After all the comments from last week’s post about Seven Benefits of Shutting Down Youth Ministry Programs for the Summer, I figured I’d add a little clarification about what my summer schedule does look like, rather than only what it does not look like.

“Programs” does not equal “ministry”

First of all, I didn’t mention this in my previous post, but notice that the title was not, Seven Benefits of Shutting Down Youth Ministry for the Summer, with the absence of the word “programs.” In no way am I advocating that we stop ministry, just that was slow down our programming. Remember, programs do not equal ministry. Programs are tools of ministry. They’re here to help us do ministry, but programs are not the ministry.

Programming slows down, not ministry

Second, notice that I said that we don’t stop ministry programming altogether during the summer, we just slow it down. Putting programs on hold does not mean that we put ministry on hold, too. Ministry takes place in a variety of ways outside of programming, like one-on-one time with kids, hangouts at your house, or just stopping to pray for them. Some would say that this kind of ministry is much more effective than the programming aspect of ministry.

Some critics of my previous post say that Jesus never stopped his ministry and neither should we. I totally agree. If you want to use Jesus as an example, though, I’d also point out that He never ran any programs from his church/synagogue either. That’s not to say that programs are bad or that they’re not found elsewhere in scripture, just that there’s nothing wrong with emphasizing different tools during the summer than the highly programmatic ones. We’ll be going on bike rides, having kids over to play Xbox, spontaneously meeting at the bowling ally, grabbing ice cream at Dairy Queen, playing Ultimate Frisbee, going to the movies, taking road trips, swimming in the lakes, etc. None of it is scheduled, we just wake up one morning, call up a couple people and go for it. And while we’re together, us adults model Christlikeness and speak Truth into teens’ lives through our normal conversations. That kinda sounds more like Jesus’ style of ministry to me anyway.

For the programmatic people…

That said, here’s what the programming side of our youth ministry will look like this summer:

Weekly Jr. High Bible studies at my house: My wife and I lead these together. Attendance is typically pretty low with about 5-8 teens, but that’s the way we like it. The kids who comes are sometimes different kids each week, too, depending on their family’s vacation schedules and what else is going on in their lives. The Bible study is pretty laid-back and relaxed.

Weekly Sr. High Bible studies at someone else’s house: One of the high school groups has opted to continue throughout the summer meeting in someone’s house. The group will be open to any 9th-12th grader who wants to participate.

Monthly Wake ‘n Ski: As I mentioned in a comment on my previous post, our community has a lot of lakes, so many of our church members have boats and big-boy water toys. One Sunday a month our group gets together to spend the afternoon out on a lake water skiing, wake boarding, tubing, wake surfing, etc. We stop for dinner to have burgers while I or another leader shares a short faith story with everyone.

CHIC: This is our denomination’s tri-annual international high school student conference in Knoxville, TN. I won’t be going this year since my wife is due with our first baby two weeks later, but a full busload of our high school kids are attending the week-long conference in July with an outstanding team of adult youth leaders.

MUUUCE: Every August we take a busload of jr. highers away for a three-day retreat. We meet up with many other denominational jr. high youth groups and have a blast together. We go to a baseball game, a water park, amusement park, play on inflatables, and just have an incredible time bonding. It’s perfect for the incoming 7th graders to connect with us, get to know us, feel comfortable with us, and be super energized for the school year of jr. high ministry.

Two Parent Dinners: I blogged about this back in March, so check out that post for more details, but basically we have two open-house dinners planned at my house for parents to come hang out with me and Dana. We get to listen to them, answer questions, and also challenge them.

Monthly Worship Experiences: The youth ministry is not in charge of this, but we do partner with our church’s worship director to pull it off. Every month we have a night of worship at church that’s intended to be highly participatory and experiential. It’s open to the entire church and our community at large, so I really like the inter-generational mix that shows up to worship. Our teens do a fabulous job leading different aspects of the experience.

One Outdoor Movie Night on the BIG screen: We hang a big white sheet on the side of our house and setup a projector and sound system from church in the driveway. Kids to come over at dusk and watch a movie on the BIG screen with their own lawn chairs, blankets, bug spray and snacks. Here’s a picture of my setup I posted on Twitter last year. Always fun!

