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.

It’s easy to be short-sighted in ministry. We work so hard on the day-to-day tasks that we often lose sight of the bigger picture. We go from program to program, event to event, series to series, and at the end of each one we’re often so close to the ministry, staring at it from 5 inches away, that we unintentionally lose the bird’s eye view. How do we even know if we’re moving in the right direction when we spend the entire journey staring at our feet because they’re in better focus than the distant horizon?

This exercise is a bit morbid, but very insightful for bringing the horizon back in focus for your ministry. You’ll need half an hour or so to do it properly.

1. Write an obituary for your ministry 10 years in the future

Project the ministry forward 10 years. Imagine that the Lord takes you home with Him having accomplished the vision He placed on your heart. Write a short obituary about your ministry as you’d like other people to have experienced it.

Keep in mind that your ministry has been as “successful” as it can be and the Lord calls you home at the peak of its game.

• What do you want people to say about the ministry?
• How do you hope it will be perceived?
• What will people respect about it the most?
• What new ground has it broken for the Kingdom?
• How has it partnered with the Holy Spirit for life-change in people’s lives?

Take some time to write this obituary and dare to dream big.

2. Write an obituary for your ministry as it stands today

Okay, back to the present. Let’s just say that your life on earth ended today. Perhaps you were killed in a car accident, maybe silently in your sleep, or maybe you choked playing Chubby Bunny at youth group – it really doesn’t matter – the exercise remains the same.

Write an obituary for your ministry as you see it now.

• What do others say about it?
• Will it continue without you?
• What difference is it making in people’s lives?
• Is it breaking new ground for the Kingdom?
• Is it a reflection of what a healthy ministry should look like?

The key to it is to look at the two obituaries and compare them. Reflect on the differences.

Once you’ve compared your two obituaries, the next step is to spend a considerable amount of time in prayer, asking the Lord to enable you to move from the present reality to the big dream for the future. These sorts of dreams don’t just happen because you spend more time in the office, invest more money, or try harder. Rather, they are the result of spending time with the Lord, allowing Him to continually work through you, and often taking faith risks that may feel very uncomfortable.

If you’d like to share your obituaries (or at least what you discovered in writing them) in comments below I’d be interested to read what the Lord lays on your heart.

Series Intro
I’m very excited about the upcoming series here at Life In Student Ministry. Some of the youth ministry veterans on the Youth Ministry Mentorship Team have contributed guest blog posts on their advice for new youth workers, specifically those who have been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer. However, the wisdom they share is applicable for all of us. I’m looking forward to sharing their insights with you over the next couple days.

I’ll start the series by talking a little bit about the importance of casting a vision for your youth ministry.

The importance of casting a vision

Every new youth worker wants to lead an effective youth ministry that reaches a lot of students for Christ. This is an admirable goal, but the way most new youth workers go about it is completely wrong.

First, they look to the “big shots” in youth ministry and try to copy what they’re doing, because obviously they’re using a proven method, right? So, the new youth worker reads, “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry,” and tries to replicate it. A couple years later they realize that they’re still having the same struggles and that not much has changed in their ministry. Frustrated, they look for something else and try to copy that, like Willow Creek’s model. Apparently the ministry system worked for them, so why not for us? But again, it leads to frustration and not the “Willow Creek” results they were looking for.

There’s nothing wrong about ministry models except the process most new youth workers take in implementing them: they try to copy the Lord’s vision for someone else’s ministry and think that it must somehow also be the Lord’s vision for their ministry.

Some of the general principles of every model may definitely apply, but the actual vision for your ministry will always be very different. Here’s why:

You are a unique individual created by God with a specific set of gifts, talents and abilities that differ from anyone else on this planet. The people in your ministry are also very unique, and so is your community and your ministry context. Even your value system is at least somewhat different from anyone else. Ministry models contain solid Biblical principles, but you are not Rick Warren or Bill Hybles. These people are leading incredible ministries because they didn’t search to copy someone else’s vision for ministry — they sought the Lord’s leading for their own ministry and then pursued it with great passion. That’s exactly what you need to do.

Spend time seeking the Lord for His direction for your ministry. This isn’t an overnight process. It takes months, maybe even years, before His vision for your ministry becomes clear and finally clicks. You need to constantly be reading His Word, being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, and asking the Lord to share His dream for your ministry with you. And when He does, man, you will be consumed with it!

As you begin to see the vision take shape in your mind and your heart, it will become your passion to share it with others and get them on board with it. Your vision will become so compelling that it will be contagious and the people around you can’t help but want to jump on board. Before long, you’ll have a movement of people all working together to accomplish His dream for your body of believers.

That’s when you’ll see amazing things start to happen, as you seek the Lord and follow His direction for your ministry instead of whatever top ministry strategy Google brings up. No longer will you feel like you’re jumping from one program to the next, one event idea to the next cool idea, one curriculum series to something else, with no interlinking connection or direction. Everything will be moving cohesively together toward something God has laid on your heart and it will be incredible!

