aristotle knew what he was talking about. Therefore, I encourage you to consider adopting Aristotle’s approach.

My first year in youth ministry I learned how to quickly lose credibility in my church:

Misplace the worship leader’s ten-year-old daughter at Disney World. Voice frustrations about leadership with other leadership. Try to fix things myself (FYI: Breaking down on the side of a busy interstate with a van full of teenagers always requires a call back to the church and professional help.). Be exclusively available to the youth ministry.

Looking back, I wish someone had been there to tell me how to own my ministry without disowning the church. There is no price tag on wisdom gained through experience. And my experience tells me, if I want credibility in my church, I’ve got to do a few things (there are others, but here are the few that come to mind first):

Display consistency in my walk with Christ both in and outside the church (over time). Model spiritual formation by developing habits of a growing Christian (over time). Respect leadership, even when I disagree, by communicating in healthy and loving ways (over time). Realize mistakes I make and do what it takes to make them right (over time). Include others by sharing ministry and training others in their gifts (over time). Let honesty be the rule, always choosing the truth over white lies or manipulation (over time). Take responsibility for my work by doing what I said I would do (over time). Help others with their work, doing whatever it takes to further the mission with the gifts I have to share. Seek forgiveness when wrong (each time). Let go of the chip. Whatever past hurt keeps me from focusing on the present needs to be given to God (each time). Lead well from the middle, getting rid of jealousy or feelings of competition, striving to contribute for the sake of the kingdom and for those who are lost. Be seen serving and loving people, in my everyday life. The temptation is to hide because of the social demands of ministry, but the body needs our example, and we need to be seen. My life speaks louder than my all of my words, tweets, and updates combined.

Notice the common denominator in all of these things: time.

For too long I jumped around, waiting for the perfect scenario to do ministry when, all along, the perfect scenario could be found as I remained in imperfect community, with humility, seeking to serve and share the gifts I’ve received with others. When I came to my current assignment, the word God gave me was remain. Remaining somewhere gives a person a track record that can be telling.
“I can trust you.”
“I’ve seen you weather storms.”
“I know you won’t lose track of my kids… Okay, you’ll probably lose track of my kids! But I know you’ve trained and equipped enough leaders that someone will notice quickly and you’ll have a plan.”
“I know when you tell me something, it’s the truth.”
“I know if I’m being corrected it’s because you love me, just like you’ve loved so many before me.”

If you want credibility, stay somewhere long enough for people to give it to you.

I was a youth worker in a church where student leadership was a major goal, but it was really hard to meet. Mostly what we were calling leadership was actually just laboring. Partly it’s because our leadership model was servant. In fact, in some cases it just increased expectation of their participation in additional Sunday school classes and volunteerism. In my final years of that particular ministry, I shifted the goalposts of what my expectations of student leaders were and how I identified and worked alongside student leaders.

What changed? Well, I realized that, for many of my students, a focus on leadership development didn’t make any sense. I could only help them become leaders within their communities to the extent of their abilities, charisma, and opportunities. Truth be told, though, there wasn’t a great deal of opportunity a lot of the time. Student leadership was also a way of proving yourself for students. They could climb the ranks of esteem within our community by being student leaders and volunteering for all manner of things. If a pastor did that, we wouldn’t call it healthy, so why would I want to teach this model to my students?

When those who were already serving and shaping their community became obvious, initiating those students into further leadership became all about the fullness of their being, not meeting my needs or the needs of my ministry in terms of labor.

For my students who loved music, not all of them wanted to be leaders of the band or had the skills to corral people. But one was super passionate about playing the guitar. More passion than talent to begin with, you know? Developing his leadership was all about facilitating learning experiences for him, including opportunities for him to fail well. As his ability and experience grew, it was only natural for him to share that with other students. Now he leads the band and works with a team around him, also encouraging younger musicians to grow in the same way he did.

Another example was purely practical. She wanted to become an events manager in her vocation, so facilitating her leadership simply meant giving her opportunity to practice by helping out with events and camps we ran for the ministry but only because she really wanted to and could apply the experience to something practical.

However, I think we need to be realistic. You wouldn’t teach your students to drive and then not let them behind the wheel for a few years. Remember how frustrated you were in the first few years of your own leadership experience—eager to spread your wings? False hope creates a fertile breeding ground for hard-heartedness, disappointment, and frustration.

As one student said to me this year, having just started at university, “So what am I meant to do now? I’ve been a student leader at youth group, and in my school, and now there’s nowhere for me to lead, nothing for me to do, and I just feel frustrated. What’s the point of teaching me how to lead if there’s not any chance for me to lead?” Student leadership in his youth ministry didn’t translate to leadership or influence within his broader church community, which was slowly eating him up.

There are two concurrent actions required: reshaping the goals and values underpinning student leadership and creating real opportunities for actual leadership within the church. We have to be prepared to let go of some of our grasp and to nurse bruised wings, rather than refusing to let students fall or fly out of the nest.

Invest time in developing students who want to lead and have opportunity to.

Your expectation or goal only needs to be their development into wholeness.

Don’t mince words: Students are tougher than they look, so be honest about how and where their actions can open doors of opportunity.

Stand aside, stand behind, stay wise: If others won’t step aside to make space for the students who have something to offer, then you be the one; it’s easier to give away what you have and put your money where your mouth is. Never be in a position where you can’t back them up, help them through it without helping them out of it, and keep the communication open all the time. If something doesn’t go well or students disappoint themselves or you, don’t be sad, don’t be angry. Be the person who offers healthy, constructive, graceful perspective to work it through and go again. That’s the nursing bruises part. You’ll become a trusted ally and friend.

The concept for how we build student leadership opportunities for our groups generally comes from how we identify the purpose of leadership. The church today seems obsessed with leadership culture, constantly hawking conferences, books, blogs, maxims, etc. Too often church leadership has been about creating personality-based kingdoms rather than being constantly enlivened by the views of the kingdom all around us. With this in mind, we have aimed to offer a variety of opportunities throughout the ministry year to allow students the opportunity to step toward the dreams and ideas God has given them.

Early in ministry, I succumbed to the concept that leadership required a charismatic personality and the ability to be front and center. I created a ministry team model where students fit niches within my ministry that helped establish the programs we ran regularly. This model worked in some ways, but when I got the chance to start over in my current ministry context, I decided to try a different path. Over the past few years, my students have taught me a lot about leadership from a much more organic model.

One of the issues that I have had to wrestle with in this free-flowing framework is whose ideas get the attention. For many years I have wanted students to help me create a program I envisioned. A while back, one of my students approached me with an idea inspired by Zach Hunter’s book, Generation Change. She hoped that as a group we could put on a Shack-A-Thon, helping educate people about homelessness and raise funds for a local shelter. However, I had an idea I’d been stewing on for a bit, so I took her idea and tried to redirect it. Needless to say, it never got off the ground. It wasn’t the vision God had spoken to her heart. It wasn’t until some time had passed and she approached me again that I was willing to lay down my ideas and encourage her to embrace her own vision. Leah’s Shack-A-Thon was a fabulous success this past summer with 50+ participants raising more than $5,000 and learning a ton along the way about homelessness, leadership, and how cold it can get in Ohio on an August evening.

So what does having a more organic leadership model mean? A few ideas I’ve learned in the process of the last few years of empowering students:

When you have particular opportunities for students to lead, it’s appropriate to choose individuals. Not everything has to be fair or open. After all, it was Jesus who selected twelve from among the crowds.

Allowing students to create and lead will allow opportunities you wouldn’t have thought of. I asked Leah to create a student leadership team for Shack-A-Thon, and she chose some students I wouldn’t have. But they did an excellent job because she empowered them when I might have overlooked them.

Creating a variety of organic leadership opportunities, some more structured and others less, allows for a wider selection of students to get opportunities because they’re able to step into options that more naturally fit their gifts. For us, this has meant that we offer opportunities including student-led Bible studies, establishing the room environment, coming up with their own ideas, and leading other students in pursuing them. Instead of filling up our program schedule with pre-planned ideas, we’ve been trying to put more choices back in the hands of our students, allowing them to make the decisions.

Throughout this whole process, I’m constantly reminded that leading is actually about serving. I lead my students best and model leadership best to them by serving them as they pursue Christ, rather than trying to get them to serve my programming desires. It reminds me that I have as much to learn as they do, and this equal ground creates exciting opportunities to lead together in directions I would never have imagined on my own.

Joel Daniel has been walking with middle school students on their faith journeys for ten years. Besides leading the middle school ministry at his church, he operates as their instigator of justice, giving direction to their Justice League, a collection of diverse individuals who explore together how to tangibly employ God’s love. Additionally, he provides leadership for The 330, a network of youth pastors throughout northeast Ohio and is the founder of Seismos, an intimate, conversational, non-conference for youth ministers. You can connect with him at www.about.me/joeldaniel

I grew up through a Christian youth group. As a teenager who lacked confidence, was relatively immature, and also struggled as a Christian, I would not have scored very high on any potential leader grids.

Nevertheless, the leaders incorporated me into the team, supported me, and gave me opportunities to lead and grow. My ministry today and indeed my faith have their foundation in that experience and those relationships. It wasn’t even that they took a chance and I surprised them and myself; my leadership and faith development were very much a slow-burn process, steps forward and steps back. (Even now I can’t help cringing when I think about the first session I led).

However, trying to reflect a little more on this, I’m going to go with identification of student leaders being a mixture of prayer, intuition, and of course their willingness. As a key part too, not rushing into having a set idea of who would fit the role—or who wouldn’t. There is a huge danger in an approach that identifies only students who seem to have it all together (they often don’t, or necessarily make the best leaders); or one that ignores the ones who are not such obvious candidates (being believed in and being given the opportunity may be exactly what they need). God took a chance on us, eh!

In many ways, though, it is a discipleship question. Students are going to grow more in faith when they are given the opportunity to go somewhere with it, to model it and be part of a ministry team.

I remember a shy teenager called David who, in one of our chats, confided that the whole youth group thing wasn’t really him. As we chatted, it emerged that he loved organising things, relished playing a part, but preferred being in the background rather than taking part in the malarkey. I asked him if he would run the Tuck Shop, which he then did brilliantly (profit reports, stock control; the works). Through that process of finding a place and a role, he eventually became a small group leader and was one of six young people I invested a lot of time in…and learnt much from.

In terms of initiating student leaders, I think I’m clearer on how that might happen. Reflecting on my own experience and more recent conversations with teenagers in those roles, I think there are two really key components: 1. Be clear on what a task or role is and what is expected. 2. Review with them how it is going (or how it went).

I’ve recently had conversations with several teenagers who have been asked to get involved with the youth ministry among the age group below theirs. Two of these teenagers (in different churches) both felt that they didn’t know if they were being useful. They responded enthusiastically to being asked. However, without the clarity of what they should actually be doing, other than showing up; whilst also experiencing no review of how it was going, they weren’t sure they wanted to continue. Discouragement and self-doubt can easily sink young leaders.

If we don’t really work on the why, how, and then the review, we create a scenario akin to going bowling with the alley in total darkness. We won’t know what we are aiming for and, furthermore, won’t know if we achieved anything.

Reflecting on the young leaders I’ve trained, I’m sure there are some I’ve missed. I also know there are those where it didn’t work out as I’d hoped. I’m looking forward to see what the other contributors write about who, but I think the bigger question is the how.

For many Gen-Xers like me, no punches are pulled when pointing out what is cheesy and hypocritical in the church. We’ve authored zillions of tweets, posts, articles, and books over the last decade about how the church is irrelevant, suggesting that Christianity has become a cliché in and of itself. Much of this critique is warranted and possibly part of a greater redemptive good. But those who are committed to being part of a Christian community feel a sense of fatigue from this barrage of critique.

There is a certain attitude I slide into, one in which I exhibit a stance of having it figured out. This contributes to divisiveness as it delineates us and them—the sophisticated from the simpletons, the educated from the uneducated, the forward thinking from the stuck in the muds (is that another cliché? Someone stop me).

With these realities in view, I felt conflicted about pointing out youth ministry clichés. I am tired of being the squeaky wheel (cliché?). I don’t want to labeled as the contrarian, the dismissive idealist who tears everything apart rather than helping construct. I want to provide solutions rather than pointing out the problems. You feel me? (Darn, another cliché.)

So how do we offer critique that is redemptive? How can identifying clichés that need to go away move beyond targeting pet peeves? When I critique a cliché, is it just me being tired of its overuse in my circles, or is it a phrase that is truly losing its helpfulness? The danger with clichés is that they are here today and gone tomorrow (got me again). How do we walk the fine line of critique without sliding into arrogance? Is it possible to create better categories of language? I hope so.

The language we use is important because it shapes the way we think. Language is a way that we make meaning and identify ourselves. We must thoughtfully evaluate and refine how we speak, especially about God and the church.
So maybe it is good for us to identify clichés that hold us back from clearer and more substantive descriptions of our realities. Perhaps it is helpful for us to shed words and phrases that have lost their meaning by being overused or spewed carelessly and without context.

Now, I just have to think of a ministry cliché that really gets under my skin… That would really take this post to the next level!

Youth ministry becomes segregated from the church body. It becomes us (students) versus them (adults). Chap Clark calls this the Mickey Mouse Syndrome. Essentially, youth ministry becomes an extension and not a part of the church body. When only focusing on ministering to students, it becomes easy to drift away from the church. The problem is that there is no intersection between other adults and students in the church context.

Youth pastors cannot effectively disciple the masses. One adult can really only have a deep spiritual relationships with five to eight students, max. There is no way a youth pastor can do discipleship well for more than five to eight students at a time. Eventually the youth pastor will need more help from the community and church. This is why the youth pastor must get parents and adults to partner together in order to raise the next generation.

So if youth pastors are not supposed to only hang out with students, then what do they do? Why should a church pay for a professional youth worker? I think there are two primary tasks that define the role of the youth pastor.

The first task of the youth pastor is to mobilize God’s people to do the work of the ministry to young people. The youth pastor has to figure out how to get the church and the family to work as partners in raising students. God’s people are called and compelled to serve. Therefore, youth workers have to persuade adults they need to serve the next generation.

If the youth pastor is not empowering and equipping more adults to care for students, then no one ever will. Youth workers must approach everyone with the opportunity to work with this incredible next generation. Every youth pastor has to be thinking, How can I get more adults to care for students?

The second task is assimilating students into the church body. The goal of youth ministry is to assimilate authentic disciples into full participation in the life of the community of faith and the church. As Jim Burns of Homeword and Mark DeVries of Family-Based Youth Ministry have said, "The degree to which students will stay in the church, get involved, and make significant life decisions for Christ is directly dependent on their sense of belonging to the church community.”

The aim of any youth ministry must be that students see and experience themselves as participants in God's family of faith. One of the best and most practical ways for students to play an active role in the life of the church is by creating avenues for them to serve inside the church. Bottom line: The youth ministry programmatic strategy needs to move students from youth group participants to church body participants.

I must admit that during my first year in youth ministry, I thought youth ministry was awesome because I didn’t have to deal with adults. In fact, church adults annoyed me. I thought my job was to be the cool friend to all the youth. After my first year, I realized there had to be a more robust framework. After some seminary education, contemplation, praying, and reading I was convicted that youth workers are theologically responsible to train all generations to care, love, and serve the next generation. The more committed adults the church has to care for students, the more sustainable the students’ faith will be.

