Category: Strategy

Defining the Win

Lately, our student ministry team has been redefining our wins.  Also, we’ve been reading through 7 Practices of Effective Ministry.  Basically, we’re kind of obsessed.  It’s been a great exercise for me and my team.  Here’s what we’ve come up for the ultimate win in our student ministry:  We win when a student is still following Jesus at age 25.  Yeah, that’s right.  It’s an intimidating goal.  A little about the wording…

  • We decided that what really matters is that our students are still pursuing Jesus and still connected to a church long after they leave our student ministry.
  • We chose the word “follow” because we’re not just after belief.  We’re after discipleship.
  • We chose the word “still” because we want kids and students to develop faith in our family ministry…not after.
  • We chose the number 25 because most 25 year olds are done with or finishing up college and yet, 25 is typically before children.  In other words, we want to fight against the trend of emerging adults putting their faith on the shelf in college and not reengaging it until it’s time to take their kids to church.

Obviously, this win is a lot harder to attain or measure than the typical win:  “leading students into a relationship with Jesus.”  Sure, this is part of what we want but it doesn’t speak to life-long faith, which is what we are really after.

In the process of redefining our win, we’ve been wrestling with the “how.”  I’m confident that our win is correct, but how exactly do you get there?  This is the part that I could be wrong about.  Also, we haven’t wordsmithed any of this yet.  I’m open to your ideas and your feedback, but here’s a rough cut of what I’m thinking:

 

CONNECT THEM

I think the foundation is connection to a Jesus community.  In other words, attendance matters.  Belonging to the community matters.  By all of this, I mean participation in your student ministry, but also connection to the congregation as a whole.  FYI has repeatedly shown that students who are inter-generationally connected to their church have a much better shot at healthy faith as adults.

So, what’s the first step?  Get students connected to your student ministry…and don’t you dare be a silo!  Get them connected to the rest of the congregation as well.

 

GIVE THEM A GUIDE

I’ve come to believe that this strategy is the cornerstone.  The three other pieces are important but this one is absolutely crucial.  Kids and students need a guide.  They need a mentor to show them what it looks like to follow Jesus.  A caring adult who is willing to walk with a group of students over the long-haul is the secret sauce of life-long faith.  Over and over again, I have seen how a great spiritual mentor can be a game-changer.

This is why small groups are a must and investing in volunteers is crucial.  We don’t need chaperones.  We need spiritual mentors.

 

HELP THEM GROW

The third piece is a growing personal faith.  Students who develop their own spiritual habits (or disciplines) are much more likely to continue pursuing Jesus in life after your student ministry.  In other words, it’s imperative that students begin to engage Jesus in their own world.  If their faith only exists at church, then we have a problem.  We must find ways for them to integrate their faith.  This is difficult because developmentally, students will naturally compartmentalize.  But, if we’re serious about promoting life-long faith, we must find ways to break down the walls of compartmentalized faith by helping kids bring their faith home and to school.

 

LET THEM SERVE

For years, the word that has defined our high school ministry’s strategy has been “Express.”  We desire for our students to begin expressing their faith.  This shows us that it is no longer their mom’s faith but their faith.  When students step out and express their faith through service and leadership, we know we are on the right track  However, we’ve learned that experience is often needed before expression.  That’s why we focus a great deal on mission trips, serving in our children’s ministry and serving roles at our summer camp.  And of course, because we desire inter-generational connections, we don’t have a student leadership team.  We want our middle school and high school students to serve alongside adults in church wide ministries because then they will develop relationships with other generations.

Lastly, students want to serve and lead now.  Don’t leave them on the sidelines!  First off, this practice is hurting the faith of students all across the country.  If they have to wait to practice their faith, they are far more likely to put their faith on the shelf.  Secondly, students are full of passion, energy and ideas.  Put them in coach!  It’s no coincidence that most of the world’s faith revivals have begun with students.

 

So, we win in our student ministry when students are still following Jesus at age 25 and these four strategies are our pathway to getting there.  What’s your win?  What’s your path to winning?  And…let me know if you have any genius wordsmithing ideas.

 

image credited to Erika via Flickr

How to Take Your Student Ministry to the Next Level

If you’re like me, you’re never really satisfied.  It’s never quite good enough.  We want to be great.  We want to be part of something big.  When it comes to student ministry, we want to reach all the kids.  We want all the kids to be connected to life-changing community.  We have ever kid to have a mentor.  We want our ministry to be a powerful force for the kingdom in our communities. And so, we always ask:  What’s next?  How do we get to the next level?  How do we growth?  Become stronger?  Gain more influence?

I believe that for most of us, it comes down to one thing:  volunteers.  That’s right.  Whether you’re mega or mini, rural or urban, Methodist or Presbyterian, Sunday morning or Wednesday night, the answer most likely isn’t a better sound system, a youth building, more money, a new Mac, or believe it or not, better teaching (although that might be the second answer!)  The answer is an amazing team of volunteers.