Canoe Trips: There is also one jr. high canoe trip and one sr. high canoe trip this summer. We all car pool to a river, rent a couple canoes, they drive us upstream and we paddle back. Another great time to bond, talk, and help kids transition into jr. high or high school ministries.

Rock The River Tour: A couple kids and parents thought the Billy Graham’s Rock The River Tour fit well with our strategy to take kids deep and wide, and since one high school student was willing to head it up, I let her go for it. That will happen in August.

One Parent Information Meeting: Before the school year starts up again, we have our big annual parent meeting where we recap last year’s ministry, talk about what we learned, and, based on that, what’s changing for next year. We give an overview of the calendar, answer questions, introduce the other youth leaders, and do a whole lot of vision casting.

Youth Leader meetings: I usually don’t do too many of these during the summer, but a couple years ago we made some significant changes to certain aspects of our ministry and the fruition of that starts next year. So, we need to have a couple youth leader meetings to make sure the train’s momentum keeps moving in the right direction. We also have a mini youth leader training conference with a couple of other churches in our community.

Other summer ideas

Looking for other summer youth event ideas? Check out my blog post from last year on the top 5 summer youth events that cost under $5 total.

Casey writes with the following question:

“I am sitting here trying to burn my energy and all my time and can not seem to come up with a youth group name. Are there any resources for this or websites that can help me out?!?”

Hey Casey! There’s no website for it or anything that I know of. When I try to think of a name for a ministry program, I start by asking, “What is the desired outcome from this program/meeting time?” Call your ministry something that reflects whatever your answer is. That helps everyone, including myself, stay on track and remember what that ministry is all about. Honestly, sometimes the process of thinking of a good name takes a couple months, but keep praying about it and discuss ideas with different people until the Lord brings something to mind that just clicks.

For example, our high school large-group meeting on Sunday nights was called just that for a long while — “Sr. High youth group on Sunday nights.” lol After several months of dreaming and thinking, we decided to call it, “Impact,” which honestly just popped into my head when I woke up one morning. The meaning is two-fold: we’re here to be spiritually impacted so we can go out in the world and make an impact for Christ. Maybe “Impact” isn’t a highly original name, but it fits our sr. high large-group time well as a constant reminder of what that meeting is all about.

Other Responses
I asked this question on Twitter last night and got a couple responses from other youth workers, too.

Kevin Twombly said: “ask the youth – pray – match a name with what the vision of the group is – pick out of a hat (sarcasm…)”

ruthEbabes said: “we wer tryin 2 get a new yth grp name & set a nite aside 4 them 2 share their fav bible vrs/passage. We used a key word from 1 of them.”

Ben Kraker had a longer response and messaged me on Facebook:

Use the Bible as your guide to develop a name for your youth ministry. What passages of Scripture have been encouraging for you and/or your students since starting at your church? During my ordination service as youth pastor, my senior pastor read Ephesians 3:14-21 as a prayer over me and my work with the students. He prayed that I would be rooted in Christ’s love, and help my students find their “ROOTS” in Christ’s love as well. Choosing a name is easy when you can “name” what God is doing in you, through you, and sometimes in spite of you in your youth ministry setting.

Our name, “Roots,” comes from that passage which was prayed over me during my ordination service. I try to base all of what we do as a youth group and all of what I do as a youth pastor on those verses. It gives me a framework to work from.

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Have a youth ministry question you’d like me and other readers to answer? E-mail it to me! Please keep your question brief and to-the-point. Thanks!

We’ve taken a little break from our Friday Skypecasts since I was away on a missions trip for a couple weeks and then last Friday was July 4th. I’m excited to talk with you all again this Friday, though. We always have such great conversations about youth ministry, our struggles, our praise reports, and sharing advice. What an encouraging time! I love it!

This Friday we have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s talk about what’s been happening in your ministry so far this summer. How has God been working? What are you excited about? What issues have come up that you’d like to bounce off other youth workers? We want to hear all your stories from this summer so far.