It is really tough to change the mentality I only work with students to I mobilize God’s people to care for students. But trust me; getting more committed adults in the lives of students is such a healthier and sustainable way to do youth ministry. So let us shatter this cliché.

I think it only continues to promote the idea that the youth pastor is merely a stepping-stone job to some senior role or is for overzealous twenty-somethings who want to hang out and have an excuse to revisit their high school years. I suppose—on a good day—it could be a caution that the job might be harder than one thinks. But beyond that, I’m not sure it has much merit.

I also think those of us who have accepted a call into youth ministry need to take a hard look at what we signed up to do. I know several youth pastors who have been at three or four churches for three years or fewer each time. I also know plenty who have been in the same spot for more than ten years. But when you move on for a third time after a short stay, I stop believing the church is at fault and start to believe it’s the youth pastor. The truth is plain and simple: Mentoring teens into young adults is no short-term process, and if we are just one more revolving door in their lives, then we should have little reason to believe our impact will be much different from the example we’ve set. If their faith comes and goes, well, so did we.

In addition, if you only stay three years and then leave, depending on the age of students you’re working with, you likely won’t even have any understanding of what it is your ministry is producing. About the time you get a chance to see any real fruit, you’ll be headed for the door, never once serving alongside a student who came fully through your ministry and is back to serve with you. It’s a tragic loss to the kingdom of God and even your own personal story. Let’s stack hands and destroy this cliché once and for all.

Your youth ministry is full of cliques. Really, please tell me, what group of people in the world is actually clique free? It seems that every sports team is one or has many. I’m guessing every small group ever formed is one. Workplaces have them. Schools have them. Churches have them. We could build a solid argument that Jesus and his disciples were an exclusive clique. Maybe Peter, James, and John were yet another.

I’ve been told more times than I’d like to admit in the last eighteen years of youth ministry that someone’s child won’t come to my high school ministry because it’s too clique-ish. Nine times out of ten it’s just an excuse from a student who sits in the back, is uninterested, won’t talk to anyone, and is looking for someone to blame.

The truth is that we do have cliques, and we do all kinds of things to try to both build and destroy them. We build them all the time by trying to help students form small groups, serve in community, and build deeper relationships with a select few. Once your youth ministry has more than ten students in it, they’re going to form friendship circles, and not everyone is going to hang out with everyone else. The student claiming our youth ministry is full of cliques is almost never the one trying hard to make new friends or risking saying hi to someone they don’t know. They are actually not really even upset that we have cliques; they’re just upset that they’re not in one yet.

We also work against cliques in our main gathering especially, working hard to pay attention to those who are new and introducing them into existing friendship and small group circles where they would be a good fit. Instead of falsely fighting cliques, we strive to keep them open and use the bonds of friendship and connection to help students gain ownership of their faith and our ministry.

Perhaps some cliques need to go, but so do the clichés that people use as excuses for lack of risk and investment.

on the other side of that is a great mentor of mine in youth ministry who, every spring break, essentially invited the youth ministry to travel with his family on their spring break vacation. Obviously there are great ways to engage your youth ministry and your family, and there are some bad ways too.

My opinion is that it’s healthy when it’s done right. This last year we hosted dinners at our house every other week for our senior class. It was my way of engaging them as they went through a difficult season of college applications and anxiety. My family was always there. My daughter used to ask me on Sundays if it was an “other” Sunday. For her, it was always a highlight of the week to have the big kids come over.

I think Paul models this kind of ministry in 2 Thessalonians when he talks about “sharing his life” with the community. The only way I know how to do ministry is the same way. The families many of our students are growing up in aren’t healthy. They are busy, disengaged, and frantic. Often Dad (or Mom) works long hours and is unavailable to them. What I’m trying to do with students in my youth ministry is show them my real life and expose them to how I actually am and not just the way I want them to think I am. So I show them how I interact with my wife and how I parent my kids. I think it’s one of my greatest offerings to them as they see what it means to be a Christian and a husband and father.

To my younger friends in youth ministries, I simply ask the question: What are you modeling to students? Many of you are close in age and are more like peers to the students. Your life shows them one side of being a Christian in the world but not a full picture. You will likely eventually have kids and have to make these types of decisions. One way you can be strategic now is by inviting parents of students to come on trips and have them model what you can’t.

Last summer was busy. It started out with a five-day, guys-only houseboat trip. Then in July we did an eight-day high school trip to Seattle and followed that with a thirteen-day trip to Israel. I took my boys (ages eleven and eight) on the houseboat trip. They had a great time hanging out with the older boys. My oldest learned how to play poker (maybe I’m not a good parent), and he told me he loved listening to the talks each evening. I was busy running the trip and also being a dad. It wasn’t ideal in that there were times I couldn’t engage with the youth group kids, but I still think it was great. But I had a bunch of leaders on the trip, so I wasn’t the focal point.

The reality, though, is that I was gone three out of four weeks in July. This is typically the busiest month in my youth ministry world. But, as a dad who loves his family, and as someone who has seen the negative side of youth ministry when parents are always gone from their own kids, I say involve your kids in everything you can. I’m pretty sure Doug Fields wrote somewhere at some point that there has to be some sort of benefit for your kids when their parent is a youth worker. I embrace that statement and the belief behind it.

My kids will always be involved because I think it models health to students. It is healthy for me, and it shows that youth ministry doesn’t operate in a vacuum that is only accessible to twenty-year-olds without kids.

As we attempt to steward the gifts God has given us in our children, showing them what humility and service looks like is important. Having your child watch you be obedient as you move chairs, orchestrate midweek service, patiently listen to others, and encourage young folks is the best teaching tool you could have in your bag of tricks. You gain credibility with them as you encourage them to serve others with their lives, and respect as someone who makes humility cool.

Explaining what youth workers do is often difficult, so involving your children in ministry when they are young is important because it allows them to see it. When they see you in action, it helps them understand better what we really do. If for nothing else, knowing what we do for work can help justify why we are gone and not with them.

It is also important for them to see you working so you can model responsibility for them. Seeing that doing your job is more than planning games or going to breakfast with someone else’s kid; it is part of you following through on commitments and being responsible for leadership in a ministry of the church.

Volunteers who serve alongside most of you are young themselves. They are often looking for models who demonstrate godly parenting. If they are single, they look for examples of what to be looking for in a spouse, and how you engage with your children could be one of the most positive peeks into marriage and parenting they get. We often overlook our discipleship of volunteers, but you are discipling them whether you know it or not, and showing them how to parent is a wonderful tool of Christian discipleship.

Lastly, if your students are like me or many young people I know today, they have poor examples of faithful, consistent Christian parenting at home. You might be the best example of what good parenting looks like. As young people develop their own identities and determine trajectories for their own lives, seeing positive parenting in action can help them set the bar high for who they want to become and whom they want to parent with when that time comes. This is especially critical for you men who serve as youth workers.

We all have great examples of women who can parent their butts off, but unfortunately these shining lights are often lacking when it comes to dads. If you’re a guy, I strongly encourage you to think about your example to your students; not just how you interact with them but how you model a loving and faithful commitment to your own children. In fact, your parenting and marriage might be the most important lessons you share with your youth group while they are under your influence.

Now, having said all of this, I have to caution you to use common sense when involving our own children when they are young. Keep your child safe. Don’t ever assume that teens know how to handle, hold, or interact with young children. I wouldn’t trust most teens to be alone with my children. Don’t use your kids like puppies. Puppies are cute and cuddly and can bring a lot of attention to the owner. Your child is not a student magnet. If your child is going to interfere with or distract you from teaching God’s Word, leave the tyke at home.

Lastly, if you’re feeling guilty about not spending enough time with your kids and are involving them in ministry to kill two birds with one stone, learn to set some boundaries and say no more often. If you need help prioritizing between your children and the children of others in your ministry, your children are more important.

Then, as she grew older, it became more difficult. As soon as my daughter was old enough to observe, repeat words, and mimic certain behaviors, my wife and I had to have a conversation again about whether it was wise to allow our children to be part of our youth ministry events. We mutually decided we would still make sure our children could be part of our youth ministry as much as was feasible. We concluded it was important for the following reasons.

We thought it was important that our children had a healthy view of me, as their father. My father was a pastor, and aside from his Sunday morning sermon, seldom did I see him in action, so to speak. Every time I heard my mom and him discussing a church-related issue or subject, I could only imagine my father as a pastor. All I knew of my father was what he was like in our home. I would have loved to see my father live out his calling as a pastor as well as my father. My wife and I thought it was important for our children to see their dad outside the home to give them a bigger view of life and a holistic view of my life.

We thought it was important that our children had a healthy view of relationships and how people interact with one another. We wanted our kids to see the two of us related not only to teens but to the parents of teens and to other youth workers. Not all the interactions my kids have seen me participate in have been positive. One thing is certain, however. The interactions were real, and our kids have seen me in a more holistic way.

We thought it was important that our children have a healthy view of the church. I desire for my kids to love the church. I long for them to discover what took me more than two decades to learn, and that is that the church is not a building; it is a people. Our youth ministry events were a microcosm of the church in action—that is, the people of God actively engaging God’s mission to restore the world to its intended wholeness. I’m sure that through all the years of participating in the mission of God with teens, parents, and volunteers, they have at the very least a glimpse of the holistic nature of God and God’s people.

We thought it was important that our children have a healthy view of our calling. My wife and I are both called, in a general sense, to be growing disciples. Our intent was that our kids would see us actively live into our calling to serve others and that to be a growing disciple, one must love others as much as one loves God.

We thought that it was important that our children have a healthy view of formation. My wife and I wanted our kids to see a holistic view of spiritual formation and dimensions of formation, such as the disciplines and practices. Both my wife and I grew up in churches where formation was viewed as a program, not a process, and we desired that our children see both of us being formed spiritually through life with others.

Now that I have answered the question, let me make this statement. Whatever you decide to do about your children or any others participating in youth ministry events and activities, know that it is even wiser to find ways to let your kids know that the ministry is never more important than them and that your love for and calling to them as a dad or mom far exceeds your calling as a youth minister.

That isn't to say we've forgotten what we did. We hosted some sharing, singing, and communion; simple. So simple, in fact, that we thought we could get the same results if we just did the same thing. Wrong. The sum of what we've learned is that the Spirit is always moving, but we can't make it do so. That's the way the Holy Spirit shows up in our ministry. Whenever it wants to.

Fortunately for us, it wants to a lot. Theologically, the Spirit is with us all the time. Any sort of healing, any sort of spiritual discovery, any sort of trust in Jesus is all the work of the Spirit. That means that so much of what is expected of us as pastors—so much of our job descriptions—is actually out of our control.

The desire to see students find life in Jesus is a healthy one, and it's essential in ministry. Unfortunately it can easily mutate into an unhealthy drive toward spiritual alchemy. Alchemists of yesteryear tried to take ordinary materials and convert them into gold. As pastors, we can tend toward the same thing. If only we can get the candles and songs and meditative videos just right, maybe, just maybe, the cloud that filled the temple will descend on our youth center. But that's not how it works.

A powerful visitation by the Spirit is not a dish for which we can just follow the recipe. God's Spirit shows up when we least expect it. A girl accepts Christ and leads her parents to do the same. Down the street, a couple decides not to divorce. A boy decides to give up speaking for Lent, to learn when to speak and when to listen. Real stories.

We can't make the Spirit move, and to focus on that is to focus on the wrong thing. Pagans both ancient and modern believe in divine beings that were largely sedentary and had to be wooed into action. Praise God, it's not that way for us. We have a Spirit in motion. And if the Spirit in motion is our point of departure, our task is no longer to conjure it but rather to clear the way.

We do this by training our leaders and students to understand the basics of pneumatology: What is the Holy Spirit, what is its role, what does it do? We teach spiritual disciplines like fasting, silence, meditation, lectio divina, and listening prayer. We create a leadership culture that allows us to check our plans and voice contrary opinions, lest our program leave no margin for the Spirit to work. After all, God will always pursue us but will not force his way onto us.

The overall metaphor is the second of the three seed parables in Mark 4. At the end of the day, the sower doesn't know how his seed will sprout and grow. She or he must leave it up to the sun and rain and soil. The kingdom of God is the same way. There is some seed scattering and soil tilling we can do, like preparing spaces and hearts for divine encounter, but we then must move out of the way and let God be in charge of growth and fruition. We can trust that when we allow God space to work, he does.

After scoring a lot of points on the basketball court (for the other team), I sank my heart into a Victoria’s Secret catalog and dreamed that I’d be on those pages someday. For all the wrong reasons, I truly wanted that.

If it weren’t for the Spirit’s gentle and convincing work in my life, chances are I wouldn’t have ditched this empty dream for a full one that has led me here, to the most fulfilling life I could live—modeling to a different crowd, and for different reasons.

The Holy Spirit helped me see how my life could be transformed through a conduit of trust. The Spirit knew what I needed when I needed it—and gave those things to me. The Holy Spirit led me into youth ministry. So, this part of God—the part that walks beside me and lives in me—is the same part that fuels the vision, mission, values, and practices of a ministry for and with teenagers.

The Holy Spirit is my counselor. Jesus said he would give us “another counselor” (John 14:6), and he has done that for me. As I serve the church, my Counselor helps me with everything from the smallest decision to the really big ones. My Counselor helps me live my life in his life. I need a clean heart to be able to see where there is jealousy, anger, and unloving attitudes. There is a rigorous replacement happening, my will for his. And when I’m stubborn and stall, I’m comforted to know that I’m still not alone or abandoned in the process.

We need the presence of the Holy Spirit to help us ditch plans sometimes and go with God, in our plans, in our relationships, in how we carry out youth ministry in our communities.

The Holy Spirit is the power (Acts 1:8, Luke 24:29). When the Spirit is given space to purify my heart, to perfect love in me, I have power in ministry. I’m able to lead and speak with confidence, even in my weakness because his power is made perfect in those moments. There is always the temptation to be all about me, to worry only for my own comfort, goals, and ideas. But the Holy Spirit guides me to surrender selfishness for a genuine awareness of others. I can’t do it on my own. I don’t have enough light in me to be what I need to be, but the Holy Spirit is able to do this.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in me (1 John 3:24). It’s what happens at the altar at camp. It’s what happens in our conversation at Chick-Fil-A. The presence of God fills our smiles, our high fives, and our hugs for those with tears. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in my sermon writing, the check in my gut that says, Now is the time to talk about… or, Maybe you should go in another direction.

We try to look for the Holy Spirit at work in our students as well. We can overlook sometimes the fact that God dwells in them, just as he dwells in us. The Holy Spirit worked in one of my students’ lives to raise more than $26,000 in one year for clean water in Africa. This is the echo of the Kingdom as we collectively listen.

We make it known to our students and leaders that the Holy Spirit is given a free pass to roam the halls and rooms of our ministries and our hearts. My prayer is that the kingdom of God would be larger for our willingness to be filled, that youth ministries would receive power as their leaders receive it, and that we would live in grateful and prayerful response for the gift of the Spirit.

