Doing Ministry

One of the earliest things I learned about ministry is that if you do not take initiative, you will fail.  While there are ministry responsibilities that must be accomplished, there is also a good bit of time where you must use your time wisely.  Whether it is getting a jump on a future talk, visiting a school, or communicating with parents, there are always things that need to be done.  Sometimes I feel like seminaries should offer time management seminars to prepare future ministers for the immense demands on their schedules.  The truth is that the minister’s work is never done.  Usually there is more to be done than can be done.  This can be tough if you are a personality like mine where you want to do it all but simply run out of time and energy to accomplish everything.  Something that helps me to reconcile this is to think about why I am not accomplishing all that I need to accomplish.  Here are the reasons that I have found cause us to feel like we are not doing enough:

1. We are not working hard enough.  Let’s be honest, sometimes we can just be plain lazy.  Maybe we are just coasting through because we think we have it all figured out.  Maybe we feel like we deserve to slow down a bit after a crazy season of ministry.  The problem is that because there is always something to be done, we must find ways to continually expand our ministry impact.  It drives me crazy when ministers fail to respect the position that they have been given.  Ministers must be professional and diligent in our work ethic if we are to maintain the standards set forth for our office.

2. We are trying to do too much on our own.  I confess to doing this so often.  Sometimes I feel like I cannot get to the important stuff because I am stuck doing the busy work.  The truth is that if I had leaned on a ministry team, I would not be running around last-minute to get cups because they could have been picked up.  Over the past year I have realized just how many things I should actually be able to delegate to small group leaders or to volunteers.  I would love to have more time to dream and to get creative, but so often I am exhausted from getting all of the little things done like fueling the vans.  Allowing others to do ministry alongside you allows you to do more ministry.

3. We are doing pointless things.  We are all stewards of our time.  We must decide how to use it and how to prioritize the things we do.  As a result, we must also take some time every now and then and think about whether we are actually doing the things that will have the most impact.  I have spoken with student ministers who use 16 hours a week to prepare their talk on Wednesday nights.  That seems unbalanced.  Other ministers I know spend the majority of the time on a program that has terrible attendance, but it is part of church tradition.  It is so important to make sure that you are making the maximum impact that you can make.  Truthfully, a quick lunch with a student may make more of an impact than twenty Wed. night talks.  I tried to make a list of everything I did throughout a whole week.  When I looked at the list, I realized that I was spending too much time keeping one program working so I purchased a curriculum that cut my work on that program down by 75%.  Now I have more time to write thank you notes or hang out with students after school.

4. We don’t plan ahead.  I actually love to make the calendar for the year.  I love looking at the blank squares and seeing them come to life with activities and teaching topics.  I do this because I understand that if I can plan June in December, I will be saved from running around like a headless chicken when June comes along.  Planning ahead allows us to have a distinct advantage of getting our tasks accomplished because we have the time to think about all that is involved.  Planning ahead also allows us to get people into place that can help make the event or program happen.  We did so much planning ahead this year for our Fall Retreat that I actually got nervous the day before because everything was done and that seemed impossible the first year that we did the retreat.

In college I worked at a camp where I had to use every bit of energy that I had each day.  The last bit of life I had in me was that which allowed me to lay my head on my pillow.  I was exhausted, but I was also proud of the fact that I left nothing on the field that day.  I try to have those kinds of days in my current job.  I want to leave the office with no regrets.  I want to feel good about taking that day off because I maximized my ministry time and was able to accomplish all that I could possible accomplish.  I hope that is your goal as well.  Your church and the Kingdom of God will be better off for it.

One of the unexpected blessings of this past year has been the opportunity to spend time with other youth ministers in our area.  It’s unexpected because I would not have guessed that it would make such a huge impact on my own approach and understanding of ministry.  I have gained so much from spending time with my fellow ministers.

Truthfully, the idea to get the network going came out of my own shortcomings.  I was noticing that I had a hard heart towards many of the other local youth workers.  When their programs out shined mine or when I lost students to their ministry, I sat in judgment rather than celebration that the Kingdom of God was increasing.  As I recognized this dark place in my heart, I knew that the only way to resolve it was to open the doors of relationship with these men and women who were, after all, trying to accomplish the same goals that I was.  All it took was a few phone calls to recognize that restarting the network was something that resonated with all of the other youth workers in our area.

