Last week I wrote a guest blog post for YouthMinBlog.com on their weekly topic of building relationships with teens. I decided to take a bit of a different approach, though. In fact, I argued that the #1 key ingredient to building healthy relationships with teens actually has nothing to do with the teens at all.

[ Read the full article over at YouthMinBlog.com ]

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

What do Pharaoh’s daughter rescuing Moses, Rahab helping the Jewish spies, David’s treatment of Mephibosheth and Elijah’s response to the woman whose son just died have in common? They all were showing kindness.

Kindness can be defined as God’s loyal love and favor toward His people. In the Old Testament, the word translated as “kindness” or “lovingkindness” refers to God’s long-suffering love — His determination to keep His promises to His chosen people in spite of their sin and rebellion (Deut 7:12; Hos 2:14-23). This attribute of God was shown through His divine mercy and forgiveness toward sinners when payment of sins through the sacrificial system was no longer effective (Deut 22:22; Ps 51:1).

In the New Testament, the Greek word translated as “grace” best represents the idea of God’s kindness or lovingkindness. Because God has been gracious toward believers, they should treat all people with kindness or grace (Luke 6:35). All people are created in God’s image and should be treated accordingly, no matter how badly they have twisted and deformed that image (James 3:9). Kindness is not an apathetic response to sin, but a deliberate act to bring the sinner back to God (Hos 2:14-23; Rom 2:4).

God wants us to be kind to others because He is kind to us. Our kindness shows His kindness to others, and in doing so we become more like Him. Whenever we show love or compassion to others we are being kind. To an extend man can do that out of their old nature, but to show real kindness requires the presence and power of His Spirit for it means being kind to those who aren’t deserving of it and may retaliate with hate. Turning the cheek in love can’t be done without God’s power.

How can we become more kind? First, we need to submit to the will of God (Philippians 2:1-8). If we can’t submit to God’s will we won’t be able to submit to the needs of others. Then, we need a teachable spirit (James 1:21). We need to be open to instruction to make us more like Jesus. If we think we know it all already we will never grow more like Him. Finally, we need to have a consideration and love of others (Ephesians 4:1-2). We need to be able to put ourselves in other’s shoes and be sensitive to their needs.

Kindness is love in operation so others can see Jesus in us. We deeply appreciate God’s kindness to others. Others can experience His kindness through us.

Scripture
Proverbs 14:21, “He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who is kind to the needy.”

Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

Galatians 6:10, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”

Reflect

• Who comes to mind when you think of people who are kind? What is there about them that makes them stand out from others? (Make a list of traits or characteristics.)
• How do you measure up to the list you just make?
• Are you so focused on leading your ministry that you neglect doing little kind things for others?
• Pick 2 or 3 of the traits you lack and pray about them, asking God to produce them in your life. Then make a list of things you can do today to meet these.

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Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 14 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Yesterday, in our LIVE YM Talk, we had an open forum conversation where we discussed several issues relating to youth ministry. The top discussions were:

• When your own children are in the youth ministry
• Should women be youth pastors?
• Handling cell phones in youth group meetings
• Reviving a youth group’s spiritual passion

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Download this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next week’s discussion

April 3: Next week’s featured guest is Joshua Griffin, sr. high pastor at Saddleback Church. He’ll lead us in a discussion about working with sr. high teenagers. Join the conversation LIVE next week!

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Interlinc is giving away one free ConGRADulations 2009 set to any church who asks! You’ll have to part with some contact information to get it, which might not be worth it if it was just another compilation CD, but the ConGRADulations 2009 box contains a lot more than just music.

Of course the music CD comes with a bunch of music tracks from various Christian artists, but it also has a 48-page booklet containing some great stuff from Dave Ramsey (on financial issues) and Francis Chan (about avoiding the spiritual status quo). The set also has a media DVD containing videos from the two aforementioned guys, along with clips of other advice and wisdom for the big transition in life.

I personally have never given these sets away as graduation gifts, but I’ll be happy to take a free copy to check it out. Use the link below to get your free copy and evaluate it as a potential gift for one or more of the seniors graduating from your ministry this year.