My last year at Youth Specialties and the pressure I felt to perform were particularly soul deadening for me. By the time I got laid off, I was close to burnout—both professionally and spiritually. But in the two or three months that followed, I experienced a gorgeous re-awakening of my soul. I felt God’s presence for the first time in a long time. My prayer life rekindled, and I started to hear God speaking, nudging, consoling. I knew this was the Holy Spirit, who had never left, of course. Instead, my spiritual eyes were merely opening to the Spirit’s presence.

This ramped up when I launched the Youth Ministry Coaching Program. When my cohorts were in times of personal sharing, I started sensing the Holy Spirit giving me insight that was beyond me, and I even started receiving what could only be called words of truth to be offered to others. I entered into the exercise of this with open hands—not grasping it or claiming it or arrogantly confident about whatever I might think I should say. But I was amazed, over and over again (as I have continued to be over the last eighteen months) that what I was hearing—from the Holy Spirit—was usually accurate. One of the most powerful of these was a time when I had a strong sense that another person in the sharing circle had a word from God for the person talking. Sure enough, when I called that out, the words spoken had a profoundly holy and truthy beauty to them, and we all knew we were on holy ground.

This has changed both my regular, everyday experience of God as well as my youth ministry practice. When I’m leading my middle-school-guys small group, for example, I’m trying to choose (and it is a choice, by the way) to simultaneously listen to my guys and to the Holy Spirit. One of the surprise benefits to me, in a youth ministry setting, is that I feel unburdened and free. That’s because I’m not carrying the absurd responsibility of being smart or insightful enough to know what to say.

This personal awakening and shift in my practice has also shaped my thinking about youth ministry and church leadership. If you ever hear me talk about Youth Ministry 3.0 stuff these days, I hope you hear the difference from what I wrote about in that book. When I wrote that book, about four years ago now, I was not operating with this mindset or experience, and most of my suggestions only tip a hat to the role of the Holy Spirit. But these days, I’m convinced that great youth workers (and great church leaders) need to recover the art of collaborative discernment. Great youth ministry takes all different forms because it has to be contextual. But the path to a wonderfully contextualized youth ministry is not merely an effort of assessment and study. In fact, it is first and foremost an exercise of listening (and I believe that listening needs to be practiced in community, which is why I am passionate about collaborative discernment).

Yes, we need to do assessments and learn about the community we do ministry in; yes, we need to read and study and observe. But more important than all of that is the intentional act of gathering a small group of spiritually minded people to actively listen to the Holy Spirit. Ask, What teenagers have you placed in our midst? (No, just observing them is not enough.) Listen. Ask, What teenagers are you calling us to in our community? Listen. Ask, What would a culturally and contextually appropriate approach be to reach those teenagers? Listen.

Bottom line #1: Without a sense of the Holy Spirit’s role in your life, you will always be limited in your own spiritual growth and practice and, therefore, in your youth ministry efforts. Bottom line #2: A youth ministry that’s not informed by active and intentional listening to the Holy Spirit will miss out on who God is calling it to be.

It’s like everyone online has their own twenty-four-hour satellite TV station running at full broadcast power, all the time, and we just change channels or tune in and out depending on what’s on. It’s one of the few areas I think it’s wise to put caution before anything else. Digital reality is removed from all the nuances of body language, tone, and context. The danger is that anyone using social media can reveal too much out of context or inappropriately. When I think about young people dealing with normal or out-of-the-ordinary life and angst, my fear is that using social media as an outlet or a source of reassurance can push young people out of healthy contextualized relationships where they can deal well with their issues and frustrations.

Similarly, it can create false expectations, false ideals to live up to. It’s easy to portray for yourself or observe in others a life that is better than—leading to unhealthy imitation or perspective. So here’s a few things I do and encourage others to do:

Be friendly with lists and privacy settings. You have to be transparent (so, perhaps consider living and displaying the kind of life on Facebook that doesn’t need any privacy), but you also need to be smart. Not all your family and friends on Facebook want to interact with your students. Always create lists and manage your post visibility according to lists; customize your security settings. This includes chat settings.

Can we talk about it offline? Rarely will discussing it online be helpful in the long term. I often make myself unavailable to chat online with students or with students’ parents. Both groups need face-to-face or phone time. However, if I’m online and a student chats to say hi, no problem. If the conversation turns serious, I take it to a phone call. Often students find the courage to type before they talk, but it’s my responsibility to turn text into talking by getting them on the phone or in a room. Same with text messaging; it’s just a no-no.

The drama queen and the passive-aggressive tragedy. We all have those students, and they can be difficult to deal with face to face but can be even worse given social media tools. You know the ones. They take potshots at the “friends who disappoint” them and use social media to talk about how lonely they are, “but it’s no surprise.” The dark underbelly of blogging and social media is that it creates a platform to talk, even if no one’s listening. My rule is that I simply won’t engage in the public forum, but if the pattern of online behaviour matches offline, real-life behavior, then it’s time to intervene and address the issues.

Should I be friends with my students on Facebook? Probably the question everyone starts with. So long as you can treat students with the same level of respect that you would hope for, then yes. But you need to think it through and let your supervisors know what your plan is so that you’re working from a basis of positive trust and in an affirming environment from the outset.

What about randoms? Very few people become friends on Facebook first and transpire those relationships to real connections. I’m lucky; one of my best friends and I met online, but our friendship has transcended that and lasted ten years. We were peers, however, and the balance of trust in our relationship was equal. As a youth worker, you have a level of trust from parents, students, your church, and society that must be maintained. I’ve often had to decide what to do with random requests from speaking at an event or students who came to youth group once. Reading the above, can you guess my response? Of course I’ll say yes, but everyone goes into a list!

Human communication is complicated; there’s no two ways about it. We weren’t really designed for one-volume broadcasting, and we have to remember that. We were designed for layers of influence, relationship, conversation, and the beauty of the spoken word. Social media should only ever be a springboard into a better, deeper, relational swimming pool.

The highest ideal and supreme example of communication is found in God, who became man and brother to us. In our liturgy, we pray that we might “come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” That Jesus Christ came to earth in bodily form to repair the fractured relationship between God and man powerfully exemplifies the importance and significance of real relationships. Jesus walked among us. He listened. He spoke. He told stories and shared meals. He cried at the loss of a friend. He healed others with forgiveness, a touch, or a vocal command. Jesus Christ is the fullest experience of God being in relationship with us. We who desire to communicate God’s love for others and the invitation to be disciples of Jesus must recognize the value of real relationships in our various ministries.

Virtual relationships only hint at intimacy. We who believe in the incarnation recognize the highest value being placed on relationships where we “dwell among” others. Because of this, our relationships seek and desire not a transitory acquaintanceship but the fullest of commitment to one another.

In virtual reality, there can be a false perception of closeness, but it is not true intimacy. In our faith, we understand the truest intimacy to occur when we are in communion with one another. The earliest Christians understood the role of communion, intimacy, and relationship building as imperative to discipleship. In the Book of Acts (2:42-47), community is articulated: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.”

It sounds contrary to speak in the ideal of intimacy of Christian relationships but then put on the brakes. Consider these issues: There is a difference between being friendly and being friends with children and youth. I do not include young people in my social circle. Healthy boundaries between adults and young people must be maintained. It is uncomfortable and inappropriate when there seems to be a special relationship between an adult and a young person who seems to be a favorite. The appearance of special relationships will always undermine one’s effectiveness in addressing the whole community. As ministers, we are called to objectively assess how others might perceive or misconstrue your behavior and the behavior of the adults with whom you minister. Social networking makes it difficult to maintain the perception of treating all equally. There is great risk in patrolling the internet for the young people to whom you minister. While a young person should have no expectation that statements made online are private, it is the parent’s role to monitor their child’s behavior, and those who minister to young people on behalf of the church never should usurp the role of the parent. Intentionally monitoring and probing where young people have shared their intimate thoughts violates their privacy, not unlike picking up a participant’s retreat journal over a meal break.

Now, when I share my personal policy not to friend young people under the age of eighteen, I do get some pushback. How can I celebrate kids’ birthdays…? How can I publicize upcoming events…? How can I monitor the loves lives of the kids…? And the questions each end in “…without Facebook?”

Facebook has not even been around a full decade yet. There are ways to develop pages that give your church a presence online. As for the rest, those of us who have been around for a while still send birthday cards through the mail and keep our ears perked during pizza breaks.

What’s the point? Jesus is calling you and I to enter into students’ lives, live incarnationally among them, and embrace the inherent danger that brings. Jesus isn’t calling you to do anything stupid or to break the law. But he often calls us to do things others consider stupid, unsafe even.

Youth ministry is dangerous. It will bring you into temptation. It’ll bring you face to face with your deepest fears and greatest annoyances. It’ll cause you to create policies and break them at the same time. Chances are, as you engage with students online, you’ll see all of that and a whole lot more.

I remember several years ago, when Xanga was hot, stumbling around and finding most of my students’ blogs. I was shocked by what I read. Many of them shared intimate details of their lives they’d never shared with an adult in our ministry. Fears, doubts, experiments, dirty deeds, the whole enchilada. That knowledge forced me to consider my response. Since I had crossed the line and found them in space they presumed to be private, what was I going to do about it?

In the end I decided not to broach the subjects, either directly with them or indirectly through my choice of teaching topics. To have done so would’ve revealed that I had violated their privacy. Sure, they hadn’t password-protected those things to keep me out. It wasn’t as though I had done much more than surf around to a few links. But I didn’t go there because I hadn’t been invited either.

Invitation is the dividing line in my eyes. I think that, as we engage with our students through social media, it has to be about permission. I know many of them say things in Facebook messages or chat that aren’t honoring to God. I know many of them have secret Tumblr accounts and private circles on Twitter and/or Google Plus. But I don’t want to force myself there without permission. I don’t think my role as a youth worker should come with expectations that I’m an FBI agent, cracking into their private spaces to discover what they really think.

That’s my advice. Don’t go sneaking around where you haven’t been invited. Instead, live before your students with open arms and invitation to deeper and deeper levels of intimate, incarnational discipleship.

The second question is about your own disclosure. Should you encourage students to friend you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, read your blog, or add you on Google Plus?

First, I think your church leadership should wrestle through this question together. I know it sounds lame to think about drafting a policy, but there are both philosophy of ministry and legitimate liability concerns to think through. Most school districts do not allow teachers to socialize with students on Facebook. There is good logic there that is worth wrestling through as a staff. Whatever the policy is, it’ll take the staff team policing one another to enforce it.

Second, I think that when you do engage your students, you should do it through a ministry account and not your personal account. For instance, it’d be a good idea to create a Facebook page for your ministry or church and then interact with your students by using Facebook as a page. It’s a nuanced difference but an important one. It puts you in a position where you are obviously an agent of the ministry instead of the individual person. Because, at the end of the day, that is your role. Just like you attend a Friday night football game as a representative from the high school ministry, you engage with students online as a representative of a ministry.

Do you get the picture? I’ve been burned a time or two in this category and, because this fishbowl I’m writing in is actually a public aquarium, I’ll be as honest as I can and totally vague about specifics. Let me just start by affirming two things: 1) We all need safe friendships at church. All of us. 2) When you’re the youth pastor or youth leader, they are hard to find.

Part of this is because you spend a lot of time with teens, and teens are not safe or healthy for accountability for you. So, the group you work with—unlike an adult ministry—is not a possible option for a safe friendship. Another reason is that, unless you’re at a really big church, if you’re the youth pastor, the pastors on your team are often people you answer to. Try as you may, it’s really hard to have a safe friendship with your boss who signs your checks or, when you confess your sins, doesn’t also muddy it with your leadership responsibilities. Which leads us to another reason we both need and find it hard to have safe friendships. Everyone around us is looking to us for leadership and guidance, and a safe friendship is one where you can be the uninhibited you. In a safe friendship, you share joys without creating jealousy and failures without creating judgment. So it’s hard. Understanding all of that, here are a few thoughts about how:

Avoid plastic people, curious people, and over-sharing people. Plastic people are fake. They poop potpourri. Their world never stinks, and they never fail. Their marriages are perfect, their lives always look put together, and they are not real or safe. Curious people always want to know “How are you, really?” way before they have earned the right to the full answer. They want to know about your marriage, your life, and your kids, and they are just too curious. My experience says they are not really interested in you; they just take pride in being in the know. Beware. Over-sharing people tell everyone everything. If you tell them everything, expect them to tell everyone. Avoid them.

Be safe. Be authentic. Be wise. You can’t expect to create safe friendships with others if you’re not safe. So don’t be plastic, don’t go searching out details in people’s lives for fun, and don’t gossip. Be a friend who is there. Be humble and share honestly your successes and failures to the degree that others can hear them. Don’t pretend you have it all together. Don’t hang all your laundry in the front yard either.

Start with a few. Start Slow. Pray for God to lead you and then invest in someone whose life you respect. Start slow. Grab weekly java. Open your heart and see where it leads. Then if it’s safe, share your hopes, dreams, and fears. If the passion for friendship is mutual, then invest. Ask God to protect it. Your safe friendship is also a chief battlefield for ministry. Know that the devil is not fond of it and will work hard to destroy it. Guard your friendships in prayer. Choose them carefully.

Join a network or create one. Sometimes the safest friendships can be found inside the church but outside your local body. This isn’t an excuse for being an outsider in your local church or for lacking vulnerability there, but there is some truth in someone who totally gets your calling yet is not looking to you for approval or leadership. The right network of pastors from a couple of churches can, if comparison is declared off limits, be a very safe place. I actually meet with a youth pastor network monthly, a group of three pastors quarterly, and annually with a group of five long-haul pastoral friends from all over the state for a week of accountability and friendship. All have proven invaluably safe places for me.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle makes it clear that the number of people with whom one can sustain the kind of relationship he calls a perfect friendship is quite small. The role of youth pastor is relationally driven, which means the capacity to maintain a large group of friends is not sustainable. There is no need to have a large pool of surface-level friendships but rather having two to three really great friends outside the church. So the question remains: Should youth pastors find friends inside or outside the church?

I strongly argue that the best solution to finding safe friendships is simply outsourcing your friendships outside the church. First, youth workers need more community outside their church communities. Getting sucked into the church fishbowl is dangerous because your life, perspective, and experience are only rooted in your church community. You won’t be able to see life outside your church community lens. It is important to have non-church friends to help you objectively think and process about your life, marriage, and ministry.

Second, youth workers need outlets that force them to get out of the fishbowl. You need legitimate reasons to jump out. If church life is the only thing you have going, it will literally suck the life out of you. Find ways to enjoy life outside your church life.

Third, friends at church can only see you as a church employee. You need friends who see you as you. Ministry is your job, so don’t feel obligated to have best friends at your church. You cannot get on a vulnerable level with friends inside the church without changing their perspective of who you are as a leader in the church.

Fourth, having friends at church is too risky. You need safe and trusted relationships were you can freely vent without having to filter your thoughts and words. It is problematic when you are worrying if your venting sessions will backfire. Church people love to gossip about other church people, especially if it is about the church leadership.

Youth pastors have to figure out how to build relationships where you can be honest. My only solution is to jump out of the fishbowl and start intentionally carving time to cultivate friendships outside the church. Here are two ways to cultivate safe, fun, and trusted friendships outside the church:

Be committed to developing long-term friendship. In order to build great relationships, you have to value friendships. The best friends for youth pastors are other youth pastors. Youth pastors share interests and passions with other youth pastors. Join a local youth pastor network so you can befriend other like-minded youth pastors with whom you can talk life, marriage, and ministry.

