Christians, Church Is Not About You

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“well, that’s unfortunate”.

yup, that’s actually what someone told me today when i explained that my church is laser focused and unapologetically in business for the people in our community far from God.

of course, this conversation was in a larger context of why our church does ‘this’ and doesn’t do ‘that’, and how those decisions happen to not line up with the style of worship they would prefer at the moment… yada yada yada.

to be honest these conversations weary me. i’d rather floss my teeth (something i really hate doing). i wish people who call themselves Christians would just read The Great Commission and take it literally. i wish they would look harder in the Gospels and somehow catch Jesus’ heart for the broken and the messed up. i mean, is it really that hard to see? he would spend hours talking to town prostitutes in the hot sun while his friends looked for funnel cakes, and he’d hang around money launderers with his own reputation on the line.  Jesus’ passion for people affected his everyday, operational decisions, and yet it feels today like so many long-time (mature) Christians love taking cheap shots at churches trying to get their hands dirty by making those same kinds of decisions.

i think it’s unfortunate that they think it’s unfortunate. it’s sad really. because the church is not about you, Christians. it’s not about what you like, or what you prefer. the minute you turned your life over to Christ you were given a job: to love without limits, to care compassionately, and to sacrifice selflessly.

so if you’re looking for a church, look for one that’s getting their hands dirty in the lives of people far from God. and put your personal preferences aside.

The Basics Of Student Ministry

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been thinking a lot lately of what student ministry at its core really is. back when i was a student in high school it didn’t seem like youth ministry was as big a “machine” as it is today. what we have today is certainly not bad… in fact i’m thankful for the hundreds of conference/training options, books, resources, blogs, podcasts, etc. out there. but as anything grows and matures, it can lose (at least for me) the essence of what it was created to do in the first place.

here was my experience 15 years ago when i was in high school, and how our church’s non-complex student ministry literally transformed my life. this is what it’s really all about:

1. we had a bunch of caring adult leaders around, and one of them in particular pouring into me. they were there every wednesday night. playing ping-pong, joking around with other teens, introducing themselves to the new kid, asking me about my world, and organizing a pickup basketball game at the park right afterwards. most of them knew me and i knew they all cared about me. but there was one who went beyond the others. he took a special interest in me, met up with me every week outside of Wednesday nights. we emailed, talked on the phone, hung out, and simply did life together. rubbing shoulders together as we went through everyday life made a profound impact on me, greater than any one event or amazing youth talk.  and the coolest thing… he wasn’t even the youth pastor!

2. i was given chances to lead. our youth leaders saw potential in me, and created space for me to lead. i know many nights the program bombed because of me, and i dropped the ball. they could have done the job better and quicker without me, but they saw a value in me holding the mic or writing the encouragement card. i still remember giving the announcements, running tech, and greeting other teens at the door, and for a self-righteous stuck up teen like myself, i needed an opportunity to see beyond myself.

3. we had an extremely safe crowd program. wednesday nights at our church was the place to be if you were a teenager in our little city surrounded by cornfields. there were always new teens there, and i still remember our youth pastor arriving each week in his beat-up, old truck with a bunch of students from the community. he even transported a kid in a wheelchair more times than i can count. the crowd was everywhere on the spiritual spectrum, and i still remember the nervous looks on the some of the older church members’ faces from time to time when they would walk in. there was laughter, learning, worship, and a strong challenge to follow Jesus harder.

no matter how complex and involved student ministry today becomes, i hope we always have these 3 components coming through loud and clear!

I Love My Job

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just got an email from youth specialties with this video. if you work with students, it’s totally worth the 3 minutes. we’re gonna show it at our next team meeting in a few weeks.

some of the most significant ministry to students really does happen between youth services.

thanks YS!

“I’m Here”

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have you downloaded Marko‘s free e-book A Beautiful Mess yet? if not you can grab it over here, at least for now.  i just started reading it and fell in love with the story below. i love how as youth workers we often have no idea the impact we’re making and we’re so often in the dark, but underneath God is moving students’ hearts and answering big prayers.