More information about the ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

Order your FREE Interlinc ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details.

The poor guy below wrote me a while back asking a pretty simple question, but I ended up going on a rant. Sorry! lol I would love to hear input from all you guys in the comments below.

My pastor asked me to look around at some other youth ministries and see what they set and use to evaluate their ministries. He suggested that I set up some “Key Result Areas” to use for our ministry here. I realize that some of this is dependent on personal context, but I would be interested to hear if any others, including you, have done work with KRAs. What are the KRAs of youth ministry that exist in almost any context?

I haven’t formally done anything like this before, but I do meet with the youth pastors in my community every Tuesday morning and talk. We did an informal discussion once about the percentage of students who are connected to our church in some way versus the percentage of students who are actually involved in the ministry. My ministry is at about 50-60% involvement, which I thought was horrible until the other guys said they were closer to 25-35% involvement. Now I don’t feel so bad.

But that’s the problem — we should never use other ministries for the standard of evaluating our own ministry. It’s not “how they’re doing” versus “how we’re doing.” And I know you’re not asking in a competitive sense, but for all practical purposes, that’s exactly where the focus goes. There’s nothing wrong with taking your community’s demographics into consideration as part of your strategy, but don’t use the success or failure of other ministries as a basis for evaluation. The danger is, if you happen to be on the top of the totem pole, you start to feel the same way I did: content. As long as there are still unsaved people in this world, I should never be content with my ministry’s “performance.”

Instead, I use scripture for the basis of our evaluation. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 says, “…God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” And the Great Commission in Matthew 28, of course, along with 1 Peter and Hebrews challenging believers to grow into full maturity, not stuck on spiritual milk. God wants 1,000,000% growth, not numbers who are involved versus not involved, as if that could somehow determine spirituality.

What I care about most, and I’m sure you do, too, is that I’ll hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” My ministry will never meet up to His standards, I know. As long as there are lost people in my community and believers who need to grow deeper in the Word, I’ll never feel like my ministry is “doing okay” or “meeting expectations.” It’s all about Him and what scripture indicates a ministry should do and what it should look like. So I’d encourage you to start there. Besides, no life-change or spiritual growth happens apart from the Holy Spirit’s prompting and conviction anyway. Whatever the Key Area Results are for my community, the Holy Spirit can (and wants to!) radically change that. Sometimes I think we approach ministry from a business perspective instead of a spiritual perspective.

What do you think? I’d love to dialog about this a bit because I’ve never really thought through a KRA before, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

NOTE: Obviously I know that careful ministry evaluations are important and very necessary — this post is not questioning that. Rather, it’s challenging the yard stick we sometimes use to measure our ministries and the conclusions we draw from it.

1. People don’t commit to programs. They commit to relationships. One of the first questions a kid asks before signing up for a youth trip: “Who else is going?” Most people don’t care about the program, the trip, or the event as much as they care about the people they’ll be with. How is your ministry leveraging relationships with teens, both peer relationships and adult relationships? Does the program serve the spiritually encouraging relationships or do the people serve the program?

2. People don’t commit to programs. They commit to vision. People rally behind a vision, rarely behind a program. Passionately communicate the vision for your ministry and get people on board with that. When the vision is contagious and people understand how they fit into the big overall picture, then they become excited about the program that may guide them there. People want to be part of a movement, something that is significant and is bigger than they are. Where is your youth ministry going? How compelling is the direction? Are you passionate about it or is it just a statement typed on a piece of paper?

Programs are here to serve the relationships, the vision of your ministry, and ultimately to bring glory to God as a body of Christ, not the other way around. If you’re spending a lot of energy trying to get people to commit to your programs, you have it all backwards.

It should never be about the program in the first place.

Time Out (by Jerry Schmoyer)

The annual cost of those who run red lights is over $7 billion dollars. This includes medical bills, car repairs, etc. The average time saved by running a red light is less than 50 seconds. So why do so many do it? Impatience.

Patience is a fruit, a product of God’s Spirit. It isn’t part of the equipment we are born with. Have you ever met a patient newborn? No one has to learn how to be impatient. We are automatically made that way – its part of our self-centered sin nature.