Find hobbies outside the church. In other words, get a life. I was just recently at the National Youth Workers Convention in San Diego, and I stopped the youth ministry guru/veteran Les Christie to ask: “What has kept you sane in youth ministry tenure?” Without any hesitation, he passionately said, “I found hobbies outside the church. I found other things to do than just youth ministry.” I smiled and gave him a hug and said, “I completely agree.” The hobbies I have pursued outside of church have kept me sane and given me other friends.

So how can one guarantee safe and life-giving friendships? Shatter the fishbowl, be committed to cultivating friends outside the church, and find hobbies that pull you away from church work.

On Facebook, I have almost five thousand friends. That might sound impressive, but allow me to put it in perspective. Whereas most people meet one person at a time, my work sometimes affords me the great and humbling opportunity to be in front of lots of people on a regular basis. In addition to youth ministry, I’m in a band; I do some theater work; I produce and speak at events pretty regularly; stuff like that. Some days nobody requests my friendship, and other days, dozens do.

In real life, I know a fraction of the people who befriend me, but it doesn’t stop them from approaching me in public, stepping into my bubble, and exuberantly declaring, “Hey! We’re friends…” I’m pretty quick to assume they’re talking about Facebook so as not to let an involuntary facial scowl tell my real thought of, No, we ain’t! I can usually catch myself. Usually. In brief conversation, they might recall one of my statuses, a posted picture, or inquire about some upcoming event I’m promoting. Then without fail, that awkward moment of how we wrap this up is upon us.

And no matter how kind, pleasant, or amusing the person was, I invariably leave that conversation not feeling known but rather feeling watched and reminded how many people on any given day are doing just that. Watching. Some with good intent, some not, and I don’t always have a way of knowing which is which. It’s certainly a vulnerable position to be in. It makes one long for safety. Truth is, as fulfilling and purposeful as ministry can be, it often is like being in a fishbowl set on top of a really tall pedestal with lots of people bumping the stem. Even with lots of people around, it can be a lonely place and terribly silent in the midst of constant noise.

Recently at a community event to honor one of my friends, I was given the opportunity to publicly applaud his many accomplishments, talents, and endeavors. I chose instead to applaud his friendship. My speech was this: “My friend, you are anointed. To anoint means to make sacred. Sacred means to esteem, secure, or protect from violation. Your friendship has been that in my life. It has been anointed. It has protected me not only from outside opposition but even from the oppositions I sometimes put on myself. I would trade you for nothing.” After the ceremony was over, we went to dinner, complained about the food, laughed about all the things we found funny, and then wished each other well before heading back to our respective fishbowls. So, here’s my slant.

There’s nothing you can do about the fishbowl. Get used to it. It’s part of the call.

Recognize that there are people anointed to be your friend. Spend less time trying to find friendships. Rather, take time to discover the ones you already have. Hone in on the people who consistently and quietly support and inspire you; the ones who can challenge you while simultaneously making your life light—and don’t sneakily hand you an emotional bill for it.

Don’t let friendships become stale. Find ways to keep ’em fresh. Take trips. Have regular and spontaneous appointments. Go out of your way to hang out, even if it’s just for twenty minutes. Give each other passes on being perfect. Call or text each other and laugh about something dumb then just hang up.

Don’t make the mistake of not investing in your friendships until you need to. Purposely cultivate, protect, and grow them. To not do so is cheating and cheap, and the results will show it. Conversely, don’t make the mistake of expending energy on people who drain and deplete you. They might be anointed—just not for you.

In short, I’m saying, if you gotta be the fish in the bowl, let your friendships be the water.

We all have relational currency with everyone we encounter. I choose to spend a large amount of the available currency in each individual relationship with my youth focused essentially on helping them articulate their faith. That’s what we’re all here for, right? To help the young saints of our communities grow in their faith. One mark of growth in faith is the ability to articulate that faith.

In my opinion, articulation is a product of conviction and practice. My kids like to joke with me about what happens when I start asking questions. “Oh, here she goes again!” they’ll say. We laugh about it, but those questions are how I help them grow. Those questions provide them with the opportunity to articulate in a safe place what they believe. Sometimes those questions are directed at the group, and sometimes the question is more appropriate for an individual. It can be healthy to wrestle with issues of faith as a group and individually with proper support and encouragement.

I’m not referring to the equivalent of a firing squad that has them leaving their time with you feeling as if they aren’t Christian. I’m referring to challenging them in a healthy way to say what they know in their hearts or what they are learning as a part of their personal growth. They will say things that even surprise themselves; things that create more questions and things that spark strong convictions.

In addition to these opportunities to state what they believe within the community of the group and individually with me, corporate opportunities within the community of the church are powerful moments for the youth and the church body. Some of them have testimonies of faith that rival the lives and testimonies of our own faith stories. When they have come to a place where they are comfortable to approach this opportunity with even an air of confidence, our support, advocacy, and encouragement will be invaluable. We might even end up as their bulletproof vests, but that’s okay too.

The greatest gift of youth (and young adult) ministry in my life is to have the opportunity to advocate, encourage, and support my kids as they grow in their love for Christ and articulate their faith. I’ll take a hit and sacrifice a win for them any day, and I’m sure you’d do the same for yours.

Questions are better than answers. Most youth leaders fear the socially awkward silence that follows a question in a meeting. That pause is a golden moment. In that absence of aural noise, thoughts happen. Too often, we don’t give time for students to think through the truths we teach. It’s impossible for teens to internalize new ideas without time to process them. I began using the Socratic method in my teaching. This teaching style focuses more on processing questions than on finding answers. Questions need to be open ended, provoking the stillness needed to develop a response. Binary questions (those that can be answered yes or no) shut down thoughts and conversation. So I learned to shape my questions into those that couldn’t devolve into a one-word answer.

How you think is more important than what you know. At the same time I began developing my questioning technique, I saw a flaw in the educational system. This flaw focused teaching around memorizing and regurgitating facts. Teens weren’t being taught to think. Realizing the need, I began to organize logical trains of thought, much like the Pauline epistles. When considering a topic, I tried to consider what questions students would have from their perspective. Progressing logically through a subject helped model a way for students to reason through questions away from our time together. I began seeing youth using these skills outside of church.
The process is more important than the outcomes. Here’s the real kicker for this way of teaching. If you use this method, there will be uncomfortable moments. As you wrestle through some tough thoughts and allow your students to ask difficult questions, it will challenge both you and them. Those who look for an easy answer will be frustrated. I constantly remind my group that life doesn’t always resolve itself. Faith believes even when we don’t see the outcomes. We are called to work out our faith even into discomfort.

Warning: This way of leading discussions isn’t for everyone. It pulls teens from a pre-adolescent, concrete mindset into the abstract perspective of adulthood. As you introduce this method, the potential for frustration will be high. Acknowledge that what you are asking of your young adults is hard. Thank them for participating and encourage them for growing into a new way of thinking.

So, why would you do this if it has the potential to frustrate students? I get that question often from new parents. If today’s adolescents are going to be able to stand firm in their faith, they will eventually have to own it. All discipline causes discomfort at the time, but then it produces amazing results. If teenagers are going to be able to articulate their faith, they will have to face the discomfort of working through it for themselves.

As a result of their collective traits, with the fun and joy of working with these young men comes significant thought about intentional ways I can help them develop an articulated faith. Each and every week (and the communication/community touch points in between) I absolutely must be purposeful about my passing on of the faith.

Below are eight intentional ways I am helping students develop an articulated faith.

1. Putting myself in situations where my life of faith and their inquiries about faith converge.
2. Allowing my group to ask any question at any time about anything in order to re-narrate their questions around faith in God.
3. Send them various resources they can read and interact with in order to stretch their thinking and come into their own understanding of life and faith.
4. Help them develop a communal hermeneutic—a way to read the Bible as a community that gives them a framework for interpretation and application.
5. Be a visible presence at our church’s gatherings so they can see how important developing an articulated faith is to me.
6. Help them (by modeling it) with an ability to lean all of their past, current, and future understandings about the Christian faith up against what Scripture says about any given theme (if it does), what the church has believed through its growth over time, what their own abilities to reason help them conclude, and what the personal and practical experiences of their own faith help them understand.
7. Inspire them to see how their faith development and the ability to articulate that in both word and deed impact the world and participate with God’s mission in the world. In other words, help them try to finish any sentence about their own lives with the phrase, “for the sake of the world.” For example, I play football, for the sake of the world. I am going to study education in college, for the sake of the world. I am engaging acts of mercy for the sake of the world. You get the point.
8. Provide situational ways in which students can engage the narratives of this world. Every time we plan a day of serving in our community, we’ll spend time reflecting on that experience, and I’ll help them navigate through conversation as to what meaning they are making for themselves but in the context of the entire community/small group.

If we aren’t being intentional about helping students developing an articulated faith, then we are shaping and guiding students into spiritual formation for the mission of God. If we aren’t shaping students into spiritual formation for the mission of God, then we are most likely running a babysitting/recreation/daycare/etc. organization. Isn’t that the most offensive, unfair perception placed on a youth worker?

As we unpacked that, he talked about the danger of wrapping up my identity with my vocation and the practical implications for that when things went well in ministry and when things didn’t go well. His rant stuck with me. If I don’t see a burning bush or get suddenly blinded by Jesus, then “calling” is probably not the right description for a job hunt.

That little exchange changed my view on working in the church for the next ten years. We over-spiritualize the whole work/life relationship. It’s a job with a task, and we are professionals hired to fill a role. No offense, but your ministry gig is just that—a gig. That doesn’t mean you love it any less. That doesn’t lessen your significance in the ministry. But it does mean that it’s just a job, and you shouldn’t make it something that it isn’t. It’s what you do, not who you are.

So how do I know when it’s time to leave? Here are a few criteria I’ve used in helping others through this process.

Are you still having fun? Working with teenagers in a church and dealing with all of the ancillary stuff is hard work. And if you aren’t having fun anymore, it’s time to move on. That doesn’t mean every minute has to be filled with games. But it does mean that there is a tipping point between joyfully doing the stuff you don’t like that goes along with the job and looking at your calendar and only seeing things you dream. If you don’t like what you are doing and where you are working, you should quit.

Is this just a valley? I spent eighteen months as the solo pastor at a church after the other two pastors quit suddenly. I know valleys. Those eighteen months were survivable because I knew it was just a valley and we’d be okay when we popped out the other side. During those eighteen months of weddings, funerals, pulpit supply, and endless elder meetings, I gained a new appreciation for the role of the senior pastor. On top of that, when we came out of the valley, the joy was that much greater.

Do you love the staff? I was always jealous of the teams I saw at the big leadership events. They seemed to love each other and want to hang out all the time. I don’t know if that’s the model for ministering together we should strive for. But I do know that you should love doing life with the people you work with.

Do you still love the people? There’s a difference between having healthy boundaries between your ministry life and your personal life and just plain not liking the people in your ministry. If you don’t legitimately like the people in your community, then it’s probably time for you to do something else.

Are you there because of fear? I think a lot of people stay too long in vocational ministry because they are afraid that they can’t do anything else. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You can be a youth worker without being an employee of the church! Never stay at a job because the inconvenience of looking for work is worse than staying at a job you hate.

At the end of the day, there isn’t a formula for knowing when it’s time to double down or time to get out of town. But I’ve learned that there is great value in asking your spouse, your close friends, and a couple other advisers periodically.

How are your heart and soul? I work at a church that I love. I love my staff, the students, their families, and the whole community. I wake up in the morning thinking about the church and am really excited about all the possibilities. Most of the time I feel like I am valued. I worked at a church once where I didn’t feel that way. That was hard. I think self-evaluation of how you are doing at your soul is a huge step. If you feel like you are at a place that nurtures and cares for it, then you are in a good place. If the opposite is true, then you might want to consider a transition.

How are you compensated? I mean way more than money, but I’ll start by talking about strict finances. Do you get paid enough to live on? Are you able to make ends meet and not eat noodles every night? Does the church have a plan for how you might be compensated better during life transitions or milestones? Often in our world, churches don’t take care of us differently when we get married, have kids, or graduate. This is especially true in today’s tight economy. But this is a long-term question you will have to wrestle with. It may be that you are compensated fairly, and I don’t think money should be at the top of your list when it comes to transitions, but it is a factor.

Is there opportunity for growth? This sounds way more like a business question than a church question, but I think it’s still worth asking. If you’ve been in your job for a while and do it well, is there any opportunity to take on more leadership and responsibilities? In many cases, the answer is yes, and you could see yourself sticking around for a long time because there are places you can move into as your life changes. I’ve moved into more of a leader of leaders role as I’ve gotten older and been around longer. It’s a good place for me. If you are in a role that will likely never change and you feel already like you are butting up against a ceiling, you might want to consider a transition.

What happens when you graduate from school? I’m a huge proponent of education. Graduation is a natural time of transition. I left a church after I graduated from seminary. It was a great transition, and everyone celebrated with me. It may be that you are more qualified for a different role after graduation and doors are opening to you. Or you might find that your church wants to move you into something else or increase your salary.

Are you done? This is a simple yet profound question. The hardest year of ministry for me is always the fifth year. It is the year after the first group of students I started with as ninth graders graduate. We are not supposed to have favorites, but in general, that first class I spent four years with will always be mine. So the year after they graduate is a difficult year. I miss them a ton. At one church, I was done in my fifth year but stuck around for two more. All of us will get to a point where we recognize that we know we are finished with our role. But many of us like paychecks and hate transition and just stick around because we are too scared to follow God somewhere else.
One thing I really like about the Slant 33 blog is that you can read two other people’s thoughts here about transitions. Getting multiple opinions is probably really helpful. All situations are different. My last bit of advice is that you have to weigh all factors before making any decision. Focusing too much on any one factor will probably lead you to make the wrong decision. I did that once. I decided a location I wanted to live and a beach I wanted to spend a lot of time at. My blinders came up, and I didn’t weigh all the factors. Great beach, wrong church.

I am a church mutt—or, for those needing a more dignified description, I am what you might call well rehearsed in navigating through different church cultures and traditions. While that might seem like a negative, for the most part, I believe I’m better for it. For the minor part, I’ve learned that many of the traditions we hold sacred are attributable to nothing more than personal or communal style, preference, or mere adaptations. Conversely, there are things we hold sacred in youth ministry that I’ve found to be not much more than an oftentimes feeble attempt at being trendy.

The kids in my youth group are by most accounts normal, but even so, they are an interesting bunch indeed. They regularly shoot bullets into many textbook youth ministry traditions. While they may like and appreciate the pizzas, games, and fun outings, they consistently remind me that those are not the reasons they come to youth group.

A few years ago, I decided to surprise the kids by converting one of our regular youth group gatherings to a game and movie night. My team and I worked hard to turn the youth room into a movie theater, complete with fresh popcorn, a candy bar, dim lighting, surround sound, and a larger-than-life projection. The night went well. Kids had fun. But as they left with an abundance of treats, one student turned to me and said, “This was cool, but I come to church for church.” I might have brushed that off as just one kid’s little opinion until a good number of them chimed in with agreement. It was agreement dripping from melting popsicles but agreement nonetheless.