We’ll also have a special guest joining us. Steve Quatro is the director of Kern Center for Vocational Ministry and is an adjunct professor at Azusa Pacific University. He’s working with a team of Christian leaders to develop a program for high school students who may be sensing God calling to pastoral ministry. They are working hard to interface with youth workers on this issue, both to gain input and also equip us for guiding such teens. Steve whats to hear about what you do with students who express interest in serving God vocationally. Do you encourage your students to consider it? How young do you start planting the seeds? He’ll also give us some insights to use in our personal ministries, which I’m looking forward to hearing.

If you get a chance before the Skypecast, check out their website at www.ministryasvocation.org. They have college scholarships available, resources, and tools for exploring the Lord’s calling in vocational ministry.

What is a Skypecast?

If you’re new to Life In Student Ministry, every Friday at 1:00 PM Central Time many youth pastors from all over the world connect together in an audio “chat room” to talk about “life in student ministry.” We pray for each other, hear each others stories, give input into situations, and train each other to be more effective in our ministry to teenagers. For information about how to join the Skypecast (it’s FREE!) and to hear an audio highlight clip of what it’s like, check out the Life In Student Ministry Skypecast page.

Upcoming Skypecast Schedule

• July 11: Helping teens follow the Lord’s calling into vocational ministry (Steve Quatro, special guest)
• July 18: No Skypecast
• July 25: No Skypecast
• August 1: The balance between “fun” and Bible study in youth group
• August 8: Getting parents involved in the spiritual lives of their teens
• August 15: No Skypecast
• August 22: Problems with youth group as a “minichurch”
• August 29: No Skypecast
• September 5: Evaluating the spiritual depth of our youth ministries
• September 12: Working with students who suffer from depression and eating disorders (special guest, TBA)

I apologize for the Skypecast schedule being so sporadic. I’m traveling a lot these next couple months. Mark this schedule on your calendar, though, so you can participate when I’m here. Of course, in each Skypecast there will always be time dedicated to whatever special needs you want to bring to the table for discussion.

Stay Up-To-Date

To stay up-to-date with the latest Skypecast information, become a fan of the Life In Student Ministry Facebook Page or follow me on Twitter.

The longer I’m involved in vocational ministry, the more I’m convinced that ministry is should never be done from a Bible college or seminary education. This kind of ministry tends to focus on what you do, a task oriented to-do list of pulling off events, Bible studies and meetings. Instead, ministry should always be done out of a passion for God, a desire to know Him more intimately every day. Not just as desire to know more about God, but a deep craving to spend unrestricted time with Him. This kind of ministry focuses on who you are, a yearning for God that is extremely contagious and caught by those around you, not taught from a text book you read once.

I know this is about a week old, but I just now went through my RSS reader and caught up with this post by Perry Noble. He did an excellent job of summarizing some great tips for how to handle criticism in ministry by asking three questions. Here’s my summary:

#1 – How Well Does This Person Know Me?

Pastors, you’ve got to understand WHO is doing the criticizing. People will often act before they think (I do) and make snap judgments on your character based on one line you wrote on your blog or something you said in a sermon in which they did not listen to the entire context.

BUT…I do listen to those closest to me. I have created an open atmosphere among the leaders here at NewSpring…and behind closed doors I have been both encouraged and rebuked. You’ve got to have people around you who are willing to tell you the truth or this does not work. AND…I listen to the people in our church, who are neck deep in ministry with us…their opinion matters!

#2 – What Attitude Does The Person Criticizing Have?

Bottom line, if someone comes at me with a negative, condemning attitude…I write it off. The Bible says that we are called to speak the truth…but we are called to do so in love.

#3 – Does What The Person Is Saying Pass Through The Filter Of Scripture?

Let me say this–Scripture IN CONTEXT, I have discovered that there are some people out there who can make the Bible say anything they want it to say by misquoting God’s Word. But Scripture in context…I will listen to that.

#4 – Is This Criticism Personal Or Shared By Others?

