Tag: strategy

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.