The previous network failed primarily because it was not built on relationships.  It was more informational or sales oriented.  With this in mind, we have tried to keep our meetings agenda free where we can discuss ministry and life in an organic way.  Over the past year we have become more comfortable with one another.  We have also gained more respect for one another.  Great evidence of this is that we are developing an unwritten rule that calls us to communicate with other ministers if a student comes to our church from theirs.  Imagine the benefit this brings as we seek to help the student down the journey of faith.

Over the course of the last year I have received ideas, encouragement, ministry opportunities, and friendship from our ministry network.  It continues to amaze me how easily things came together after just a few phone calls.  God has blessed our fellowship as we seek to work together to reach the students of our communities.  If you have not found a network of ministers in your area, maybe it is up to you get the ball rolling.  I guarantee that it may be one of the most beneficial things that you do in ministry.

This summer my group and I were preparing to make the long trek back to our rooms when I spotted one of my biggest pet peeves in the world: the irresponsible youth minister.  He had chosen to demonstrate his unprofessionalism by jamming nine of his students in an SUV and then topped it off by riding on top of the vehicle with his legs hanging in the sun roof.  I did not hear any ambulances in the next few minutes so I assume that he made it down the incredibly steep mountain just fine, but damage was still done.

There is a difficult balance that all student ministers must manage.  We want to be cool, hip, and laid back.  However, we also want to be respected and trusted.  Unfortunately, in trying to develop our appeal to our students, we tend to lose our influence with the parents and church leadership.  The sad part is that our lack of professionalism so often diminishes our effectiveness in ministry.  When it comes to acting professionally in ministry, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Being young is not an excuse.  This is the regular excuse that is offered for why youth ministers tend to do really stupid things.  I’m not sure why this would work in our ministry context when it would never fly in most professional careers.  Imagine if a young doctor or young accountant showed up whenever he or she wanted to.  Imagine if they were the people doing wild and crazy things in the office during business hours or in staff meetings.  How long would they have a job?  Why is our standard for accountants, store managers, or lawyers higher than our standard for ministers?

2. Being a minister means setting an example.  In addition to the fact that you are teaching and living out the gospel, you are also setting an example for your students.  You are responsible for showing your students what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.  This means that you must have personal standards that reflect faith in Christ.  It also means understanding that students are always watching you whether you are online or at a football game.

3. Just because you work with teenagers does not mean that you need to act like one.  Again, there is a difficult balance when it comes to working with teenagers.  I love to do some of the things that my students do like go to high school football games or play Call of Duty online.  I also realize that things that teenagers like to do such as pranks, breaking traffic laws, and listening to profane music are pretty much off-limits if I want to have influence.

4. Ministry jobs are actual jobs.  If you want to get paid and desire job security, it would probably be great to complete your job related tasks.  While ministry means hanging out and preaching the gospel, it also means planning, paperwork, and communicating.  If you don’t want to work in an office, become a volunteer.  I get so tired of hearing about youth ministers who are the class clowns of their church staffs.  Wouldn’t it be great if the student minister was the most organized one on staff?  Let’s raise the bar a little bit.

When I was in high school, dating and church seemed to go right together.  During my junior and senior year, our youth group was essentially a spin off of the show Friends with everybody having dated everybody at some point.  There were more love triangles on our trips than there were Bibles.  This type of thing was never really encouraged, but I can’t really recall anyone ever addressing it either.  Unfortunately, this prevalence of relationships most often resulted in drama and pain rather than spiritual growth and community.

When I came to Bluegrass, I hoped that we might be able to avoid this pitfall.  Fortunately, we have not really had this issue.  I’d like to think that it is somewhat due to my efforts in helping students acquire a healthy perspective on dating.  It’s not that I think dating is evil, I simply find it to be unwise if the couple fails to keep their relationship in perspective.

If you ask many of our students what I think about dating in middle school and high school, they will likely say that I think it is kind of stupid.  And I do.  Besides the fact that only about 0.1% of the high school couples will get married, I also think that dating has the ability to take over a kid’s life, lead them into temptations, and skew their future relationships.

