Life of a youth pastor .

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Crunching Numbers. How do you (or your boss) rate attendance?

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Bar_graph

It happens at every church. The moment your senior pastor or supervisor asks you one of these questions:

  • “How many students do we have coming to program?”
  • “How many students attend on a weekly basis?”
  • “How many students regularly attend?”
  • “How many students are fully engaged?”
  • “What are our numbers for high school?”
  • “What are our current numbers for middle school?”

While many of these questions have a similar feel to them, they indeed are DIFFERENT questions. If your boss or senior pastor ask one of the above questions you might feel stuck or unfairly represented by answering that one question. Help them clarify their question by answering more questions that should be asked.

My high school ministry is most misrepresented by simply observing a weekly attendance report. If I were to answer the question, “How many high school students attended this week?” I would be forced to answer, [Read more…]

Organize for camp with custom lanyard schedules.

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IMG_9396      Bottom line: Get organized for camp by making your own lanyard schedules. 

Each year we run a full on NextGen camp. For MLK weekend we take 3rd-12th grade to the same camp setting, but run three independent camps according to age group. Sounds crazy and perhaps impossible right?! The three age groups never bump into each other except for MS/HS sharing a large group program.

Think about it: 300-400 kids & adults running around for three days trying to figure out what’s next, when to eat and where to be is asking for complete chaos. As you know, doing this for one age group brings enough headache of it’s own. Instead of trying to keep up with camp books, or kids asking the cabin leader every moment, “What’s next?”…we did lanyards this year and I’ll never look back.

What you will need: [Read more…]

2015 Student Ministry Survey

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This is not that conversation you have with another youth pastor to see who is “winning”, all of us are on the same team trying to reach the same generation, so let’s help each other out! The information I’m hoping to obtain with this survey can be life changing for your ministry and perspective on how your student ministry fits within your church.

After taking the survey you will know where you stand in these three areas compared to a variety of other churches.

  1. Student population in correlation to adult attendance
  2. Percentage of overall budget contributed to student ministry
  3. The student ministry staff sizes in relation to student numbers

After collecting information over the next few weeks I will email those that contributed to the survey, you will then be able to compare your own ministry to the averages obtained. This information will allow you to have real-time conversations with your church about where you are in these areas. (For me, I believe that I’m understaffed currently and I’m trying to discover if that is really the case.)

Your personal information and church name will be kept confidential, it will not be shared with anyone. The survey requires very short answers and should only take you a few minutes… when you are finished would you send the survey link to someone else? The more student pastors we can get to take the survey, the better averages and collective information we will have.

I wrote the email, but they will never know.

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imgkid.com

imgkid.com

 

This week my inbox continues to receive a handful of the same looking emails… and they are all from my small group leaders. It could be surprising, but it’s not, I planned for this to happen.

Partnering with parents can sometimes feel unreachable, but it’s just like anything else we do, if it seems unreachable perhaps we haven’t reached for it yet. I focus my small group strategy by always training with a weekly WIN for my small group leaders. When they walk in the door for the leaders meeting they see the WIN on the board and the WIN was emailed to them earlier in the week. I make sure my WIN(s) revolve around the subjects found in the book Lead Small. This ensures I don’t forget anything that could reinforce our strategy when training and equipping leaders.

This year the bulk of my WINs will revolve around partnering with parents. If you don’t know why that’s important or how critical it can be, perhaps I can convince you. A mom of high school student recently said to me, [Read more…]

You should tell them, “I’m not going to remember this conversation”

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fearless-selling.ca

 

One of the worst habit phrases you could fall into…

“I’ll get back to you.”

This phrase most often is a “nice” substitute for:

  • Hold on a second.
  • This isn’t important to me right now.
  • I’m too busy to make your priority my priority.

Now, I know you don’t mean it that way …but it can (and has) come across that way. We have all used this phrase multiple times in ministry with staff, volunteers, parents and students.