Read the Entire Series
The entire series can be found here as the posts are published throughout next week (starting October 14, 2008).

Every year each ministry in our church writes an overview of the past year. A couple of us (including myself) also give an oral report at our annual meeting. Here’s a brief (believe it or not) excerpt from my written annual report about where the youth ministry has come this past year.

A Focused Vision

This year our philosophy of ministry was greatly simplified. No more mission statement, purpose statement, vision statements, core values, strategies, etc. It was confusing for most people and very difficult to communicate. It left the vision for the ministry’s forward spiritual movement very fuzzy and unfocused for students, adult leaders and even me!

Now all those statements are boiled down together. The purpose is the mission, which is also the vision, which is also our core values and strategy all wrapped up into one, easy-to-remember vision: “Deep and Wide Youth Ministry.” We want to take teenagers deep into the Word so they become spiritually passionate believers who take the gospel wide to the lost people around them.

Beginning to Implement the Vision

The implementation of Deep & Wide is starting to work itself out in a variety of ways.

• Sr. High C3 renamed to Impact: “We come to be spiritually impacted so we can go out there and make a spiritual impact.”
• At Impact, we’re going through 30 core questions of Christianity, essentially summarizing 30 key areas of systematic theology.
• C-Groups continued to be a place where high school students can build relationships with other believers in a small group setting and be challenged to go deep in the Word.
• All teenagers were trained to share their faith using Pray, Pursue, Persuade: pray for 5 unsaved friends, pursue a relationship with them where you bring God up in conversation, and lovingly persuade them into a relationship with Christ.
• All teenagers also were taken through the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey, where we traced the Lord’s plan of salvation through the entire Bible.
• Jr. High went through an in-depth study of the entire New Testament in The Journey small groups. This year they will go through the entire Old Testament.
• The Belize missions trip was geared to take kids deep into the Word by spending an hour alone in the Lord every morning, teaching times, and through debriefing/reflection together on what God was doing through us. They were also challenged to go wide with the gospel as we shared our faith with adults, children and teenagers alike. Many came to faith in Christ as a result!
• M.U.U.U.C.E. served as a good kick-start for getting into the Word this school year and introducing new 7th graders to each other as they got ready to go through the New Testament together in The Journey.
• Wake ‘n Ski did not meet its “go wide” focus. It is being evaluated for next year.
• 30 Hour Famine was organized and let by high school student, Sara Wadi. She did an outstanding job of coordinating the event to raise funds for providing food, education, clothing, medical attention, and the gospel message to starving children in other countries. The money we raised literally “went wide.”
• Since our vision for Deep & Wide Youth Ministry was still taking shape, our winter ski trip to Big Sky in Montana did not really fall into it any specific way. That will obviously have to be evaluated if we do the ski trip again.
• M.O.V.E. 2008 was a great opportunity to serve the community of Minneapolis by cleaning a facility that provides furniture to individuals and families entering society (immigrants, ex-convicts, etc.). We also assembled a lot of donated furniture for them, as the hands and feet of Jesus.

As we launch into the upcoming year, we intend to make Deep & Wide much more pointed and integrated. The transition began last year and it will continue throughout next year, too, as we evaluate everything and seek the Lord’s direction for our ministry. Hopefully by 2010 Deep & Wide will be be the driving force behind everything that happens in the youth ministry. The life-change and growth we’ve experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg of how God wants to bless His work here.

Where the Vision is Going

Our goal is to become more Christlike, as scripture commands (Rom. 8:29; 12:2; etc.). This does not mean that we only strive to become more perfect with less sin, as many Christians think. It actually means that our heart for lost people must continually grow because, ultimately, that’s the very reason why Christ came to earth in the first place – out of a love and burden for lost people. To become more like Christ means that our hearts share His desire to see sinners come to faith in Him. This evangelism aspect of discipleship should be a part of the spiritual journey every believer takes. We want to see teenagers become more Christlike, in both spiritual maturity (Luke 2:52) and in a heart for lost people (Matthew 28:18).

We believe that evangelism and discipleship are not intended to be separate. Traditionally, small groups and Bible studies are seen as discipleship opportunities and evangelism is usually reduced to a special event or a project where students outsource the gospel message to someone on a stage. Matthew 28 says to “Go and make disciples.” Evangelism is a vital part of discipleship and personal spiritual growth.

• This next year I will intentionally to share the gospel clearly at every youth meeting so our kids hear it, know it and share it. And also for any unbelievers who might be present because nothing else we talk about in youth group means a thing if someone present doesn’t know Christ.
• This next year I will take teenagers deep into the Word by teaching theology and pushing them to be obedient to the application of the Word to their lives as they go wide with the gospel message. That means internalizing these principles myself first and modeling it for them.