Romantic relationships, particularly within the church group, also create a whole new avenue for drama.  Recently we had a guy who just sat by himself in the corner for a whole night refusing to be a part of the group.  Turns out one of the girls in the group decided to stop texting him that day.  Having experienced what I have and having seen what I have, when dating does arise in our group, I have a simple guideline that I ask to be followed.  I ask that if a romantic couple forms in our group, that they would meet with me for a quick ten minutes so I that I can remind them of a few things such as:

• Church events are not dates.
• Physical contact and church events don’t really go together.
• They are responsible for not letting this relationship cause drama while they are together or when they break up.
• I expect them to be able to act as independent people in separate groups and at events when necessary.
• They are not married, nor should they act as if that is the case.
• I want them to make wise choices when they are together and always honor their parents’ wishes in their relationships.

I grew up with parents who were ministers. I went to a Christian university. I went to Divinity School. I am a fairly avid reader. These things have combined to give me a terrible tendency to think that people know more about the Bible and theology than they actually do.  There have been so many times when I have used a word that nobody in the room understood.

For whatever reason, I have come to a point where I assume that people know what words like sanctification and exegesis mean.  Does this mean that people are inferior because they lack knowledge?  Does it mean that they have failed to become educated on these important matters?  No, it means that I am weird, a good weird, but weird.  It means I have been fortunate to have been able to dedicate a chunk of my life to understanding what these terms mean and to learn the language of theology and Biblical studies.  It also means that I have been given the honor and responsibility to become the educator and explainer.

It’s funny how easily we can forget that there was a time when we didn’t have the answers either. Now that I have two kids, I find myself answering people’s baby questions more often. When new parents ask me about sleep schedules or when to start potty training I have to remind myself that, at one time, these questions would have been as foreign to me as asking me to name the official flower of Lichtenstein (Gentiana, apparently).  I remember seeking to be licensed by our church while in college and not knowing how to answer a single question on the theology questionnaire that the church asked me to fill out (it was probably good that I was not licensed at that time).  Some things are still necessary to teach, even if you have already mastered them yourself.

What I need to remember is that people experience the same thing with the Bible.  They simply don’t know what we are talking about.  I’m not talking about stories in the Bible like David showing grace to Mephibosheth.  I’m talking about stories like Adam and Eve.  People may know the names, but often they don’t know the details or the significance of the story.  Working with students has been a huge help in getting me to teach the Bible without presuming that everyone knows the background details.  Is it the people’s fault?  No, but if they are willing to learn, then we need to be ready for the task.

While I don’t quite grasp all that the term implies, I have read often that we are living in a post-Christian era in the United States.  Familiarity with Christianity can no longer be presumed.  In prior generations people were often exposed to the stories and teachings of the Bible.  Today, it is not surprising to talk with someone who has never heard anything about the Bible.  A few weeks ago we had a Chinese student come to our Sunday morning program which was the first time she had ever been to a church.  It was amazing to watch one of our students show her what a Bible was and explain what it was all about.  Unfortunately, the girl was not able to have a Bible at home because her parents did not allow it.  What a great reminder that we are often talking to students and adults who have hardly any foundation when it comes to the Bible.

Something that we have started to do is to use our Sunday morning times to go over basic theological things like sin, the Holy Spirit, and why read the Bible.  This has allowed our students to begin to develop a vocabulary of faith that they can build on.  We also make sure that we never teach a story from the Bible as being just a story.  Instead we are quick to point out that each story illustrates a theological truth.  We do these things because we know that it is so important to work with students on their level.  We also do it because if students cannot explain why they believe the things that they say they believe, their faith is not likely to endure.

An interesting exercise that will help us in our task of speaking on everyone’s level is to go back and listen to your talks and count how many times you used a phrase or word that only a well-churched individual would grasp.  It’s likely that you are unintentionally using a language that is foreign to many of your people.