…we will fall for the line, “I’ve been talking to a lot of people…and everyone is saying…” And then they will unload their personal agenda on us and say that everyone is saying the exact same thing. Which in most cases is not true.

#5 – Is This Worth My Time?

…what I have discovered is that the majority of the criticism I get simply isn’t worth my time. I am NOT going to change the person’s mind…and “friendly debate” is out of the question…so I just move on.

Thanks for your insights, Perry! This helps a lot.

I’m going to be honest: every item I list here is based on tendencies I’ve noticed in myself over the past several months. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, maybe you’ve even noticed some of them pop up in my previous writings. When I take a step back and write about it, it’s so easy to see how foolish I am. Burning out in ministry is not a sudden event in time that will take me by surprise, like a bursting firecracker on the 4th of July. Instead, it’s a slow process over time, like holding a burning match. If I’m not careful these things will eventually creep up on me, burn me, and render my leadership useless.

I doubt I’m alone in this. Here’s how you and I will crash and burn-out in ministry:

1. Ignore spending time in the Word and in prayer. Ministry is easy — you can do it all in your own strength. It shouldn’t be based on God anyway. Spend all your time teaching others how to develop their relationship with God instead.

2. Accept responsibility for everything. Say “yes” to whatever is asked of you and your time. It doesn’t matter if it could easily be handled by a volunteer, take it on anyway because you’re the guy they pay to do it. Besides, there may be no one else willing or available to do it besides you, which obviously indicates how important it is to everyone else.

3. Become emotionally attached to every situation. Whenever someone has a need, be the first to jump in, provide all the emotional support they need and rescue them from the problem. After all, everyone needs a savior.

4. Always serve God in ministry. This is so important that you must sacrifice all personal down-time and fill it with good things like meetings, events, Bible studies, evangelism, mission trips, prayer groups, small groups, and knitting groups.

5. Attempt to control everything. Control all the planning, the results, the future, the people, the workplace, the weather and God. You are the sustainer of the ministry on whom it is all built. If you take your eyes off of any of anything it will collapse and fail miserably.

6. Base your self-worth on the “success” of your ministry. You’re investing your life into this ministry thing! How it grows and flourishes indicates how important you are and how pleased God is with your labor. If your ministry is struggling, there must be something wrong with you.

7. Feed spiritual consumerism. So-and-so left the church and is attending the “mega-church” down the street because they have a better youth ministry. Now you need to quickly compete by offering the same programs but better. Otherwise, the entire congregation will migrate and leave you out of a job.

8. Focus your ministry on programs. This may come as a result of #7. Remember that vision and relationships are secondary to programming. Look at Jesus for example: His ministry was all about getting things done, not about growing disciples through relationships or communicating His vision for the world.

9. Dwell on all the problems. So it turns out that your ministry is the only one in the world that isn’t perfect. Let it consume your thoughts, your heart and your emotions. It’s important to focus on internal problems so there’s no time left to reach the lost souls that are dying all around.

10. Avoid transparency at all costs. Vulnerability brings the potential for rejection, criticism, and people losing respect for you. As a church leader, everyone must think you’re perfect, strong and invincible. Otherwise, the perfect people in your church will have no reason to follow you.

11. Focus only on what’s in front of you. Dreaming a huge vision for the future only makes people feel uncomfortable, probably because of item #5. Passion can become contagious and take the ministry in scary and risky directions, so it’s best to avoid these dreams altogether. It’s always safer to wander aimlessly by staring at your feet than it is to walk toward God’s beautiful horizon and risk tripping.

I’m a guy who enjoys electronics, gizmos and gadgets. I even supported part of my seminary education by doing part-time I.T. administration for a company here in Dallas. So when I came across Shane Hipp’s book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, I was immediately intrigued and picked it up.

Shane Hipps spent many years as one of the top experts on culture. His job was to constantly study media and culture and teach others how to effectively use it to market their products and services. As he grew in his walk with the Lord, he realized that his job was to convince people that they were missing something in their life and that a certain product would provide fulfillment. So, he resigned and attended seminary to learn to do the same with the Word of God. His writing therefore comes from many years of experience and knowledge of this topic of technology and culture, and it shows!