Likewise was the time I skipped prayer in order to give a visiting artist more time to perform. The reminder was a smarmy yet again a clear, “Liked it, but…” I learned that while people appreciate keeping things interesting and current and relevant, they (even youth) “go to church for church;” to worship, pray, receive instruction, and be reminded of and connected to the one thing that is and forever will be bigger than themselves. Those traditions are sacred. But, as always, there’s another side.

Boys aren’t supposed to wear hats in church. That’s a big deal, particularly in the African American church because, to some degree, the act of wearing a hat represents clout and stature. To wear it in the “house of de Lawd” is an absolute offense because it makes your stature of greater importance than his. But see, for a millennial teenage boy, the hat is nothing more than a fashion accessory. To him, it means nothing and has no direct bearing whatsoever on his focus. Nor is it an indication of his lack of reverence for the Almighty. Removing of the hat is a tradition I’ve seen many a deacon and teenager squabble over, and while the Deacon usually wins it comes at the expense of the boy being so confused that he ends up completely checking out for the entire service over something that didn’t really matter.

But you know what modern accessory is clearly a threat to a young man’s reverence and focus? The cell phone; be it an iPhone or an Android. To the worship service, the smartphone is a handheld distraction just waiting to draw your attention and reverence away from the communal worship experience. Yeah, no matter how powerful and inspiring the worship service might be, it seems the urge to be connected to the outside world, even at the expense of being connected to God, is so alluring that we lose thousands of teens (and adults) to its intoxicating grips Sunday after Sunday. It matters, and every teenage boy and girl knows it.

So, rather than focus on the dated, ineffectual tradition of removing the hat, I’ve elected to zoom in on what the tradition is really intended to achieve: respect, reverence, and focus on God. So go ahead and wear your hat, Mr. Millennial Teenage Boy, but texting, Tweeting, and status updating on your cell phone are a no-no because it steals from you the whole reason you come to church. And while we're at it, please stand for the reading of God's Word. But don’t worry, in a few years it won’t be your cell phone. It’ll probably be your hat.

There’s a story about why people cut off the end of the holiday ham. Lots of people speculate about the meaning and reason for such a long-held tradition. Many thought and accepted that it was because it cooked better by giving the ham juices room to flow. So one day, after many years of going to Grandma’s house, it became time for the daughter to prepare the big dinner. Over at the daughter’s house, Grandma conspicuously watched as the meal was prepared, and sure enough, the time came to prepare the holiday ham. The daughter, per the tradition, cut off the end, put it in the pan, and then put the pan in the oven. She turned around to catch Grandma’s gaze. Trying not to be critical, Grandma squirmed before asking, “Why did you cut off the end of that ham?” The daughter quickly and proudly responded, “Because that’s what you taught me to do. It’s the tradition!” Grandma chuckled, shook her head, and sweetly said, “I cut the end of the ham off because my pan was too small.”

Don’t neglect traditions for the sake of fleeting trends. But neither uphold them just to exercise ineffectual customs. Let the reason be the reason.

Four benefits to tradition:
Shared stories. If you do an event or have a ritual or keep a tradition over the long haul, then your ministry has a consistent shared journey. Students and staff can say, “Remember that time at summer camp…” and they all have an instant shared story. Sure, each year was different, but there’s camaraderie and unity and ownership in shared language and experience, all of which are like gold in youth ministry.

Calendaring and family planning are easy. If you always do a Christmas party the first weekend in December, or every year you go to summer camp the second week in July, you become a staple in a family’s planning. They know what to expect and when to expect it. They know how to budget and what you generally tend to do. You make it easy for a family to plan with you.

We can learn and improve based on experience. If you constantly are changing stuff, then you will constantly be trying to reinvent the wheel or guess about variables you can’t predict. In traditions, you’ve done it before and figured out what works and doesn’t work. Therefore, you know the best road to get there and where to stop for dinner, the best place to do small groups, the best format for a rite of passage, the best way to run your weekend service, the best way to do all kinds of things because you’ve also done them wrong and fixed them. Tradition lets you learn from your mistakes and improve.

The logistics can be done in your sleep. You already know the family that does the food. You know who plays the music and who your leaders will be. You just call them, confirm a couple of things, and move on because they already know what to do, what to expect, and how to help. The logistics are virtually done before you even start. Tweak the flyer, fix two things you learned last year, make some phone calls, put it up on Facebook. Done.

Four dangers of tradition:
We can get in a rut. I once had a mentor tell me that a “rut is nothing but a grave with the ends kicked out.” Ruts are dangerous and should be avoided. Instead of thinking about what is best or what could and should be, we just do what we’ve always done and hope it’s better this year. We start worshiping sacred cows instead of Jesus, and before we know it, the nonnegotiable thing in ministry is not following the leading of the Holy Spirit to advance the spiritual lives of students; now it’s, “Do whatever you want, as long as you do this thing, this way.”

We get predictable. Tradition can also lead to predictability in a bad way. Instead of keeping your students on the edge of their seats, wondering what will happen next, they start to ditch stuff because they’ve already done it. Even if it was amazing the first time, the second time was okay, and the third time was, um…predictable. When we do and say what everyone thinks we’ll do and say, we lose our leadership edge in the lives of students.

We start to tell a boring story. Tradition has a way of leading us into boredom. No one wants to be boring. No one wants to tell a boring story. But when tradition trumps risk and new adventures and uncharted ministry territory, we start to tell a boring story. That’s a danger worth avoiding.

We become modern-day Pharisees. There’s a fine line between respect for tradition and legalism. Whenever we create new or hold onto old traditions, we risk becoming the very people Jesus so sternly rebuked. We are called to honor the sacred. We are not called to worship the traditional.

Fixate on him. This is my default response to discouragement. I keep thinking about the symptoms of the problem and how it affects me in adverse ways. This road leads me to create stories about how this problem came to be and how someone is intentionally dissin’ me or devaluing all that I have to offer. This response can become an all-consuming exertion of emotional energy, which always leads to frustration or another response I typically lean on, avoidance.

I have become a pro at avoiding things. Discouragement is often painful, and because I love my flesh so much, I usually try to protect it from any discomfort at all, including feeling bummed out. I let the discouragement set in and just leave it there and attempt to ignore that it exists by immersing myself in anything that will distract from the truth of what is really going on. Work and media are my two favorite places to hide from the roots of discouragement because they redirect my attention to things that make me feel good or just numb my senses from the pain that always seems to accompany discouragement.

One element of the cultural norms in Minnesota is passive aggression. Responding to discouragement with a sucker punch from the side becomes one of the ways I like to stay true to my Minnesota roots. So, after I have made up some incredible stories about the root of the discouragement, I try to get at those roots by taking cheap shots at them (always other people, never my own crap). And in true Scandinavian fashion, those shots look more like shadow boxing and not a real fight because they only occur in my head or in the presence of people who are not the intended target of the swing. This cognitive confrontation is soothing to my flesh and keeps it safe from counter punches at the same time; it’s wonderful.

Each of these methods leads to the same place: greater discouragement and greater sin. Each method is me choosing to believe some form of lie from Satan, “the father of lies” (John 8:44) and not the truth that will set me free (John 8:31-32) from discouragement. I am sinning in that I am leaning on my own strength and abilities to try to move away from my ol’ pal Idaknow.

Only recently have I been able to confront the roots of discouragement the way I should, and I hope you can too. Every discouraging thought is rooted in a lie of some type. Every lie is from Satan, and God’s Word is truth. If I am going to battle the root cause of discouragement (lies), I have to expose that lie to the truth in God’s Word.

When discouragement comes, pause and think about the root. What is the root intended to do? You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 ESV)

John 10:10 tells us that Satan’s purpose is to kill us and destroy us. Is the discouragement helping to do that in any way? If it is, then my guess is that it is from Satan and rooted in some sort of lie.

Expose the lie. We can’t just do this with our intellect because “our flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). Understanding lies is a spiritual exercise (2 Corinthians 10:3-6), and we must depend on the Spirit exposing lies through the truth in God’s Word. When I read the Bible, there is something supernatural that happens because the Spirit and God’s living and active Word work together in me, shining light in darkness and bringing life to me. The more I reading the Word, the more I am able to discern the truth from the lies I hear.

Believe the truth. I can choose to believe the truth. I can read a bunch and know Scripture, but if I don’t believe the truth there, I will continue to be held captive to the slavery of discouragement caused by believing lies. Ask for help of the Holy Sprit to give you faith to believe his truth and not the lies that have you bound in discouragement.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ESV)

When the feeling is subjective, learn to be objective. Discouragement is an “and” and “therefore” emotion. There are usually other feelings and thoughts associated with it. I use a journal to identify the emotions and work through them like below. It might feel a little silly, but just a couple attempts at this has really helped me!

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, so I wonder if it’s worth it, and therefore feel discouraged.

I feel lonely, unrecognized, and discouraged in my work. I give it everything I’ve got, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

Use your emotional vocabulary to identify the specific emotions and triggers. Assess each one objectively and reframe the feeling. For example:

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, but other students have made positive choices. I can prepare my students, pray, and support them, but their choices are not my responsibility. And their choices don’t reflect my influence or the value of my work.

We are a product of what we think, so replacing subjective thoughts with objective and realistic ones is a key way to combat unhealthy thinking when we’re discouraged.

Combat weaknesses with strengths. Often we can feel super discouraged with our failures, perceived failures, and struggles. If you’re getting discouraged because of the tasks around you, ask yourself the question: Am I operating out of my natural strengths? We’ve all been in situations where we had to work in areas that are not our natural gifts, and we don’t feel up to the challenge. Database management, anyone? It’s easy to end up with a to-do list that’s uninspiring, people on your back wanting administrative deadlines met, and then feel unmotivated and discouraged. Thoughts like, This isn’t what I signed up for! start to swirl. Here’s the hard truth: Everyone has stuff they have to do but don’t want to do (usually because it’s a weakness, not a strength); it’s part of being a grown-up. So step up to the plate and use these simple guidelines to stop getting trapped in a downward spiral that leads to discouragement.

Get it done as soon as you can. Procrastination is like a beetroot stain. If you put it off once, you’ll put it off again and again and set yourself up to get beaten up. Also, if others are relying on you, you’ll prevent yourself feeling like you’ve let people down if you get on it ASAP. To achieve it, try using the guideline below.

Follow the 80/20 rule. Try as much as you can to spend 80% of your activity time (work, exercise, hobbies, family) doing what you’re good at, and give 20% of your time to the stuff you have to do. Try doing your 20% first so you finish your day in a positive frame of mind. That way your students, your bosses, your family, and your friends get to deal with the energized person working in his or her strengths.

Be honest with expectations on yourself and the expectations others have. If you really struggle with administration, deadlines, details, or creativity, it’s important to be honest with yourself and those around you. It doesn’t have to be negative. We’ll always be more productive in our natural strengths, and we need to debunk the myth of superhero, can-do-it-all youth workers!

I feel far more confident mentoring and training my youth volunteers than being the leader up front at every youth meeting, so I’d like to work with some of our young people to develop their skills in that area, and I’ll be more focused and effective if I’m not stressed about leading a meeting every week.

I find it takes me twice as long to update the database and email out the programme updates each week, so I’d like to ask one of our volunteers who’s really good with detail to do the updates and give me a summary each week.

I love being a youth leader, but I’m just not confident about leading a teaching night. I’d much rather make sure that everyone has a ride, that there’s enough supper, and make note of anyone who didn’t turn up this week. I prefer talking to students one on one or in small groups than preparing a 15-minute talk to present.

Accept that being fully human, fully alive, is to experience it all. Hopefully these strategies read like how to work through or address discouragement, not how to avoid it altogether. There is a subtle difference! It’s important for our own personal development but also for our students, volunteers, and bosses to see us dealing with discouragement in a healthy way. The key is to not let it get such a hold on you that it starts to chart the course of your life and ministry. Sometimes discouragement is a perfectly valid emotion to experience. But it’s a momentary response that needs to propel you into one or all of the following: self-discovery and development (what you can learn); change to environment (removing obstacles or unproductive habits); professional development (identifying skills to learn or acquire).

We could probably make a long list of reasons for this tension, discussing the demands of the church, the difficulty of separating work and home life when your calling as a pastor is a 24/7 reality, the needs of people, etc. But, regardless of the reason, if you want to stay in ministry and stay married to your spouse, then my observation and experience tell me it will require intentionality.

Here are five things we’ve tried to do as a married couple that I think have been strategically helpful. Sometimes we’re better at these than others.

Remember, God called me to marriage. Bear with me here. This one is more philosophical than practical at first. The idea that God called me to be a pastor is both true and needed to keep my butt in my pastoral seat. Honestly, without a call, I would have left a long time ago. But it is equally true that God has called me to be married. Maybe that call is what keeps my butt there too in the tough times. The two callings are inseparable. So it is logistically impossible for me to say “God has called me to” anymore. It is always, “God is calling us.” I don’t mean that your spouse must work with you in your youth ministry. I just mean that the idea that God can move me without any kind of effect on my bride is simply false. So, if you’re married, calling has we implications and must be fleshed out in the community of your marriage first. This is a mental shift that says, I’ll wait for God to confirm a call in us I’ll think we before me, and I’ll make my spouse a priority in my decision-making process. The next point is a practical way to flesh this out.

Give first right of refusal to your spouse. If you want to honor your spouse, then run your calendar and commitments by him or her first. Don’t assume that he or she “understands” or will be supportive of your ridiculous work schedule. Sometimes it means agreeing together that a season is going to be abnormally busy right before a camp or something, and you can prepare together accordingly. Maybe it means deciding that we’re booking too many nights out or deciding that a specific weekend needs to be spent with family instead of with the church. Yes, it’s a two-way conversation, but clear communication saves a world of hurt in marriage, especially when it comes to scheduling. If my wife feels like she’s part of the process of making the decisions, she’s much more supportive when the strain of them is felt. As a side note, sharing a calendar that we can both access on our computers and phones has done two things. [1] It’s made our schedules visible to each other at all times. [2] It’s produced a myth that, since we can see it, we’ve talked about it. In some ways, the fact that we can both see each other’s calendars has increased the need to communicate verbally so no false assumptions are made.

Get away. Just the two of you. Perhaps the single greatest investment we’ve made in our marriage has been twice-a-year retreats. We get away for three days and two nights twice a year, without the kids. A getaway weekend is worth its weight in gold for marriage longevity. Get cost creative if you need to. Just get away.

Stop multi-tasking and unplug. When we’re at our marriage best is when we turn off our cell phones, shut down our computers, and give each other our undivided attention. The idea that we can do marriage well with the digital world constantly interrupting us has become increasingly difficult for us. Our best shot at a healthy marriage is giving our marriage all of ourselves intentionally.

Be best friends, not ministry problem solvers. I trust your spouse is someone you’d call a best friend. The temptation is to then bring your best friend into the loop on your ministry problems. If this becomes your norm, don’t be surprised to find that your marriage has become consumed with ministry tasks. Instead of talking about your heart or planning a vacation, your marriage conversations become mini church-staff meetings. Be very careful. This has destroyed many a marriage. I recommend you have a longer church-staff meeting before turning your dinner table into another one.

