Life of a youth pastor .

Juggling Rocket Ships.

by Leave a Comment

What goes up must come down…so the saying goes. But what about the rocket ship? If it goes high enough it will reach zero gravity and stay in orbit for a long time! That ship is not coming back down unless given a force in the opposite direction in from which it came.

In ministry, don’t you wish you were juggling with rocket ships?! What some of us would give, to know that we could throw a task so high that it succeeds in flight and all we need to do is keep an eye on it, making sure the flight pattern is on the right path.

Often pastors, staff, and volunteers throw one ball up at a time just for it to come back down. One area of your ministry needs help, attention, a process – you spend hours, days and even weeks helping it succeed. Just when you think you have thrown that ball high enough you see many others speeding at you like asteroids about to hit your ministry. You have now lost focus of the one ball you spent so much time with! And very soon, it too will be speeding back at you.

I’m not here to say I have the answers to this juggling act, but rather offer some sympathy and encouragement…

I know ministry is exhausting at times, find strength in the Spirit. I understand you are frustrated, find contentment in the Gospel.  I recognize you are probably not getting the results you desire at the moment, find fulfillment and joy in being a child of God!

What are you juggling right now? Budgets, retreats, capital campaigns, small groups, recruiting leaders, meeting with students, parents, equipping volunteers, casting vision for staff, writing messages for Sunday. I’m right there with you.  So, how do I juggle these tasks? I recognize that the Spirit has given each one of my staff, leaders and volunteers a gift. I play to their strengths. You are not alone in ministry…so don’t do ministry alone!

How am I currently juggling? I try to begin with prayer, knowing that God is ultimately responsible here. “God, give me someone to oversee this check-in process.” Now you have to act! Seek out people who have a gift of hospitality – put them in charge of overseeing your greeting and check-in process. This one person can focus on the one ball of greeting. Seek out who has a gift of humor, I strongly believe God has created some people to be more funny than others…and every student ministry needs one. Have this person focus on the one ball of games. I am a partnering students with these adults in the juggling act, help share the load and feel the ownership. I would strongly discourage you from just putting anyone in a postion of coaching or ownership in an area of your ministry, make sure they are qualified, passionate about that specific area, and gifted in that way. It is better to keep looking than try to find a quick fix!

As these teams develop, you do not get a free ride. In some cases, your position becomes more difficult. You will have to learn how to explain your vision, desires, why’s and how to’s, when it comes to juggling. Hopefully, somewhere along the way you aren’t the one juggling all the balls that make up your ministry. You have gone from juggler to aircraft control tower – directing the airspace in your ministry where your rocket ships have launched and are flying high!

I am praying for all the pastors out there today who are juggling away.  I pray that God guides you to people who hold gifts and passions that your ministry needs to successfully launch!

If you are really interested in learning how to juggle, take a shot at it!

Subscribe to lifeofayouthpastor via email in the top right corner.

Are you ready to plant a church?

by Leave a Comment

Church planting has a special place in my heart; it is found in the DNA of both my home church Hill Country Bible Church and my current church, Gateway. I was a bit confused when I was asked to take a church planting survey while in my interview process. In the words of my senior pastor, “If we offer you this position I need to know that you understand church planting.” Not just this youth ministry, but almost every youth ministry and every youth pastor will experience this similar pressure at some point…to grow the ministry both spiritually and numerically. I believe that many veteran youth pastors make excellent candidates for church planting. Student ministry is full to the brim of church planting essentials: equipping people to lead, casting vision, working with budgets, hiring and leading staff, organizing serving opportunities and mission trips, leading small group movements, dedicating oneself to a weekly program of teaching and worship, the list goes on and on.

The assessment given to me was issued by ELI Church Planting. “ELI is mobilizing leaders to start new churches out of the culture – churches molded from messy people rising up out of the culture to become the Body of Christ.”

So, are you ready to plant a church? Check out ELI’s website for the free assessment and learn more about your areas of strength and needs for improvement when it comes to church planting.

One of my current reads on church planting is “Church Planter” by Darrin Patrick.

Subscribe to lifeofayouthpastor via email in the top right corner of this page.