I used to just take technology for granted and explored any new way of using it in ministry. However, [tag]Shane Hipps[/tag] makes many good points why the statement, “The message stays the same but the methods change” really isn’t true. His argument is, “No, the method changes the message.” At first I couldn’t see how that could be based on anything but personal opinion, but his insights from behind the scenes of media and marketing really indicate a lot that the general public hasn’t realized about the affect media has on what’s being communicated. He starts with scriptural examples, moves on to explain the affect of the printing press and other past “phenomenons” that were considered technology, and then discusses current examples of media in church.

In no way does Shane Hipps doesn’t attack the use of media in ministry. Rather, he helps us think through different aspects of what it communicates and teaches us how to use it wisely and appropriately. It’s very helpful material.

I graduated from PBU with a degree in youth ministry and filled up all my electives with counseling classes, but I think if I had to do it over again I’d reverse that and focus on counseling instead. Even though it was only four years ago, a lot of what I learned about youth ministry is out of date. Youth culture and thus youth ministry are constantly changing. I mean, there was no [tag]MySpace[/tag] generation even four years ago. But the counseling part of ministry I use over and over again almost every day. Even this morning I spent some time talking with a girl fresh out of high school who has a history of abuse and struggles with cutting and suicidal thoughts.

No matter what position someone holds in ministry — whether it be in music, youth, children, adults, administrative, whatever — as long as you’re working with real people, counseling is a very necessary skill. I’m not even a counselor but I talk with parents and students all the time and, after earning a little bit of trust, issues always come up.

I’m looking forward to [tag]Youth Specialties[/tag]‘ theCORE this year because apparently it’s supposed to deal with part of this issue by training youth leaders to work with hurting kids. Even though I was the administrative director for Teenhopeline.com and may have more experience than some, I still wish I had a lot more training than I currently do. We all need it. And the people we talk to probably appreciate it when we have it, too.

I went through an old box the other day and came across a wrinkled sheet of paper with some notes scribbled on it. I don’t remember when I wrote these notes or what the situation was surrounding their context, but reading through them was pretty thought provoking for evaluating my call to vocational youth ministry.

PASSION

• What excites you? What do you get excited about?
• What drives you?

PERSONALITY

• What are you good at? What are your strengths?
• What are you bad at? What are your weaknesses?
• What ticks you off? What are your pet peeves?
• Who in the ministry do you look up to and respect?
• What kind of ministry are you attracted to?
• How has the way God wired you prepared you for ministry?

SPIRITUALLY

• What is God doing in your life spiritually?
• What are your spiritual gifts?

VISION

• Where is God leading you spiritually?
• What do you foresee in future ministry?

EXPERIENCES

• Are you plugged into ministry right now?
• What past experiences do you have in ministry?
• What do others say that have seen you work in ministry?

PHILOSOPHY

• What do you see ministry as?
• Define ministry.
• Describe ministry.
• Do you see ministry as a lifestyle or a job? Why?
• All believers are called to ministry, but few are called to full-time ministry. Why you?

CALLING TO MINISTRY BASED ON THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

• Faithful — Can you do it every day with passion?
• Fruitful — Are there positive outcomes? (Is God blessing it?)
• Fulfilled — Do you enjoy it?
• If one of these are not present, then you’re in the wrong ministry. Two of the servants were FFF, but one wasn’t and buried his treasure.

Mark Batterson has a great post addressing creativity in ministry leadership and “keeping what is sacred from becomming routine.” Please read and apply.

A couple weeks ago I was asked about my personal relationship with Christ and what I did to maintain it. I guess most people except an answer like, “I read my Bible, pray, and have personal worship time and 6:00AM every morning.” Although I participate in these things (rarely at 6:00AM, though!), it’s not a forced disciplined routine for me. My time with God is different all the time. I find new and creative things to do with Him. Otherwise my spiritual walk begins to feel like a rut, not an active and vital relationship.

Although Mark Batterson’s post relates more to ministry philosophy than to personal spiritual growth, I think his concept can be applied both ways.