We all know when we have a great volunteer.  They are your all-stars.  Their investment causes your student ministry to become exponentially more effective.  Their small group is the flagship of your ministry.  You wish all your other volunteers would lead and serve like they do.  In fact, you break out into a cold sweat when you think of losing them.  They are indispensable and invaluable.

These amazing volunteers are magnetic.  They are magnetic in the way they…

  • pull students deeper into the student ministry community through the way they love kids
  • pull students deeper into relationship with Jesus through the way they pursue Jesus
  • pull new volunteers into the ministry through the way they passionately share their experiences

Let’s dream for a minute.  What if, instead of having one or two of these magnetic volunteers, you had an entire team of them?  What if your entire volunteer team was a magnetic community?  How amazing would your student ministry be?

I believe this is a realistic and achievable dream.  We can and we must create a magnetic communities of volunteers.  It’s possible.  These communities are what will take our student ministries to the next level.

So, how do you build a magnetic volunteer community?  I’m glad you asked.  Stay tuned over the next  few days because I have a few ideas.

Why Structure is Everything

The other day, I found myself sitting around a table eating spinach and artichoke dip with my friends Jon and Brian, who happen to be two of the smartest people I know.  In my experience, great food and drink lead to great conversation.  As often happens, we were passionately discussing ministry strategies and philosophies.  Brian made a statement has been rattling around my head ever since.  Here’s what he said:

“Structure unleashes relationship.”

Here’s what followed in our conversation…

1.  DISCIPLESHIP IS ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIP

Student ministry that transforms lives is all about relationships.  Great student ministry involves spiritually mature and caring adults pouring their lives into students.  In essence is about spiritual mentoring.  In addition, great student ministries create cultures in which students learn to live in community with peers.  Through small groups, students begin to experience the family of Jesus through encouragement, presence, accountability and life together.  When it comes to student ministry, relationships are crucial.

Sometimes I hear from youth workers about how their student ministry is all about discipleship.  “We teach the Word!”  My argument would be that without deep and sustained relationship there is no such thing as discipleship.  Students do not learn well from lectures or sermons.  They, and we, if we are honest, learn in the context of relationship.  We learn from discussing ideas with mentors and people we trust.  We learn from watching others and practicing together.  In truth, discipleship is all about relationships.

2. RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T ORGANIC

Relationships have a odd way of running toward chaos.  Pick a relationship in your life.  Left alone, it will run toward chaos.  If you neglect a friendship,  marriage or business relationship, it will slowly degrade and eventually collapse into ruins.  I’ve come to believe that relationship are in fact, not organic.  In other words, relationships do not simply happen or grow stronger naturally.  Life reveals the exact opposite.  In my relationship with my wife, we grow apart when we don’t intentionally invest and protect our relationship.  Especially because we have four kids, growth in our relationships requires scheduled dates, persistent connection, shared projects…in other words, structure.

I have often heard from student pastors and volunteers that their ministry is very organic.  “We’re just about relationships.  We’re like the early church in that way.”  What they mean is that program and structure are somehow counterproductive to discipleship.  In my experience, this philosophy sounds impressively spiritual but it is in truth over-simplistic and doesn’t actually lead to discipleship.

Discipleship happens over time and in the context of many conversations.  Discipleship is built on the foundation of trust, shared experience and intentionality.  It doesn’t happen organically and it doesn’t happen in a pew.  It happens in purposeful relationships and it is structure that unleashes these relationships.

3.  CULTURE ISN’T ORGANIC

We have an obsession with the word “culture.”   In student ministry circles, we talk about building cultures.  We all know that we want a culture of transformation or a culture of this or that.  The question is, do we understand what we are talking about?  Or better yet, do we have any idea how to build culture?  In reality, culture is actually very simple.  Culture is the structure of how we live together.  Our societal culture is the structure of how our society functions together.  In student ministry, culture is simply the structure that facilitates how we function together as a group.

It is possible to build a culture or change an existing culture.  However, the path to culture change doesn’t begin with an impassioned speech or a new decorating scheme.  Culture changes begins with structure.  If you want a culture of discipleship through relationship then you need a structure that promotes and facilitates relationships.

So what exactly do we mean when we say structure?  That’s a great question.  I’ll unpack the sort of structure that unleashes relationship over the next few days.

 

image credited to gaspi*yg via Flickr

Cancel Sunday School

Delorean badge. Cannon Beach Ferrari Show

What would you do if you could go back in time and undo something in your student ministry?  Maybe you’d undo your youth group name, “BOB”—Bunch of Believers.  Or perhaps you’d like a mulligan on that youth room color scheme that was so hip back in ’83 “when you could still throw a football over them mountains.”

Want to know what I would go back and undo?  Sunday morning programs.  No, not all the church services!  Sheesh, I’m not that crazy.  I’m talking about high school programming.  Let me explain.

When I launched out as a youth pastor ten years ago, I inherited a Sunday morning high school program that was on life support.  My superiors charged me with bringing it back to life so that’s what we did.  By the end of my first year we had grown the attendance by 80%.  At first, I assumed that this reflected how awesome our high school program was—and by extension how awesome I was as the youth pastor.