Whether you oversee a dozen people or hundreds, someone will always have a question for you to answer or a problem to solve. Here’s the ironic part, [Read more…]

6 “must visit” youth ministry websites

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We youth pastors can be guilty of spending too much time on the internet all with good intent… browsing, spiraling, ending up watching too many videos of cats. Your intentions are good and you are just trying to find a game for this coming weekend or hit a writer’s block so you hopped on facebook. When it comes to youth ministry related topics wether it be games, curriculum, or ideas, these are a few of my favorites [Read more…]

The Outsider

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Perhaps you enjoy the crowd, noisy bleacher seats, and the occasional stepping into something gooey… something tells me it’s the mustard from your corndog that has now ruined your new kicks. While a seat among the crowd can have it’s perks and excitement it can also be distracting as all get out. I for one appreciate watching the big game from a leather recliner on a big screen. Sure, there might be a 2-3 second delay from real time but who cares? I get to see it all! I see the players faces up close, I can see the line of scrimmage right down the middle every single play… something no one, not even the coaches get to see. I’m completely in tune with what is going on, but I am an outsider.

We get caught up in the game of youth ministry. We are overwhelmed with whether or not students are coming back, parents are on our back about why we are eating pizza yet again, and still we are frustrated why others just can’t see how much we have going on. We are stuck in a loop of the same people, doing the same thing, week after week after week. You know the saying, “If you keep doing the same thing expect the same results.” So, are you tired of the same results in your youth ministry? Let me present to you one person that could help you greatly, the outsider. [Read more…]

Best Bible Memory Apps

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memory

We live in a day and age where technology can work both for and against us. I spent my last airline flight playing a game, listening to a podcast, memorizing a bible verse and falling asleep to some classical music. All of these things were done on my phone.

While in high school I dedicated the book of Philippians to memory. This was done through long and tedious hours of writing out each verse by hand. I made note cards and [Read more…]

Putting out fires and starting new ones.

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APTOPIX Western Wildfires Yosemite

Recently I watched a documentary on forest fires within Yellowstone, reminding me what I had seen first hand last summer. The charred and barren spots within the park remind us that fires can be damaging or beneficial, sometimes both. This all depends on where the fire begins, the duration of the fire, and the one fighting the fire.

Ministry can often feel like you are playing the role of a fire fighter, and many times it can feel lonely. [Read more…]

Inside peek: Planning our Winter Camp.

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todos

The only successful to-do list includes this formula: Assign + Execute = Done. 

What appears to be a massive to-do list is almost just that. Some of these to-do’s will take 10 minutes while others may have taken 10 collective hours poured into them by our entire NextGen team. The multi-color spreadsheet to the right is our master schedule of 3 camps happening simultaneously at the same location on one weekend: 3-5 grade, 6-8 grade and 9-12 grade.

Assigning. This is probably more important than execution. If the task is assigned a champion to ensure it is completed then you do not have to worry about the 10 minutes – 10 hours it may take to execute the to-do. Evenly distributing your workload for a huge task like winter camp is the only way to go. It should never be one person’s job. If the item is not correctly delegated it will most likely not get done or present a source of frustration for the whole team. On our to-do board, in each checkbox there are initials representing the champion of that task, most of our team picked their own tasks to own. This came out of experience in a certain area or a gifting that made that task more preferable.

Executing. It usually always takes longer than you think, so allow double the time you think it may take so that you can produce quality work and not simply just get the job done. I’m not only talking about your input or work on the project: take into consideration graphic artists, t-shirt companies, shipping+handling timelines, and room for error if something needs to be redone. Set some timers. Today I had 15 minute timers going to keep me on task to execute my current to-do so I could move on to the next one. In the same manner, when a team-mate finishes their tasks you should start playing dominos (let one person that is finished fall into another persons task to help them until they are finished so that you can speed up the endgame)

This is probably not far off from what you and your team does before a camp or retreat. In a project as this you will be heavily reminded the importance of teamwork, if not you may be doing something wrong. You might be able to lift a few heavy things but you can’t do it all. Learn that now and you will still be sane in a few years and perhaps even your longevity in student ministry will increase.

A word of advice: Don’t wait until the last minute to think out loud with your team and start assigning and executing tasks. It’s never too soon to begin a project, but too soon can turn into too late very quickly.  Set dates on your calendar now for planning your next big event, set alarms on your phone, and reminders on your calendar for certain tasks. I suggest 4-6 months ahead of time.

Do you want more students at your camp? Do some forward thinking like some of your families.

If your personal and work life feel like they are overflowing with to-do’s try this exercise, I call it the “brain dump”.