Student ministry is an
interesting beast. It’s loaded with good memories, fun trips, prayer times, students hopped-up on Red Bull, and significant moments with
students who you share your life with. To reach, lead, and mentor students is a
high calling youth workers respond to, but it doesn’t come without its
challenges.
With all of your best intentions
and purest motivations it is still very easy to fall into a host of ministry
traps that will sabotage, blindside, and wreak havoc on your youth ministry.
Here are just a few ministry traps to watch out for:
1. Self-Importance
Leading in student ministry
suddenly gives a young person a little bit of power and, with any success, the potential
for pride to take over. In youth ministry, what’s important isn’t you, how many
Twitter followers you have, how cool and hip your clothes are, or how big your
ministry is. What is important is making Jesus’ name great, not yours.
2. Over-Scheduling
Filling up the schedule
burns out students, parents, volunteers, your family, your ministry, and you.
Don’t be lazy, but intentionally leave blank space in your weekly, monthly, and
yearly youth ministry calendars. You get to set the pace so make it
sustainable.
3. Guard Your Social Circle
The students you lead should
not be your primary social-circle. You need friends, adult ones, because you’re
an adult – right?!
4. Comparison
Comparing yourself to other
leaders and other ministries is an easy trap to fall into. There are multiple reasons why comparison hurts your leadership and ministry.
5. Undermine Parents
As youth workers we are on
team with parents, DO NOT undermine them! As soon as you do, not only have you
lost credibility with the parents but you’ve also lost the credibility to lead
that student.
6. Become an Island
The larger a youth ministry
grows the easier it is for you and your youth ministry to become an island
unto yourself. Student ministries need connection with each other.
7. Under Administrate
A common trap student
ministry leaders fall into is to under administrate. Email
replies that should have been taken care of last month, unreturned voicemails,
and expensing receipts from 2006 are surefire ways to drop the ball. Many young
pastors sabotage their best efforts and their natural charisma by not learning
to administrate well. Structures actually release leadership to work smarter,
not harder.
A rule of thumb: the younger
the age of those you lead, the tighter your administration will need to be.
This will settle any parent’s worries, keep you out of jail, and will help you
build trust and credibility with those you lead.
8. Tick-off Local Principles & Teachers
Don’t do this! Local
campuses are the mission field and school administration hold the key. Bless
them, don’t tick’em off.
9. Be Unsubmissive to Your Lead Pastor
This connects back to point
number one; the more highly you think of yourself the more likely you’ll begin
to resent and be unsubmissive to your lead pastor. Serve your pastor well by
being a good follower.
10. Dream Too Small
Expand your vision.
11. Poor Delegation
Leaders of every age
struggle with ineffective delegation. If you delegate a job to a
capable person and then proceed to micro-manage the job, you’ll lose
credibility. If you delegate a job to a person unfit for the task and offer no
direction or help, you lose.
12. Get Lazy
I cringe when I see youth
workers not giving their best to youth ministry. What happened to the call, the
vision that God gave you, and the passion sparked in your heart? Why would you
rather distract yourself with meaningless things and avoid the task of student
discipleship? If this is you, get back in the game!
13. Under Value Volunteers
Try this experiment: plan a
huge event, invite tons of students, and give every single one of your
volunteers the night off. The next morning (or the next month) after you’ve
recovered from your near-death-experience, re-evaluate your plan for
encouraging, inspiring, and valuing your team of volunteer youth workers!
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