Our Sunday morning program was so epic that students liked it much better than the adult church services.   I began to notice that the students would either sneak back into our junior high program the following hour or jump in their cars and hit up the local coffee shop.  Very few of them were attending the adult church service.  I was so blinded by the numbers and the positive attention I was getting from leadership that I never bothered to think through the ramifications of what was happening.

Even worse, when I heard students complaining about how boring the adult services were, I kind of liked it because what I was hearing was, “What you do is awesome.  What they do is boring.”  Call me a jerk, but I like to be awesome.

After a few years (I’m a slow learner) the flaw in my approach finally dawned on me—like a pile-driver to the face.  I realized that when our seniors, who had been regularly attending our high school program but not the main services, graduated from our ministry they disappeared.  Sometimes they found a church that better suited their tastes but more often than not they peaced out from church all together.  This is one of the great regrets of my life.

When students walk away from faith, we as youth workers are quick to blame the student, parents or culture.  “Well, I’m sorry but he shouldn’t have been hanging out with those guys.”  “His parents were just clueless!”  “Our culture is just so messed up, it’s practically impossible for kids to stay committed these days.”

Although it’s much more painful, I think it’s far more valuable to look in the mirror and to evaluate our structures and programs.  The logical reason my students were walking away from church is that I was training my students to walk away from church.  How?  I was isolating them from the church services and community.  When they graduated from my ministry they didn’t possess the tools or desire to integrate into the larger body.  For many, this was the end of church.

So what would I do if I indeed did have DeLorean?  I’m glad you asked:

  • cancel Sunday morning high school programming
  • encourage high school students to attend church with their families
  • encourage students to serve in the children’s ministry/junior high/larger church body (if you have 2 or more hours of Sunday morning services)
  • refocus high school youth group programming to Sunday night or Wednesday night
  • build the high school youth program around solid teaching and adult mentor relationships

That’s it.  Oh, and if you do happen to have a DeLorean…CALL ME.

A Simple Approach to Intergenerational Ministry

A lot has been said and written recently about the importance of intergenerational ministry.  The Sticky Faith research has pointed out the importance of adult mentors in the lives of students.

I think many student ministries assume they are doing well in this area simply because they put adults in proximity with students.  Personally, I do not believe that quality mentoring relationships will naturally grow out of proximity.  It takes intentionality.  Here are 3 ways we intentionally promote intergenerational mentoring.

1.       VISION VOLUNTEERS

First, we INSPIRE our volunteers to become mentors.  Before every Sunday or Wednesday night we hold an hour long leader meeting and one of the things we do in these meetings is tell stories of great mentoring.  We talk about how our volunteers have made a difference in the past and how each person investing in the lives of students today is altering the trajectory of a student’s life.

We EQUIP our volunteers to become mentors.  We teach them how to pursue students, how to manage and effectively lead a small group, how to interact with the parents of their students, and how to handle crisis conversations.  We don’t hold quarterly or even monthly training meetings; we train our volunteers every time we meet for large group.

We EXPECT our volunteers to become mentors.  We believe so deeply in intergenerational mentoring that we create standards.  I understand that it is impossible to quantify mentoring but we do our best to do it anyway.  We require a certain amount of small group activities, one-on-ones with students and parent interactions.

Although our mentors are volunteers, we still hold them accountable to their role.  If they aren’t performing, we carefully confront them.  If after a few more weeks they still aren’t performing, we fire them and find someone else who can mentor our students.  Yes, you can fire a volunteer.  This is how deeply we believe in intergenerational mentoring.

2.       STRUCTURE FOR MENTORING

We happen to believe that over time, small groups are a great place for mentoring relationships to develop.  Because of this we don’t ask students to opt into a small group.  We simply place EVERY STUDENT IN A SMALL GROUP and leave 30 minutes at the end of every LifeLine night for small groups.

Mentoring relationships take time to develop so we leave our small groups intact for all three years of middle school and all four years of high school.  Particularly in high school, we believe that SMALL GROUPS TAKE 1-2 YEARS TO BUILD TRUST.  The next 2 years are fertile soil for mentoring relationships.   

3.        SIMPLIFY PROGRAMMING

We believe that faith is best learned outside of the church building.  Students need to see faith lived out in action.   Because of this belief we require our volunteers to get on their students turf and to interact with them outside of our student ministry programming.

We know that volunteers only have so much time to devote to ministry.  Because mentoring outside the church building’s walls is a premium, we simply cut our programming to make space and time for our volunteers.  WE DON’T DO EVENTS.  Our senior high ministry literally has no events other than our Sunday night programming, snow camp and mission trips.  We simplify so that our volunteers can commit to pursuing their students outside the walls of the church building.

“No events!” You say?  Are you crazy?  Well, I guess that was a lie.  We have all sorts of events but we don’t schedule them—our small groups do, organically.  They are better and more strategically targeted than anything our staff could ever dream up.

 

So there you have it.  3 simple ways to promote mentoring in your ministry.  How have you promoted mentoring relationships in your setting?