So I said no, even though everything in me wanted to say yes. It wasn’t easy, but I knew I needed to make this decision with my husband in mind.

By nature, I’m a juggler, and I feel like I can throw everything into the air and catch it too. In fact, I can’t imagine my life any other way. But I’d have nothing if I lost my most important relationship on earth while trying to catch a few inconsequential items as they compare to the most important things.

And because of this juggling nature, (which I believe is not uncommon for ministry leaders, many who are bi-vocational) I’ve got to follow some rules that lead me to honor my marriage, even when I’m tempted to neglect it.

I’m still discovering new ways of honoring my spouse while working in ministry. New contexts and changes we face give plenty of space for this. Even so, there are a few fail-safe ways to honor my spouse.

Give space. I give space by not volunteering my spouse out. For example, have you ever uttered the words in a staff meeting where they are looking for someone to help in an area where your spouse has obvious gifts, “Oh yeah, my spouse can do that!” Always have a conversation (in private—even if that means sending a text or making a quick call) before you volunteer your most valuable person.

Gather advisors on major ministry and professional decisions. Even if I know the answer to a question, if it’s major, I take it to my T.E.A.M. (Trusted leader, Elder, Always faithful (a close friend), and My spouse). The Africa trip is a great example of this. I was conflicted. I knew the right answer was no, but I wanted to say yes. My TEAM affirmed what was happening in my spirit and supported me in making the honoring choice.

Say no—for the right reasons. Develop healthy boundaries with those you work with. Set expectations that are clear and have been explained. For example, I don’t answer my cell phone during dinner time. I have roughly three hours with my children before they go to bed. I dishonor my spouse if I don’t invest in those hours with my full attention. Sometimes things come up, but they are the exception, not the rule. I try not to overcommit. We are human. If we hyper-schedule ourselves, we’ll find our lives to be frantic, frenzied, and full of confusion. Honor your spouse by saying no. It’s okay.

Get help. One of the biggest blessings has been having the support of a professional design company. The owner of the company attends our church. When asked, she was more than willing to give her time and help. Not only has her company graciously supported us, they have taken visual communication to another level. We have a teenager in our church who started a nonprofit to raise money for clean water. The design company was the first to offer help and support their marketing pieces. For an entire year, they’ve given their creative services to help Birds of Hope raise more than $25,000. I would have jeopardized time with my family if I tried to do this on my own—and the products wouldn’t be half as good. I ask for help with things like this because my marriage is better when I’m not trying to be good at everything. Try asking for something. Make your need public and watch to see how God provides.

Unplug. No church talk at dinnertime or in bed. Enough said. These are the rules, fools. Follow them and thank me later.

Notice. God has given people in ministry an acute awareness of the needs of others around me and an ability to respond to them. I have to remember that my husband is just as deserving of this awareness.

I could have said yes to Africa and then yes to Thailand, an event that came up a week after the Africa offer. Everything would have been okay, but I would have been saying to my husband (and to my kids) that my plan is more important than our purpose together as a family. I’ll have other opportunities to serve and to give around the world, but I may not have another opportunity to honor my family.

Cheers to honoring our spouses, seeing their needs like we see everyone else’s, unplugging to connect with them, getting help and counsel to help us make honoring decisions, saying no to be able to say yes, and giving space to allow our spouses to be the people they were created to be. Sounds like a plan to me.

Context, in the crudest sense, is simply the situation one finds oneself in. There are dimensions to context that play together to help a teacher or facilitator know not only what to teach but also in what ways to teach. Teachers must wrestle with the following three dimensions of context.

First, there is the immediate situation. The immediate situation reveals matters like setting (Is this large-group or small-group learning?) and people involved (What age level/learning style am I teaching? What is the time frame that I have to teach? What is the setup of the room?).

Second, there is the intermediate situation. The intermediate situation provides the teacher with information about the normal environment in which the students learn on an ongoing basis. (Is this the students’ only subject-related formal learning situation? Or is what I am about to teach a supplement to their learning? Are other factors involved in the students’ learning that should shape what I teach? Is there a certain scope and sequence to the students’ learning?)

Third, there is the principal situation. The principal situation is the foremost dimension of context by which both the immediate and intermediate situations are influenced. (What is the common framework in which the students I will be teaching are learning? What is my best understanding of the students’ life perspective coming into this classroom? Are the students predisposed to think any particular way? What are the social and relational dynamics of the students?)

NOTE: You may only need to use the above outline once. For example, I have a small group of senior guys whom I teach each week. The situation outline above was helpful to determine what I would teach each week. I merely go back to it as a reminder since I teach the same twelve guys each week. However, one night I was invited teach at a friend’s church. I taught some high school seniors on the Eucharist. Before I decided to teach on the Eucharist, I used the situational outline above to help me determine that particular topic.

So, to get to the question, I use the simple framework above. I ask questions about the situations (all three dimensions) that help me get the best understanding of what I should teach. I do not start with a topic or theme or subject and then decide how I am going to disseminate information. Rather, I do my best to understand the persons involved in the learning in order that whatever I teach has more of a long-term formational impression. At least, that is my hope.

The reason I start with the context is that, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter what I teach if I can’t take a subject and teach it in a way that my students learn. Then it isn’t teaching; it is merely talking. Talking is about the teacher. Teaching is about the learner.

After determining the unique context I will teach within, I dig even deeper into the immediate situation and ask questions such as the ones below in order to determine what I will teach:

• What would interest the learners in this situation? How can I hold their attention?
• What do I think is important to teach that might enhance or even change the predisposed thinking of the students?
• What expertise do I have that I can most fully inspire others to learn from?
• What do I feel like the students are missing that I think would help shape their lives?
• What are they already learning about that I might be able to go further and deeper with? (For example, is the senior pastor in a series that I could base my teaching times on?
• What can I teach from my own experience that will help them into their future?


How do you determine what you will teach?

Pray for God to reveal the needs of your students. Sermon and series preparation has to start with prayer. My prayer is that God will show me clearly some of the topics I need to cover in the course of the year. Sometimes it will show up in your counseling, sometimes in a conversation, sometimes in the quietness of your own time with Jesus. Either way, be listening for direction in the normal routines of ministry.

Ask them! One time not too long ago, we created a card that listed fifteen topics we could teach on in the coming year. We called it Choose Your Own Adventure and then tackled the most popular topics students wanted to learn/be challenged about.

Create a focus group and run your ideas by them. Every Tuesday during the school year at 4pm, you’ll find me in my office surrounded by a select group of high school student leaders who are my focus group. I run everything by them: rough drafts of sermons, object lessons, ideas, icebreakers, series ideas. They give invaluable insight into what they and their fellow students need to hear and how the message can best be shaped to meet them where they are living. And yes, they have veto power. It kills me when they use it, but I know it is for the greater good.

Be inspired by others. I love nothing more than devouring sermon and series ideas from other people! Youth pastors are creative, so if your idea well is running dry, find some people out there who are killing it. Stolen ideas I’ve had recently: a series on Facebook and a question/answer message where students text in questions to be answered live in the service.

Hit the majors. There are certain topics we are going to cover every year in our youth group. The majors for us would be things like friendship and purity. We make sure that specific perennial topics are being covered, though we might change the number of weeks or the voice speaking so it always feels fresh.

Try to cover a whole book of the Bible sometime in the year. This summer we did a study on a specific book of the Bible (Philippians), and last summer we took five weeks and went chapter by chapter through James. Both ended up being unique and gave us clear teaching topics for over a month. I love the dream that when someone graduates from our ministry, they have a survey of much of the Bible and a command of some specific parts of it.

Take a risk. A few years ago, a student came to me with the idea that we do completely student-run weekends divided up by the five major high schools in our area. I loved the idea, but we had never done anything like it before. A new, risky series called You Own the Weekend was born. It was huge. Students owned the services like never before, they were eager to bring their friends, and it gave me a much-needed break from teaching. Take a risk and try something out of the box; you might stumble onto something incredible.

Follow the adult service’s lead. Once a year or so, we link up with big church and match them week to week for a series they are doing. Pastor Rick did a series on being great parents, so we did How to Raise Your Parents. This January we’ll be going through 40 Days of the Word in adult services as a church-wide campaign, so we’ll create a student-friendly version of that topic as well.

Blessings to you as you pray and search for inspiration on what topics to teach your students this week in youth group.

In my position, you get to hear and celebrate all the testimonies that get reported. Unfortunately, you get the unpleasant task of hearing and knowing about people’s struggles, slip-ups, and downright failures in living the righteous life. And If I’m completely honest, even though I believe in our church slogan, there’s a side of me that sometimes says, “Everyone’s a minister…except him.” I know, I know. We all sin, but my sin ain't as big as theirs. At least, that’s what I tell myself. My sin is still inside the boundaries of permissible.

Nobody would admit that they think that way out loud. I'm not even admitting it out loud. I'm confessing it behind the safety screen of my computer, where I'm guarded by a degree of anonymity and geography. Truth is, while it's spiritually polite to say we're all priests, I think we secretly harbor a grading chart that systematically disqualifies people who screw up from being able to minister, and I guess I had settled with that religious bigotry until I got a sobering reminder that “every member” means every member, even the ones who mess up.

Allison is a girl from my youth group. She’s had a remarkable summer of rededicating her life to Christ. It’s a change you can see. She’s brighter, happier, and more purposeful. At youth group she’s stepped out of her shell and has started engaging more. She worships openly now. She comes to the church and volunteers. She Facebooks and tweets scriptures and prayers. She doesn’t really have any obvious aspirations to be in ministry, but she’s definitely taken on the priestly robe. I’m proud of her.

One day, Allison sent me a text message that read, “I need to make a confession.” My stomach dropped, but then I thought, How bad can it be? Maybe she cheated on a test? Lied to her mom? Thought negatively about me or some kids in the group? Whatever it is, it’s probably nothing really serious. So we met, and as we sat on the floor, she recounted recent events that left me speechless. Nothing serious? I couldn’t have been more wrong. When she finished, there was silence. Words escaped me, but I had thoughts that there was no way that she was gonna be a minister at youth group right now. At least, not up front.

As we began to talk through her confession (and recover from it), her countenance shifted. Her head lowered. Tears rolled continuously down her face, so much so that she gave up on wiping them away. It wasn’t a loud and obnoxious cry, but it was clearly coming from deep within. I could tell that this had gone from being a disappointment in herself to a real and true godly sorrow. As I looked at her, I flashed back. I suddenly had a rush of remembering that moment when the last thing I wanted to do was hurt God's heart. Sitting with her in that broken space made me really reflect on the many transgressions of my life. And not just on my transgressions but on the days when contrition was right.

In truth, I’ve come to a place where some days I sin and think, Ehhh, no biggie. God and I are cool. I'm still going to heaven. But in this moment, as I watched this teenage girl confessing and lamenting, she ministered to me. She truly ministered to me. As she was walking and working out the salvation, love, and reverence for God that I had taught her about, she re-taught it to me in turn. Sitting in this moment of confession, she ministered to me. As Jesus used the woman caught in adultery to teach the self-righteous crowd of onlookers, so God used this girl to teach me. And I was just one judgmental thought away from missing it. A defining reminder that yes, indeed, the priesthood of all believers is real, at work, and nobody—even those who sin or struggle—is disqualified.

More adult leaders were interested in serving due in part to the opportunity on their part to share from their experiences as well as provide words of encouragement and correction. Authentic LA found that mentoring relationships proved more meaningful than simply sharing a generic sermon from the platform hoping it would hit the youth where they were at.

Previously, my youth ministry experience was more reflective of a modeling perspective of ministry. Here, events were crafted so youth would experience God in the confines of church buildings and Christian camps. Leaders sought to help youth relate to God in the safety of ministry functions, centered largely on preaching and worship. There was a large emphasis on understanding who God was, with little time spent by leaders seeking to understand who the youth were outside ministry functions. Leaders didn't venture into the homes or schools of youth or actively seek out youth to build relationships with them outside of ministry activities to hang out, chat, or learn. Instead, youth were audience members, being entertained rather than trained to be and make disciples where they were. It was more about engaging youth and hoping they would continue to invite their classmates to ministry events.

The differences between these two types of ministries truly illustrate an organization’s commitment to empowerment. The biblical concept on this subject is the priesthood of all believers. The idea that everyone not only has access to God but also is empowered to live out their callings is what the priesthood of all believers is about. The question I was faced with years ago was, How are we preparing the youth in this ministry to be disciples right now? On a day-to-day level among youth, my role is that of both a model and a mentor. I am a living work in progress who is accessible in my home and can be found seeking out relationships with youth outside of ministry activities. I am a leader who helps provide accountability, support, and tangible resources to youth so they can live out their callings.

From an structural level, I am responsible for helping organize the mentoring aspect of the ministry. This includes recruiting, training, and providing ongoing support and resources to adult mentors. I also help to shape the direction of the ministry with other leaders as well as lead some of the weekly transformational small groups that provide the dynamic venue for youth to develop as disciples.

Safety briefings on airplanes can help us understand the core importance of this boundary. On every flight, there is a short safety presentation before takeoff. Most of the instructions are essential, if a little mundane. However, there’s one that never fails to catch my attention. It goes like this: If the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will deploy from the ceiling. Pull your mask over your nose and mouth, and pull the ends to tighten. Here’s the interesting part: If you’re traveling with children, secure your own mask before helping them.

Say what? Helping ourselves before helping others sounds, at first, so backwards. My family’s lives are far more important than my own. Why not risk my life to save theirs? Greater love hath no one… We have to remember that safety is a mutual goal between ourselves and the airlines. From their research and experience, the best chance of achieving this goal is putting our own oxygen masks on first.

In ministry, our oxygen mask is our consistent, vibrant relationship with Jesus. Our ability to minister effectively begins with our own well-being. Henri Nouwen rightly recognized that the core of what we as Christian leaders have to offer is the intimacy of our relationship with Christ (In the Name of Jesus). When we are full, we have much to give. When we are empty, our natural gifts are a poor substitute for our spiritual ones.

Jesus always kept his oxygen mask firmly in place, even in the face of pressing ministry needs. He had disciples to nurture, critics to deal with, and numerous others needing the healing and redemption that only the gospel could provide. He also had limited time.

Sound familiar? Faced with the same scenario, we are tempted to pound a few more coffees, roll up the sleeves, and get back out there. Jesus took a different approach. The gospels include multiple examples of Jesus withdrawing by himself to pray, regardless of circumstances. He did this regularly and unapologetically. It was a nonnegotiable boundary.

Helping others before helping ourselves may do some good, but it is a one-way ticket to burnout. It may take weeks, months, or even years to happen, but disconnection from our source will eventually bring down even the most experienced ministers among us. A mentor of mine once told me, Be careful about ministry because the dangerous thing about it is you can learn how to do it. It’s possible to leave our mask off and still do the right things, say the right things, and produce the right things for a while. We may even look good doing it. A closer look, though, reveals we’re running out of air fast.

Instead of running around disconnected from the source, let us take care of ourselves so we can take care of others. With the oxygen mask of our relationship with Jesus squarely in place, we can give of our best to our families and ministries.

Some things I do to make sure I’m living this way:

Accountability and coaching. We all need help with this. Find someone in whom you can confide who will also tell you the truth. Share with that person how you currently maintain your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. If that comes from within your church community, that’s great. It can also be a special blessing when that voice comes from outside your regular circles.