We have had a busy couple of months where it seems like we are just doing event after event.  When times like these pop up, I find myself using one of my ministry catch phrases.  The phrase goes like this: “we don’t do anything that does not build up your student’s faith.”  The idea is that I want to tell parents that they can trust all of our events to be worthwhile.  We are not interested in babysitting or filling time with random events because we feel like we are supposed to be doing something.  The problem is that I am not always sure that we mean that.  Intellectually, we mean it, but when I look at our event calendar and our weekly programs, sometimes I feel like we are just doing stuff because, well…because.  This got me thinking about how easy it is to say things that may not be entirely true about our program.  Let’s look at some examples:

1. We don’t do anything that doesn’t make a difference in your student’s life.  I wholeheartedly believe that if you cannot explain why you are doing something (and why it is important) then you need to stop doing it.  We came to terms with this when we stopped doing “game nights” which were basically just directed hang out time instead of planning a worship/teaching time.  Unfortunately, there are still some things we do that don’t entirely make sense outside of the “we’ve always done it” mentality.  Our goal is to always be rethinking and evaluating.  Some things are working great such as our Fall Retreat or our Sunday nights, but some things seem to only exist in order to take up my time and grow my patience.

2. This is a safe place.  I recently asked our students what they liked best about our student ministry and overwhelmingly they said that the atmosphere was their favorite part of being here.  This is great because we have worked hard to create a safe place where students feel comfortable and accepted.  It’s good to see that students feel this way, but, in order to keep this atmosphere, it will continue to take a lot of work.  If we want to be able to say that this is a safe place, it means that we cannot let students lose focus on bringing people in, even if it disrupts the equilibrium that they feel here.  It also means that we must head off drama and strife.  It also probably means that we should excommunicate any students who try to date within the group, but that would not be entirely fair.

3. We are partnering with parents.  This is a tough one because my ministry philosophy acknowledges that parents need to be the main spiritual influence for their teen. However, it is a lot easier to leave the parents out of the loop and just take responsibility.  Obviously this is misguided, but there is a part of me that feels like it sounds too hard to partner with parents.  Unless I engage parents, I am operating at about 20% efficiency.  Disicpling students requires us to engage parents and empower them to connect with their teen.  Often it requires discipling parents so that they have something to offer their student. 

4. We are so thankful for our volunteers.  The key to determining whether or not this is true is to look at how much time you invest in your volunteers.  Have you given them expectations?  Have you given them resources necessary to succeed?  How many thank you notes or thank you calls have you sent or made?  I want to honor my volunteers because they truly make everything work.  I want them to know that they are appreciated, but that takes action.  Your gratitude is not assumed.  Without expressions of gratitude, volunteers will stop feeling appreciated and start feeling taken for granted.

Good ministers never intentionally mislead the people we minister to and with.  Unfortunately, we need to also be honest with ourselves so that we can speak with integrity and consistency.  The problem is that when people doubt our sincerity when discussing our programs, that broken trust gives birth to a whole host of problems for the ministry.

The student minister has a strange role in many churches.  Actually, they have several strange roles.  The student minister’s charge is to disciple students, but how this works leads to a complex set of responsibilities.  Many student ministers find themselves essentially running a mini-church.  They fulfill the role of worship leader or at least worship planner.  They fulfill the role of education minister as they direct the curriculum and discipleship aspect of the student ministry.  They have the task of communicator as they speak or preach to their students.  They fulfill the role of event planner as they schedule opportunities for their students.  If we’re honest, we also probably play the role of janitor more often than we wish as well.

Student ministry is a unique vocation.  It requires much but also offers so much to the minister.  We have the honor and privilege to disciple and speak into the malleable lives of teenagers and their parents.  There are times as a minister where I can hardly believe that this is actually a paid job.  There are times when other people wonder why it is a paid job, and I typically ignore those people.  While it is a great honor to work as a minister, it is also complicated and takes some serious contemplation of what it means to minister.

So many people get into ministry without really considering what doing ministry really is.  So many people see doing ministry as this summer camp type of experience where you are always close to God and you are changing lives simply by reading a Bible verse out loud.  This would also look like a person becoming a doctor because they want to help save lives.  Here is what the potential doctor and the potential minister are missing: they are focusing on the peaks of those vocations, not the normal experiences.  Doctors save lives, but they also put on bandaids, do a ton of paperwork, work long hours, and watch people die.  Ministers make disciples and help save souls, but they also do tons of planning, do a ton of paperwork, clean up messes, and have painful conversations with people making bad decisions who may never start making good decisions.