A French proverb says, “Laziness is often mistaken for patience.” Perhaps the opposite is also true, patience is often mistaken for laziness. A mother once chided her doctor, when her daughter was ill and she was worried. “Why don’t you do something?” she asked. “I am doing something,” replied the doctor. “I am waiting.” Many of us have trouble determining when we are being patient and when we are being lazy.

We can define patience as bearing difficulties without complaint, trusting in a greater reason or purpose behind them. The Bible uses four different Greek words that are translated in various ways as patience. Each of these words emphasizes one aspect in one way or another of what we think of as patience. Paul said the fruit of the Spirit is “makrothymia.” This is a compound Greek word made up of the words “makro” meaning long, and “thymia” meaning anger. So literally it means LONG TO ANGER as opposed to “oxythymia” which means sudden anger. Longsuffering gives us the picture a person who in relation to those who annoy, oppose, or molest him, exercise patience. He refuses to yield to passion or to outbursts of anger.

What’s so great about patience? Why does God want us to be patient? One reason is because He wants us to be like Him and He is patient (2 Peter 3:9). Another reason is because He knows it is best for us to patiently trust and wait.

Every fruit I know of has a protective outer layer. We peel a banana or orange to eat the fruit inside. Others fruit like an apple or grape we will eat skin and all. The outer layer serves an important purpose; it helps keep the moisture inside the fruit, even in dry seasons. The outer peel will also protect the fruit and allow it to grow. If the outer peel or skin is broken or removed, then the fruit will rot and spoil. Patience is like that for the soul of man. Patience protects our hearts from becoming rancid—bitter and rotten to the core. God wants our lives to be sweet and appealing to others; that’s the purpose of the fruit of the Spirit to give our lives the aroma and taste of Jesus! The practical practice of patience restores and protects relationships. Godly patience enables us to show mercy instead of hate, to forgive instead of seek revenge. “Patience is the ability to put up with people you’d like to put down.”

Patience is love enduring; it’s love that lasts and won’t be broken by anger. We are to be patient; with a long fuse we give allowances for each other’s faults and shortcomings. It only comes from staying closely attached to Jesus, the vine (John 15:5). Then when trials come it means we place our faith in Him and default to His timing instead of taking things into our own hands (Romans 5:3; James 1:2-4).

Patience is not idleness; it doesn’t mean you do nothing. Patience is active. The patient man is always ready to meet his neighbor halfway; instead of building fences, patience builds bridges to maintain relationships. Further, patience is not simply a character trait or quality an individual may possess. PATIENCE IS A LIFESTYLE! It is a way of life that affects all our relationships. Patience is an expression of love because love is patient. Patience, being slow to anger enables us to live a good life. Patience will keep us from embarrassing ourselves by what we say or do.

Scripture
Ephesians 4:2, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

Hebrews 12:1-2, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Isaiah 40:31, “They that WAIT on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Reflect

• Would those who know you best say you are a patient person? Why or why not?
• What seems to make you most impatient? What can you do about that?
• Are there any particular people who seem to bring out impatience in you? Why?
• Ask God to show you any impatience you may have within you now, then confess it as sin and ask Him to fill you with His Spirit and patience.

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Jerry Schmoyer has been a minister in Pennsylvania for over 25 years and has worked with teenagers for 14 years, ever since I became one myself. He authors the weekly Time Out series here at Life in Student Ministry in hopes to spiritually refresh your soul as you continually pour so much of yourself into students. God bless!

Yesterday’s LIVE YM Talk featured special guest, Thomas Roepke. He led us in a discussion about some of the church’s ancient traditions of holy week and implications for them in youth ministry, especially as it relates to creating learning experiences for teenagers. We shared a whole lot of practical ideas of how each of us does it in our own youth ministries, too. Some great ideas you really need to hear!

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Download this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next week’s discussion

March 27: Next week’s discussion is still open. There are a couple options with different guests, but none are confirmed yet. Keep your eye on the LIVE YM Talk page for updates.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!