Practice the fundamentals. Regardless of our ministry education or experience, we are never too far advanced for disciplines like regular prayer, Scripture reading, etc. If anything, our experience should teach us the primacy of those things.

Schedule the time and keep the appointment. Carve out a regular interval in your calendar when the only thing you do is commune with God. Maybe that’s a Monday morning or a Wednesday afternoon. A pastor friend of mine takes a half day every third Thursday of the month. If your schedule requires flexibility, carve out a backup time or two!

*Thanks to Jesse Oakes, the high school pastor at my church, for his collaboration on this post.

I know our days are full. I know the needs of kids and their families never end. Yet, as God modeled by taking a day of rest in the midst of creating the world (yes, I said creating the world), none of us is too busy to take a day off.

I am convinced that the Sabbath is by far the most neglected and disobeyed of the Ten Commandments by leaders today. I am convicted every time I read Exodus 20:8-10a: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work.”

If we stopped reading this blog, and this passage of Exodus, right now, we might be left with guilt as our primary motivator for keeping the Sabbath. The good news is that God told Moses something pretty inspiring about the Sabbath. In Exodus 20:11, God reminds his followers that “the Lord blessed the Sabbath” (emphasis added).

So how can the Sabbath be a blessing? How can it be something we do not out of guilt but out of a sense of gratitude for all God has done for us?

In the midst of my studies about the Sabbath, I’ve been able to answer both those questions, thanks to Eugene Peterson’s description of a Sabbath. He describes it as a time to pray and play.

It is a time of prayer, or specific focus on God.

It is a time of play, or a chance to do that which we would not do on other days of the week.

Now that I’m a volunteer in our youth ministry, Sunday actually can be a Sabbath for me. So on those days, I try to spend more time in solitude and prayer. I also try my hardest not to check my work e-mail on Sundays. I usually take a nap. I try to enjoy special fun with my husband and kids. During the fall, I love watching football (go Chargers!). Sometimes we have friends over for a low-key dinner.

Sometimes there are projects that have to be done, in which case my Sabbath is a half day, or even one third of a day. But even when that is the case, I still love my Sabbath.

While I said it’s easier for me to come up with an answer to this question, it’s not always easy for me to live out that answer. In fact, it’s actually pretty challenging. I would be lying if I told you I kept the Sabbath every single week. I did keep it yesterday. I’m hoping to keep it next week. But sometimes deadlines or needs emerge that disrupt my plans.

But wouldn’t it be great if one of the habits teenagers picked up from us was our keeping of the Sabbath? In the midst of a culture that is ever pressuring teenagers, that is one of the greatest gifts we can model and teach our students.

King David knew that our souls need quieting. Psalm 131 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, and I remember it when I’ve wandered from the well of rest that God offers to us all.

…I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me…

For me, practical ways to find solitude and rest need to be planned out long term, short term, and daily.

Life gives us seasons of rest, and we can expect lulls where we can come up for air. However, if we don’t plan, we may find ourselves caught in the riptide of life and unable to swim in to shore for a much-needed breath of air and replenishing of our strength.

Here’s what I try to do:

Plan long-term rest. My husband and I plan at least two weeks a year to go somewhere to completely unplug. It doesn’t have to be pricy; it can be anywhere at all, as long as we are somewhere away from phones, email, networking, and multi-tasking. We’ve found that planning to vacation in areas where there is no cell phone reception keeps us accountable, and we are truly able to get to a point of healthy detachment from the busy lives we lead. Underneath, we find our essence, the very thing that keeps us going, the heart of Christ becomes clearer in us, joy returns. It’s a wonderful place, and I look forward to this time during the busy seasons. Knowing I’ll get this vacation keeps me focused and hopeful when I begin to feel drained.

Plan short-term rest. I plan a day or a half day every week for this. I do something outside, avoid tweeting, updating, or talking too much. Tell your co-workers when this time is scheduled for you and ask them to honor it. Rest can mean focused prayer. Rest can mean a great nap. Rest can mean some much-needed time with your spouse. Something I always loved about Mike Yaconelli at National Youth Workers Convention was when he would say, “Some of you, instead of attending another seminar, need to lock yourselves in your rooms and don’t come out until Sunday.” He couldn’t have been more right. While there were probably quite a few NYWC babies that resulted from that approach, the other byproduct was rested and content youth workers who are able to lead out of strength, not out of emptiness.

Plan daily withdrawal. Every day. Exit the grind a couple of times a day. Withdraw to recharge. Pray. Play basketball at lunch. Take a walk around your building. Drive to get a snow cone. Change it up and find rest for your soul. When you exercise, you can’t have a conversation with more than one person, you can’t dial a phone, you can’t answer one (technically you can, but you shouldn’t unless you want that iPhone to be a cracked phone). Find a few ten-minute periods when you can read Scripture, be in nature, move around, and listen to the Spirit of God moving in your life.

I don’t have this figured out, but what I do know is that rest and solitude are essential. My life has never been busier, and I’ve never had more opportunity for emotional and physical breakdown. However, this one thing has helped me to recover and recover well.

You can read some other blogs I’ve written on the same subject.

Rest: We all need it.
The Best Four-Lettered Word for Your Ministry.

The questions are: Why aren’t you resting? ● What’s keeping you from it? ● Where is solitude found in your life? ● In the car, on a retreat, in focused prayer?

Wherever you find rest and solitude, go there often. You’ll be so glad you did.

Four years ago, a good ministry friend had just returned from a six-month retreat after retiring from eighteen years in ministry at our church. She offered me her unneeded block of time at a Christian retreat center. She apparently thought (and my wife concurred) that I would benefit from being silent for a few days, alone, by myself. Not wanting to seem like a scaredy cat, I took her up on the offer.

I checked in, I ate dinner, lay down at 7pm, passed out, and woke up fourteen hours later. I didn’t even know I was tired. After a day there, alone in a cabin, just me and God, I knew that I was going to need more than the two nights and stayed for three. This was honestly one of the most challenging things I have ever done. No schedule, no agenda, no something to have to get to next, no phone, computer, and then no watch. Just me and all my thoughts.

I read a lot, walked outside in the woods, sat in a sweet rocking chair, answered some questions from my friend Carma like, What is your relationship with yourself?, wrote some thoughts, read my Bible, walked some more. I discovered that my busyness was convenient in helping me avoid deep life stuff, that it supported the perception that I was in control, and that stopping required me to trust—trust I could handle silence, would catch fresh air as I dug deeper than ever before, and that God would want to hold me in his arms smelling the way I did spiritually.

I have been back every December since then. Intentional silence in solitude has become my rest, even if just once a year. I crave it, long for it, am filled by it, and see the amazing fruit from it for the rest of the year. I have coughed up spiritual hairballs, found out I was rebellious because of insecurity (which also explained why I got fired from my youth ministry job), forgave my mom, overcame the lies that made me fear being a father to my son, finally discovered that I have never really feared God, and have seen him give me that fear and awe I asked for.

After my five-day, four-night stay this last year, I received a love of God’s Word that has continued in me, making me hungry for it like never before. After forty-one years on this earth, God’s Word is working in me and changing my heart and making me want him like never before. My time away is not a perfect lifestyle of rest and solitude, but it is working for me and giving me the heart change to seek after rest more and push me further away from my dependence on my busy rhythm to sin and angling my leaning in to the one who requires my trust, fear, and dependence.

Satan does a good job at convincing us that what we hear about moving is truth i) I will get it later. ii) I don’t need rest. iii) If I rest, I won’t do what I need to do. iv) People will think I don’t care, am selfish, or am not a team player.

But it turns out they are lies. Mark 2:27 says that God created Sabbath and rest for us; that slowing down was modeled for us in creation (Genesis 2:1-3). Think about it: Did God really need to rest? Yet he commands us to stop and rest. Jesus modeled it as he felt the energy drain from him as he spent time with people (Mark 5:27-30). Just an FYI: Ministry is tiring. Mark 1:32-37 tells us that he left some healing undone to go and find rest and be still in the presence of his Father.

He couldn’t serve us unless he refueled daily with his Father. Couldn’t find direction until listening to God’s voice and will (John 8:28-29). And couldn’t serve us if he didn’t remain obedient to his Father by being still and knowing who was God.

The psalmist tells us: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Notice the order? Stillness followed by the knowledge that he is God. We often fear what we will discover in the silence. God says that he is there if we only submit and rest in him.

Isaiah 58:9-14. He wants us to cry out for him so he can answer.

I’ve started to think about it like training. It begins with understanding how solitude and rest help me be more productive and healthier, even when it seems to be an interruption to the schedule. Learning to have a long-term view of what’s going on with my work, my body, my mind, my spirit, and my community as well as a sense of self-awareness around how I function best and fine-tuning my recovery as well as I fine-tune my workouts. This way, I make solitude and rest a priority, and eventually I see the benefits in my output and attitude toward life!

First, identify the challenges to good solitude and rest:

Being an extrovert. I’ve learned that in order to be truly focused and productive with my time, I need people, even when I’m resting. Sometimes my best moments of rest and solitude have happened in a busy coffee shop, with my journal open or a good book.

Watching the clock. When my to-do list gets out of control, the last thing it feels like I should do is take time out. But my stress hormones and mind start to treadmill too fast for me to keep up and send me to panic mode if I don’t take space to breathe and form a plan to attack that mounting pressure.

Expectations need to be managed. The people pleaser in me rushes to the surface when an unrealistic deadline or expectation is placed on me. (Trust me, I never create unrealistic expectations for myself ;-), right?) We have to learn to practically address what robs us of rest and healthy functioning. In the first year of my internship, I was asked to do 6-10 hours but did nearly 20 hours every week to meet the unspoken expectations. Setting a healthy pace for myself also results in a healthy pace for my ministry, my volunteers, and my students.

Then, I need to make the most of the rest breaks. I find my creativity is at a high in the morning as much as I like to reflect on the day before as sleep brings perspective and insight. First I like to clear the decks, making lists of all the compartments, any practical solutions or actions I need to take to problem solve or move a project forward. Once my head is clear, then taking a walk. Either leaving the phone behind or turning it off helps. Energizing my creativity benefits my whole day.

Like I said, often the biggest obstacle I face is myself. Learning not to feel guilty about not taking a call or not booking a last-minute meeting in time I’ve set aside. I use daily ritual to measure my time. I start the day in a local café, I hit the gym at a certain time each afternoon. I guard those times fervently because they are valuable headspace.

I’ve learned I sometimes suffer from FOMO: fear of missing out. However, like most fears, it just needs to be faced. Missing the odd social outing actually isn’t the end of the world! The benefit is learning that I actually quite enjoy my own company at times. Sometimes a struggle with solitude is that we don’t really know the person we’re spending all that time with. We know ourselves at work, at church, with family, and with friends, but learning how to spend time with yourself is like any relationship. Quality time is the only way to get through that awkward stage! Think about it like taking yourself on first, second, and third date. By the time you get to double digits, you’ll have a much better idea what’s going on.

As a single person, I’ve sometimes felt the time demands and pressure double. While other ministers have families and commitments that keep them at home, sometimes people feel your time doesn’t have as many restraints. Push back gently on this. I don’t go home to share the burdens of my day with anyone; that part’s all on me!

I’ve often said that good structure allows for spontaneity. The truth is, keeping small and regular breaks for solitude and rest in my days and weeks means that I’m rarely at a deficit now.

Four weeks later I questioned my own wisdom. One by one, the students grilled these couples. None of them waited until they were married to have sex. Three out of four of them married someone their parents disapproved of. All of them seriously considered divorce. All had deep regrets.

On one hand, it was an opportunity for me to teach that God isn’t interested in perfect people leading his church. On the other hand, many of my students walked away from those interviews with a new level of permission for their sexual promiscuity.

It was the opposite outcome from what I’d hoped.

I believe the primary task of a leader is to take people where they would otherwise not go themselves. George Patton wasn’t a great leader because he was brilliant at giving speeches to Congress about the nature of war. He was a powerful leader because his aggressive positioning of tanks worked. Likewise, Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t a great leader merely because he was a powerful orator. He backed his words up with actions and led people where they were too afraid to go themselves.

The question for Patton or King was not, Am I afraid? Certainly, they had fear. But they recognized that their fear was not going to lead people to where they needed to go.

So they faked it. They recognized that standing before their people and blabbering about their fears and the hardships they might face was not going to lead their people somewhere. Instead, they led people toward something that seemed impossible: victory over insurmountable, impossibly defensed enemies.

As I teach the Bible to my students, I recognize that it’s important to be authentic. But I also recognize that in my attempts to be transparent, I may overshadow the portrait of what God can do with what I’ve been unable to do.

You see, sometimes the most authentic thing you can do is fake it.

Our task as leaders is not to treat the teaching platform as the couch of a daytime television show. It’s to communicate biblical truth to adolescents. Sometimes, in order to lead them where they can’t go on their own, you have to put on your unscared, tough-guy face and show them how brave you can be.

The opposite of authentic is not fake. The opposite of authentic is untrustworthy.

Today’s students have lives filled with people who have contractual obligations to invest in them. They aren’t asking, Is this person willing to talk about their worst sexual encounter before a room full of teenagers for a dollar? They are asking, Can I trust this person? And, Is the Jesus this person represents worth following, even if it’s scary and leads me somewhere that costs me my life?

If that’s the question, then forget being authentic. I want to be fake all day.

she will likely inaudibly weep in thanksgiving that we are together and that others are missed. As my children now become adults, I find myself experiencing the same. No words are needed, just the openness of tears shared.

We all understand the power of being present when we witness a birth, baptism, or wedding and sharing in the joy. The same power is there in moments of loss and grief. It is even there when we accompany others in a shared experience at a work camp, conference, or just a cup of coffee. No words needed, just the sharing in being present.

And yet, sometimes, we choose to use words. So how do we determine that very thin line between vulnerability and over sharing?

Consider the Latin adage Cui Bono? It translates as, To whose benefit? In investigating a crime, it is usually more expedient to investigate those suspects who have something to gain.

Often, what trips us over the line from vulnerability and into the hazards of over- sharing is when we find ourselves the benefactors. In the Strength Finders assessment, one of the identified talents is that of Significance. People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.

In the Catholic church, our National Directory for Catechesis (faith formation) helps us discern what constitutes an authentic presentation of the Christian message. It establishes a “hierarchy of truth,” which first and foremost asks if the message “centers of Jesus Christ.” It also places a prominence on “proclaiming the good news of salvation.”

When we as spiritual leaders (and there is no denying that is how others perceive us, even if we fail to see it in ourselves) preach the gospel (which we are doing at all times—again, even if we fail to see it in ourselves) and choose to use words, I wonder, Who benefits? Does your witness make you seem like a likeable, real person, or does it empower me with my own story of challenges and faith? Does your story set yourself up, or did you call attention to the One who is Good News, even in hard time?

If you are my spiritual leader, I’m not sure that I ever need to hear about your alcoholism, your academic degrees, or even your smokin’ hot spouse, unless it somehow points me toward my own relationship with the Lord.

More specifically, youth ministry thrives on the relationships between the youth and the adult leaders. The call to vocational ministry as a pastor requires constant discernment in all arenas of life, especially when navigating relationships with those you lead. However, the cornerstone of every relationship, no matter the situation or the context, is trust.