Does this mean that ministry is unrewarding?  Absolutely not!  It does mean that it will be infinitely frustrating if someone enters ministry thinking that their only role will be preaching to people for 30 minutes each week.  Now that would be an amazing full time job.  Few people, including aspiring ministers, understand what the day to day work of a minister includes.  Just last night a student asked me what my real job was.  I recently read a blog post that suggested that a student minister can really only expect to spend a third of his time in direct work with students.  The other third would be spent with meetings, empowering volunteers, and administration.  If you want unlimited time only doing face to face ministry, that is typically called volunteering.  Being a minister means being a ministry architect and a shepherd.  It means speaking into the lives of students and speaking into the lives of volunteers so that they might speak into the lives of students.  It means keeping the church going so that the student ministry can even exist.

One final note is that regardless of where you are, but especially if you are just about to enter ministry, you need to know that you do not have ministry figured out.  The people who have ministry figured out are typically the people who are destined to be out of the ministry in a year or two.  We are doing spiritual and eternal work.  Ministry is a journey, and you are blessed to have been put on the journey.

Not long ago I had a conversation with a youth pastor of a large church in our area that absolutely rocked my ministry perspective.  Due to a school schedule conflict, a small group of about 15 students that were a part of his student ministry could not attend their church’s large mission trip.  As a concession, this lead youth pastor agreed to take this small group on a later trip.  The youth pastor went on and on about how great it was to get to spend time with such a small number of students.  Ironically, 15 is a pretty good number of students for me when it comes to getting students to attend an event that lasts more than a day.  It really made me wonder if I was using the size of my group to our advantage.  What were we doing that embraced our size rather than in spite of our size?  Are we making the most of our ability to be flexible and spontaneous with certain events?  Are we using our smaller size to have big conversations?

The term leveraging has become a somewhat overused one in church leadership recently, but I feel that it particularly applies to this discussion.  Regardless of your church’s size, you must use that factor to your advantage.  When I look at the big programs in our area, I lament our lack of resources and critical mass for big events.  When I look at their numbers, I admit that I get antsy and wonder if I am making a difference.  Here’s what is crazy: sometimes when large church ministers look at smaller churches, they wonder the same thing.  They worry about students falling through the cracks and wish they could run a simpler ministry that does not require charter buses when they want to take a trip to Sonic.

One of the problems with leveraging your groups’s size is that the models of ministry that are advertised in books and articles are almost entirely based on very large churches.  If a student minister with 40 kids tries to do everything Saddleback or Willow Creek does, there will typically be problems with duplicating that model in the smaller context.  The resources that come out of larger churches are great, but the problem arises when we think that our church should look like that church or our program should look like that program.  It would be like Mayberry deciding to restructure using the plans of New York City.  It just won’t work, and it really shouldn’t.  When we focus on becoming more like a larger church’s ministry, we are denying all of the benefits of being a smaller group.

The same holds true for larger churches wishing that they could be smaller.  The trick is to embrace the size of your church and determine ways to make the group smaller.  Perhaps my friend saw the benefit of the smaller mission trip group and will consider doing multiple mission trips with smaller students.  Maybe rather than having the large group times as your key point of emphasis, larger churches constantly discuss the importance of small group discipleship.  I served as part of a large college ministry that found it difficult to disciple the mass of college students who came in the doors.  The answer was to create small groups that brought certain people together and created different discipleship opportunities.

In the end, our mission is not to have an awesome program.  Our mission is not to have the largest number of students in town.  Our mission is to make disciples.  A huge step in doing that is to stop worrying about how cool our program looks on a flow chart or how awesome our logo looks.  When we get down to simply looking for the unique ways that our church can lead students to know Jesus and become his disciple, we will find that God has given us everything we need to accomplish the task that he has called us to.

Sometimes ministry is all about theory and creativity.  We talk about dreams and visions we have for our ministries, but sometimes ministry is about paperwork and planning.  Depending on your role in ministry you may spend a significant time planning and doing office work or maybe you are mostly out of the office.  Either way, your job is probably full of a multitude of tasks that are often unrelated.