Reading 1-2-1

by Leave a Comment

Can the Bible be used as an evangelism tool? Your answer, “We’d be lost without it!” But what I’m getting at is actually inviting someone who is far from God or unfamiliar with the Bible to study it with you. I presented this challenge to my adult leaders in student ministry. Some latched on to the idea and a few ran with it. One man in particular who has been a leader for many years felt so compelled by the Spirit during my challenge that his neighbor came to mind. That very week, with the Bible in hand, he walked across the street and asked his neighbor to meet with him and read the Bible…his neighbor agreed! They started with the gospel of Luke and read the whole thing! The neighbor proceeded with, “Shouldn’t we start at the beginning?” They read through Genesis and now are working through the Old Testament, and may I remind you that this man does not have a relationship with Christ! Can you imagine what it would be like to learn how to study the Bible before coming to faith? He will know how to feed himself the Word of truth and where to go for answers about life and faith.

A quote from the book One-to-One Bible Reading that I gave each of my leaders and some choice student leaders:

“We asked a total of 1,000 twenty-something unchurched people; 900 American, 100 Canadian. And we compared them to a sample of 500 older unchurched (30 or above)…
One of the questions that we asked them to agree or disagree with was: ‘I would be willing to study the Bible if a friend asked me to?’ Among twenty-somethings, 61-percent said, ‘Yes.’ Among their older counterparts of 30 and above, 42-percent said, ‘Yes.’ And that was a statistically significant difference, telling us there’s something going on, there’s an openness that’s there. So we’re seeing that as an opportunity–that in the midst of some negative views of the church, there is also some openness to the things of God.”

In a previous post I did talk about the dropout rate of high school students walking away from their church and faith. Let this be an encouragement that their are many that are thirsty for the truth, but more importantly are awaiting the ask, “Will you study the Bible with me?”

Who in your life could you invite to read the Bible with you that might be far from God and unfamiliar with His love for them.

Pray for opportunities.

Watch for opportunities.

Act on opportunities.

Grab your copy of One-to-One Bible Reading

Subscribe by email or RSS feed in the top right corner of page for immediate postings or updates!

Take your street for Jesus.

by Leave a Comment

Fanchon St. – Our rental has been quite the fixer-upper for my wife and I during our first year of marriage. Our honeymoon house. The home was built in the 1920’s and moved to Fanchon St. in the 1940’s (our landlord is a house mover). Along with character it has bubbling plaster walls and uneven floors. Since moving in my father-in-law and I re-walled the bathroom, Calla and I painted the whole place and I transformed a dirt pile into a yard with grass and a garden!

The first night after our wedding we came home to pack for our honeymoon, it was storming pretty bad…the ceiling in the living room was bowed with a crack down the middle gushing water all over the newly installed carpet!!! Needless to say we still packed, threw some buckets under the leaks and jetted out the door for for our honeymoon. Oh the beauty of renting and not owning! And yes…I did call my landlord once we pulled off Fanchon St.

We drove 12 hours north to the quaint, boundary waters town of Grand Marais, Minnesota. There we enjoyed the great outdoors and a beautiful cabin overlooking one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. One week later we sank back into the reality of “real life” on Fanchon St.

We were the only married couple on our street when we moved in last year. Our neighbor on the left is a recently divorced man, to our right an older single woman whose boyfriend visits on the weekends. Across the street a family with many kids from different marriages, the current couple is not married….and more identities unfolded over the year as we got to know our neighbors. We picked up the bits and pieces on what all these people shared in common…a longing for community.

My wife and I began praying for our neighbors…that we might have the opportunity to be Jesus to them. Our prayer and dreams began spinning out of control as we prayed for months and months that we would have opportunities to love our neighbors, serve our neighbors and help build the foundation of a community that would be centered on the hospitality and grace of Jesus.

Nothing happened. Sure, there were good conversations here and there…times we were able to share our faith stories with them…but nothing really happened. Our prayers, hopes and what we were wishing for were not lining up with the reality that Fanchon St. was still the same old Fanchon St.

We had to take initiative…our hopes needed to be followed by action. We decided to have a campfire in the backyard and invite everyone over for s’mores! We made it a BIG DEAL and let them know all about it by printing off colorful postcards and putting one in each mailbox…it was titled “Friday on Fanchon St.” The incredibly small investment of time, intentionality and an invitation paid huge dividends for the kingdom of God. That night everyone showed up, parents, kids, a baby, and around that campfire we had COMMUNITY! As if we couldn’t ask for more, one woman stayed particularly late and we had the opportunity to unfold the love of Christ in the gospel story and share how we know the Bible is historically accurate.

Need I say more? Take your street for Jesus. They are longing for community, more than that – longing for the person of Jesus Christ.