A modern-day story, shared with me recently by a friend of mine, gifted veteran youth pastor Sam Halverson:Sam had a teenage guy in his group (we’ll call him Tim) who’d shown no spiritual interest whatsoever and was normally brooding and dark in his outlook. At a particular worship time, the students in Sam’s group were given some space to reflect on their spiritual lives. Tim sat by himself and was drawn into a very personal something. Sam couldn’t tell what was going on, whether Tim was having a profound spiritual moment, or was angry, or something else. He noticed Tim with his head down; as Sam moved around the room and neared Tim, he could tell Tim was in the midst of something intense. Sam said he had no idea what to do. Should he interrupt what was possibly a personal moment between Tim and God and ask Tim what was going on? Should he lay hands on Tim and pray for him? Should he leave Tim alone? Sam, feeling helpless and bumbling, lightly touched Tim on the shoulder and said, “I’m here.” Tim only nodded but said nothing. As he walked away, Sam felt he’d probably blown it, that there was likely something better he should have done (but he had no idea what that better thing would have been). A week later, Tim’s mom called Sam about another issue. At the end of the call, she said, “Oh, and I wanted to tell you thanks for what you did for Tim.” Sam was confused. Tim’s mom continued, “Tim told me that he was really struggling with whether or not God even exists. In that prayer time, Tim was begging God to reveal himself. He prayed, ‘If you’re real, God, then do something—right now—to say “I’m here!” ’ Tim told me that the second he prayed that, you put your hand on his shoulder and said, ‘I’m here.’ ”

Don’t Call Your Event An Annual Thing!

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caution, rant coming!

why is it that we in ministry so often start a new event/program/initiative and right out of the shoot call it something like “the first annual pizza eating contest”?  when the event miserably fails, or even produces minimal levels of success, it makes it that much harder to kill it and channel resources to a more worthwhile initiative.  it’s funny to me how one word can keep dysfunctional programs on the calendar for far too long.

it’s always good to evaluate an event from top to bottom. and it’s certainly good to start by even asking the question whether or not the event should even continue next year.  the reality is, even if something’s been successful for 20 years, it still doesn’t mean it will be successful next year.

i guess this stuff has been on my mind more lately as i’ve been reading through necessary endings by henry cloud with the rest of our church staff. i’m realizing that as the leader of our student ministry, one of my primary jobs is approving what is allowed to go on our ministry calendar, and by extension, what initiatives are allowed or not allowed to get our attention. that simple yes that i give affects many families – my ministry volunteers/staff, our students and their parents, and other groups wanting to use our facility.  as a ministry we can’t do everything, and we must make sure our resources are being sent to initiatives that will truly produce results.

the next time you have a great idea, don’t call it an annual event! give yourself freedom to take it off the calendar and replace it with something else.

Empowering Parents To Leverage Your Amazing Youth Talk

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ever since attending the simply youth ministry conference this past march, specifically a session with jim burns from homeword, i have been trying to build a stronger partnership between our student ministry and the parents of our teens.  there’ll probably be more posts rolling out soon related to this topic, but here’s one super easy thing we’re trying now to strengthen this partnership. 

i’ve always tried to let our parents in on what we’re generally teaching (the series name and description, and the topics addressed each week).  but my sense has been that the info getting to them before the actual talk wasn’t specific enough to actually empower them to do anything with it. i know not every parent asks their kid what they learned at youth group, but some do. what if we made it a point to give them a specific direction in which to aim their questions, and would that in itself begin to build trust?

though i know in a general sense what topics and scriptures i’ll be teaching weeks and months in advance, it’s usually not until a couple days before the talk that i have the content flow and specific outline points finalized.

here’s what we’re trying. i usually preach on sundays. so on friday right after i finalize the message and send the notes to print, i type up a quick email to our parents with specific info on this weekend’s message.  here’s the one that just went out this past week:

Jealousy is a powerful force, and if you’re human, you’ve experienced its pull from time to time.  This Sunday we’re going to be challenging our JH and HS students to recognize it’s destructive potential and offer a solution when they feel it creeping near their soul.  We’ll begin the message by talking about that awkward moment when you see a 3rd grader strutting around with a better phone than your own (As a 20-something I’ve felt this before!), and we’ll acknowledge the many students that either don’t have one yet or lost some of its privileges lately.  We’ll spend most of our time looking at the story of Cain & Abel in Genesis 4, and how Cain’s example of unresolved jealousy took more away from him than than just his brother.  We’ll touch on the fact that when jealousy leads us to anger, it leaves us in fear, in isolation, and with lots of regret.  Some supporting Scriptures we’ll reference will be 1 Corinthians 3:3 and Galatians 5:19-20.  We then plan to wrap up the message by offering the teens a solution: to make it a habit of celebrating other people’s success.  Whether it’s a teammate who excels on the baseball field, a classmate who scores higher on her SAT’s, or a friend with seemingly more freedom – celebration crowds out jealousy.  When we can no longer celebrate and get excited about the great things in someone else’s life, we’ve probably been breathing in a whiff of jealousy’s fumes.

Please ask your son/daughter about the message and let us know what we can do to help you take it deeper with them.

–Pastor Cory

I’m not sure if we’ll do it forever, but we’re trying it now. here’s some encouraging feedback we received from a couple parents after last week’s email went out:

“Hi Pastor Cory – your note about this upcoming Sunday was what we were envisioning as a great parent’s tool… I think your detailed agenda for Sunday will be a great help in opening up dialogue after the service – and maybe even before as we parents can do some ‘prepping’ to get the soil ready for you to plant!”

“Hi Pastor Cory, Based on the email you sent out below, I have challenged our whole family to read all of those scriptures this week, and then at the end of the week we are going to have our own small group to discuss our thoughts and feelings about what is being said.  Thanks for sharing what the messages are on…”

what other ideas are out there to better position our weekly teaching for more parent/student interaction and growth?

Adelina Turns 1 Today

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it’s amazing how fast the last 12 months have gone, and we’re so grateful for the fantastic people in our world who have shared it with us! happy birthday, adelina!

Recruiting: Your Best People Are Already In Your Church

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in student ministry we’re always look for caring adult leaders to continue loving on students  and volunteers to help us advance the ball in our ministries. but let’s be honest, sometimes it seems that they’re hard to find.

i still remember watching one adult volunteer from a different church a few years ago who was obviously not in his sweet spot serving in student ministry; during an overnight event, some of my teens tried to play a prank on him at 2am by deflating his 3 ft. high air mattress (while he slept on it). i still laugh thinking about it… until i remember how he quickly lost his cool and shouted obscenities at the teens in his sleep! some people just aren’t cut out for this kind of ministry.

but some are… and the big question centers around where to find them.

sometimes it feels like flipping through a where’s waldo book.

i recently began reading through 1 corinthians, and this verse jumped out at me as i’ve been thinking about recruiting these days:

“Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.”

what i love about this verse is the fact that paul is talking, under the inspiration of the holy spirit, to a very dysfunctional and broken church. and even in that messed up environment, his theology taught that all the gifts necessary to lead a healthy ministry were already present in the collective body of believers there in corinth.

that gives an incredible amount of hope to us in the trenches of recruiting volunteers.  though all of our churches are messed up to some degree because they’re made up of messed up people, hopefully your’s isn’t as bad as this one in corinth. but even if it is, by faith we can be confident that there’s no spiritual gift lacking within our walls to accomplish the ministry God has called us to.  we just need to keep looking, asking, following leads, taking potentials out to lunch, and being faithful with the ones he’s already entrusted to us. they’re there… we just need to find them!

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to view the process and application we use when we do find the right person, check this out!

 

They Just Want To Know That You’re Being Responsible

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was looking through my notes from college (this one, to be exact) for a fellow youth pastor friend the other day, and stumbled upon a few nuggets of truth from one of my classes that has proven to be super helpful. i remember running into so much tension between different people during my first couple years of ministry. if i just understood that all they wanted was to know that i was being responsible, it would’ve softened many tough conversations.

SENIOR PASTORS want to know that you are responsibly leading the ministry to spiritual maturity.

THE BOARDS (deacon, elder, trustee) want to know that you are responsibly stewarding the church’s money, time, salary, and people resources.

PARENTS want to know that you are responsibly shepherding the physical & spiritual needs of their kids.

i’ve learned that it’s not just a matter of being responsible. it’s about communicating enough with these three groups so that they know you are being responsible. unfortunately, when there’s poor communication, people tend to assume the worst, and when that happens it can get ugly.