After experiencing the pain of trying to juggle all of my responsibilities by memory, I came to the point where I needed to have a better approach in order to keep stuff from getting dropped.  My answer was to come up with a work flow for my week.

I realized that most of my week followed a pattern.  Preparations for Wednesday night programs were being done Monday and Tuesday, Mondays were full of follow-up and check requests.  Thursdays were used to get Sunday programs worked out.  Noticing this flow, I constructed a super simple list of the things that I would work on each day of the week.  Each day I have a list of the major things that I need to accomplish.  This list gives me a great framework for building my day and helps me to focus on accomplishing the stuff that really needs to be accomplished.

One of the hard parts about working in ministry, which is also one of the great parts about working in ministry, is that you pretty much control your schedule and what you do.  Outside of certain weekly expectations, you basically have to be self-motivated and entrepreneurial.  It’s great not having someone stand over your shoulder telling you what to do, but if you are not a self-starter, it can be a recipe for laziness and mismanaged time.  That is where I have found my work flow to be extremely helpful.  There are days when I am worn out from activities the day before or from nights when my kids decided to wake up every hour, but having a set task list each day ensures that what needs to get done gets done.

One other benefit for doing things this way is that it forces you to be better prepared for your events and programs.  I now have no excuse to be planning Wednesday night activities on Wednesday afternoon, that was Monday and Tuesday’s job.

In case it helps, here are my essential projects for each day:
Monday: Hospital visits, Sunday follow-ups, check requests, website updates, Wednesday night planning.
Tuesday: Staff meeting and staff lunch, send out Sunday curriculum for our morning and evening programs, finish Wednesday night details
Wednesday: Work on upcoming events, lunch at schools, Facebook page update, lunch with other student ministers
Thursday: Finish Sunday details, missions team responsibilities, volunteer encouragement, Wednesday follow-ups, lunch at schools

Keep in mind that these are just the must-be-done-every-week things. And yes, Wednesday has two lunches.  Built onto this work flow are things like gearing up for events, random meetings, preparing for fill-in sermons, and all other kinds of random duties.  The key for me is that I have some level of accountability, even to myself, that the schedule is followed as closely as possible.  Hope this helps.

Do you know those sounds that absolutely drive you crazy like rubbing a towel on carpet or scratching a chalkboard?  To me, this question, “where is everybody,” is the equivalent of that.  I cannot stand it when a youth worker, paid or volunteer, acts as if they are disappointed in attendance.  Sure you were expecting a few more, but why should the people who came feel bad for coming?

Showing that you are disappointed in attendance at a program or event communicates these three things:

1. Sure it’s nice that you are here, but it would be better if there were other people here too. It’s not good enough for just you guys to have come.

2. Well, I guess we can still sort of have fun with this small crowd. We’ll just make it work if we can.

3. The effort I put into this lesson/program/event is now going to be wasted on a group this small.

One of the biggest problems that arises when youth workers say stuff like this is that we kill morale.  Students have come to have a great experience and now they find out that this experience was dependent upon other kids coming too.

The other big problem with this way of thinking is that we as youth workers miss a huge opportunity to demonstrate how excited we are that anyone shows up to our stuff.  Instead of being excited that we can now have more one on one interaction, we lament the fact that we will have to manufacture more energy for our activities to work.

I get that having a smaller crowd than expected can be discouraging and can force us to change plans.  Last year we had almost 40 students sign up for a weekend event, one that required more than three months of planning.  In the end only 18 students actually attended the event.  I of course declared that my last day in youth ministry forever in the whole universe.  Eventually I calmed down and realized that we now had an opportunity to really invest in a group of kids in a way that would not have been possible with 40.  Did it mean making a few changes to the schedule and events? Sure.  Did it mean that I was a failure or that my career was over? Nope.

Rather than focus on what is totally out of your control, i.e. attendance, it is much better to focus on leaving each event knowing that you made a real impact and that you helped a student have a better relationship with God.  I have found great solace in planning events where we can have an effective event even if five or six kids show up.  And when the numbers are small, I never want to act like it’s not good enough.