Part of relationship building is creating trust through authentic presence. That presence is most commonly communicated through quality time in conversation where both parties are, in some capacity, vulnerable. This happens most often by reciprocating that which the other chooses to share.

For example, one of your youth comes to you and says, “I cut. I don’t want to, but I don’t know what to do about it. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop.” It is possible that as a teenager you struggled with self-mutilation and an addiction to cutting. The natural response would be, “When I was your age, I cut too. I understand some of what you’re feeling.” Or maybe you struggled with an eating disorder, a pornography addiction, attempted suicide, etc. It takes a certain level of vulnerability to share that information. Responding with something of equal personal value reciprocates the relational investment and builds trust.

In leadership, vulnerability may not simply be a reciprocal response. At times, you will feel led to share your struggles with your youth. That is a step of faith you must discern. Your youth may need to know that you’ve been where they are in order for them to trust you with their struggles. In this situation, vulnerability may feel like you are over sharing. Trust and discern.

The place I often struggle to discern the appropriateness of what I desire to share is when I’m responding to a question. Youth have a tendency, when they trust you as a leader, to ask questions where your first response is difficult to even think about saying aloud. The truth may be that the same issues they’re sharing with you through the question are issues that you’re still struggling to resolve. Since the cornerstone of every relationship is trust, the only option in those situations is to embrace and engage vulnerability. Carefully choose how you share that you are still struggling with the same issue because, in this situation, the truth that builds trust may compromise your leadership. Generally, when posed with a question, respond honestly.

The one constant in every relationship, context, and situation is truth telling. If you’re gossiping, you’re lying. If you’re lying, you’re over sharing. Don’t lie. It will only ever break the trust and damage the relationship, compromising the effectiveness of your leadership.

2. It saves money. We do a lot of ministry purchasing and ordering online. So if we need an earth ball or a bunch of water balloons or books for a small-group teaching series and I don’t want to run around town to fifty places to get the quantity I need, I simply order them and have them sent. But a huge budget killer is paying to have everything rush shipped. When I plan ahead, I can have someone search for the best deal, find it on sale, and pay for the minimum shipping or accept the free shipping without having to stress that it won’t be here on time. And if you’ve ever tried to book a speaker, artist, band, retreat center, airline ticket, or hotel last minute, then you know it’s not only more stressful and difficult to do, it often costs more too.

3. It increases creativity and ownership. My experience says that both of those things take time. If I want creativity to be a team task and I want to pool the best ideas from my team, then I have to gather people together far enough out to give input. When I do this, they also feel like it’s their thing, not just my thing. When we talk about outreach or basic ideas for a teaching series, planning gives a lot more time for input and increases the creativity of what we can do because we now have the time to plan the skit, create the design, gather the people, or prepare something to be really well done with a wide level of involvement.

Annually, in the early summer, I have my student and adult leaders gather for a couple of days of basic skeleton calendaring for the next school year. We spend some time in prayer, and we talk about our mission and why we do what we do. We eat and laugh and share visions. Before they arrive I take a huge whiteboard calendar and mark when school is out, when holidays are, and large, nonnegotiable things, like the annual summer camp we go to or church-wide functions. Then we look at the space that is left and start talking about our dreams. We talk about details like when small groups should start, what other retreats or events we want to do, and some main topics, themes, Bible texts, and teaching ideas we want to cover in the next year. Since we teach in series form, I then begin to then lay out a rough sketch of teaching series, and we start putting them down on our weekends.

Quarterly, I gather some key people to talk about what is coming up. We gather several months before major seasons like the fall kick-off for school, Christmas, spring break, and summer. These meetings are less about overall vision and begin to move into the nuts and bolts of design. We start making lists of things that need to be done, thinking of people we could ask to help, and dreaming about what we’re planning and what it really looks like.

Monthly, I meet with my student leadership, and we plan out the next month’s youth group meetings. We meet after church and over lunch, and we brainstorm the next month based on our previous nine-month plan and any changes we now have to make. We talk themes, pop-culture references, relevant songs or movie clips, brainstorm games and discussion questions, and evaluate and identify anything we learned from the previous month of doing ministry together too.

It is a wise idea to get away for the day and get a big picture of your ministry. Take a break from the pace of ministry and the distractions of email, voicemail, and the persistent nagging of Google Plus and wrestle with an overview of your youth group. August is the perfect time for this!

For some, this is a simple task because they live in the world of ideas and vision. For others, it will be challenging to stick your head up over it all and get a glimpse of the whole.

Key questions to ask yourself at this big-picture stage:

• Where do you think God wants to take students in the next year?
• What worked well last year, and will it work again?
• What annual events would be effective again this year?
• What needs to get the ax?
• Have you blocked out your week of vacation?
• Where are we strong, and where are we weak?
• Is there a good balance of God’s eternal purposes for our ministry (evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, worship)?

Paint in broad strokes what your youth ministry year will look like at this point. Spend lots of time in prayer. Ask God for discernment. Use pencil.

Once you’ve got an idea of the big picture, it is time to specially plan the next season. There are lots of ways you can do this. I like to divide the year into three unequal parts: fall, winter-spring, and summer. This is the time to start to really firm up specific teaching topics, series, and events. You probably already locked up some bigger things like summer camp, trips, and retreat locations, but now is the time to make final decisions.

Key questions to ask yourself at this stage:

• What needs to be cut?
• Am I keeping this program to satisfy a parent or some vocal students or because it is what is best for our ministry?
• Where do I have momentum naturally, and where is it lacking?
• What are the teaching topics for this season?
• Who is the best person to teach?
• Has my spouse seen this before I go public?

What looked good in the big-picture view might be too much now that you’re zoomed in a bit closer. You are still flexible enough to use the eraser if needed but definitely not on your vacation time.

The closest we zoom in for planning is the current month. You’ve planned everything from a year out, you firmed up much of those plans in your season overview, now it is time to lock everything down and walk into what you’ve planned.

Key questions to ask yourself at this stage:

• What adjustments do I need to make based on circumstances that have come up since we planned the year/season?
• Am I balanced and healthy with this calendar?
• What can we do to make our youth ministry even better next year?

I’m in the thick of planning our spring right now! May God bless you as you serve students and plan your youth ministry calendar too.

Some tools to consider helping you plan your youth ministry calendar: o www.rememberthemilk.com o www.30boxes.com o www.whomi.com o www.franklincovey.com/tc/software-and-applications

Also, please consider these related posts on my blog:

5 Steps to Calendar on Purpose

4 Guiding Principles for Planning Your Youth Ministry Calendar

In this particular community we’ve found that moms are a huge resource in picking out possible conflicts.

When we get this many people involved in our planning process, the calendar stops being my calendar and instead becomes their calendar.

I also try to out-plan parents. If I can get the dates for our events on their radar a minimum of one year out, then they can plan around our schedule. This is particularly important because, in my current community, people tend to disappear for the entire summer months. But, if we let them know the dates for our mission trips and camps, they more often than not adjust their calendars so their students can go.

Long-range preplanning actually helps us be more flexible. When we publish dates a year in advance, occasionally something comes up that we need to change. People in general are much happier when we make changes six months out rather than the week of. Last summer, we planned a houseboat trip with our high school students. Ten months out, I started asking parents what they thought and got a little pushback on the safety of the proposed location. We immediately made a switch, and the trip was a huge success. Because we planned so far out, we weren’t locked into locations and contracts and could be flexible to make changes.

My process of thinking involves a lot of people and dialogue. It’s way more than just grabbing clip art and making copies of a calendar. In the beginning, I spend a lot of time evaluating what we did in the past. We talk about impact, timing, dates, and cost. We try to make sure we always have a good sense of how something met our philosophy of ministry.

At that point, if everything lined up, we start talking about whether we want to do the same trip, activity, or event again. I’m a huge proponent of repetition because it is often our best advertising. I also like change, but in general, we first look to see what has worked before we start talking about what we want to change. This is also the stage where we pray a ton, asking God to lead.

Then we then start having dialogue about all the possibilities, followed by a process in which I write it all out and start looking for conflicts. I think about presence and impact when I do this. Specifically, I look to see how everyone will be impacted by our calendar. I look at the frequency and number of events. I evaluate the downtime between events as well as the prep time needed to pull something off well. It’s a system aimed at making sure all we do has huge impact but doesn’t burn anyone out.

The next step is when we finally talk budgets and money. We purposely wait ’til near the end because talking about budgets and money too early can be a killer to the dreaming process. I want us to dream big first without thinking there will hindrances.

Then it’s time to bring everyone into the loop. This often takes the most amount of time and can be frustrating because I have to explain the reasons behind everything we are doing. After everyone has weighed in and we’ve gotten most people to consent to the calendar, we try to get our communications ministry to get all of our packages for the events done as soon as possible. We have found that planning way out and then promoting way out produces the most success.

I’ve had a bunch of bombs over the years and have had many things not go well. But I’ve learned that spending a lot of time thinking, dreaming, and praying is most beneficial because it gets more people involved. If I could stress one thing above everything else here, I would say that more people involved will only benefit your calendar.

At this season of my life, my best way to gain new skills is to learn from the experts. By expert, I mean someone who is further along than me on the journey of developing that skill. So the list of experts in both of these areas is vast. Sometimes I learn by asking these experts specific questions. I keep a list of questions I'm wrestling with related to partnerships and fund development, and I ask these questions whenever I'm around folks who know more than me.

Even better are those occasions when I get to learn by observing. Last week I had a breakfast meeting with one of our current donors, along with one of Fuller's leaders who has amazing fund development chops. I learned so much by watching this leader from Fuller express sincere gratitude for the donor's support of our mission. That ninety-minute breakfast taught me more about fund development than any article I've read in the last year.

In my early days of ministry, most of my mentors were also folks in vocational ministry. We had the same schedules, talked the same language, shared the same goals. Now, more and more of my mentors are folks who are not in vocational ministry. I love learning from small-business owners, large-business CEOs, and retired venture capitalists. They don't quite share the same language or goals, but they bring fresh eyes to what I'm wrestling with in ministry. More often than not these days, it's these non-ministry colleagues who help me pin down answers. In fact, the two insights that have most shaped our work at the Fuller Youth Institute thus far in 2011 came from two business leaders, neither of whom has ever served as a youth leader.

Periodically I ask myself a few simple questions:
What do I need to learn?
Whom can I learn from?
How can I best learn from them?

You might want to try asking yourself the same questions, and then be creative in your answers to #2 and #3. I would bet there is a business leader sitting in the pews of your church who is eager to use his or her expertise for kingdom purposes but doesn't know how—and has never been asked. Perhaps you could take that person to coffee. Come prepared, with a list of questions. Maybe even give that person your questions ahead of time.

When it comes to mentors and skill growth, I tend to learn and be stretched the most when I think outside the box.

all get squeezed by ministry, by life, and by the unexpected.

It may be worth mentioning too that it's not just time that prevents growth and learning; it is also sometimes what we already know. Youth ministers are seen as the experts in adolescence, engaging with teens and the emerging culture. What we do know (in communities where there are often fear and confusion about young people) can be a barrier to spotting the need for our development and in seeing the arenas where we have so much more to learn.

But, despite the barriers of time and existing skill, we need to learn! To be a disciple of Jesus is to embrace growth. Our call to serve Christ, young people, and the church surely implies a wish to grow in our relationship with Christ and to become better equipped at that to which we are called.

The question uses the verb pursue, which is "to find or employ measures to obtain or accomplish." The word denotes an intentionality. Given the barriers of time and existing knowledge, it's that intentionality that will be the difference between us meaning to learn and grow and actually learning and growing.

A learning theory that I found particularly useful to move toward intentional skill growth is the four stages of competency (or learning). It's a helpful progression that holds true for any area of learning. It's a useful way to look at our own development and skill growth.

The theory holds that in any new discipline we develop along a track that begins with us being unconsciously incompetent (we don't know what we don't know). We then progress to seeing what it is we don't know, becoming consciously incompetent. Having realised what we don't know, we can then begin to embrace learning, training, reading, and practice with a view to becoming consciously competent. The last stage is unconscious competence. The learning and practice are so full and so embedded within us that it is indistinguishable in our minds from common sense or. This can be applied to the whole field of youth ministry or to component skills within it.

Below are some of the things I see in intentional learners. They are also the themes I attempt to borrow and use to help me spot unconscious incompetence or steer me toward skill growth and conscious competence.

Reflecting and evaluating. Take time to listen to others. Question yourself. Make space away from the every day to critically examine.

Taking charge of the day planner. Block out space for reading or reflection. Search out learning opportunities as far in advance as possible and block the time out. Don't let an interesting poster for a learning opportunity haunt the desk or the notice board until it is too late, but book it—and put it in the day planner!

Read (and write). The best learners I know read widely, but many of them go beyond that and scribble, journal, or write, holding their thoughts, reactions, and practices as dialogues.

Embrace risk and humility. It's tempting to embrace skill growth in areas we are already pretty good at. It's more difficult to go after learning with things in which we have little to no ability or knowledge.

Find a mentor. Be a mentor. Learn from someone wiser and more experienced; allow that person to ask difficult questions. Conversely, mentor someone less experienced. That person's questions will challenge us to grow in skills and practice.

It's proven difficult to write about embracing skill growth. Maybe there are some key steps such as the list above, but mostly it seems to me, the key to skill growth is intentionally making it happen. Not easy but always worth it.

Relationally, the people I associate with and invest in will often shape the situations I engage and my understanding of the world in which I live. New environments are great places to grow in one's contextual appropriateness and flexibility; an important skill.

Additionally, being intentional about maintaining relationships with people in industries and networks I'm not immersed in is important. I often think, When I look at the people I'm in communication with currently, how many are youth pastors? How many are lead pastors? How many are worship pastors? How many are in ordained ministry? Lay ministry? How many are from my denomination of Christianity? How many are not Christian? How many are in nonprofits? How many are in marketing? How many are in business management? How many are in healthcare or social work? How many are in community development? How many are in Ohio? How many are located outside Ohio? How many are between 18 and 22? 23 and 30? 31 and 40? 41 and 60? 60 and over? And so on, until I can ask myself, In what areas do I want to know more people so I can grow in my ability to understand life from a different perspective? Who can introduce me to someone in that area?

Diversity of perspective is valuable, especially when it challenges the acceptance of other perspectives as valid in the midst of disagreement. These are relational skills that, for many, need to be constantly nurtured. Having a couple of close mentors who are willing to invest in knowing you and challenging you is also helpful in growing relational skills.

Intellectually, reading is my primary means of personal growth. Reading also allows me to encounter new ideas and concepts, both practical and thought provoking in nature. This is how I grow regarding the skills I must engage every day. My bookshelves are lined with books on practical ministry, personal finances, conflict management, personal faith, leadership, philosophy and theology, poetry, social justice, organizational change, and other topics as they apply to my seasons of life. Often these books are recommendations from people in my network(s). Reading, processing, and engaging the concepts and skills in these books helps me continue to improve myself in those arenas.

The commonality between these two areas of personal skill growth is the breadth of diversity that I am intentional in creating. Regardless of the stages of life or professional arenas in which we find ourselves, it's vitally important to remember the value of being well rounded.