Is Your Youth Ministry Ready to Grow?

One of the most important decisions any youth ministry needs to face is how to plan for growth. Let’s

be honest, It’s a nice problem to have, but you need to temper any excitement by making sure that you have well laid plans.

You might be a sole youth worker and you’re ready to make your first hires. Or you’re a solid, established youth ministry team thinking about adding a new on sight or off sight location. No matter your size or ambitions, here are a few tips to help you plan to expand.

Ensure God Wants You Grow
Expansion is not only a matter of growth, it’s also a matter of stamina, time, commitment. If you’ve got the fortitude – just like when you were starting out, you’ll be in for some long days – then you need to ensure that you and your youth ministry are ready to grow. It starts with you being honest before God. “It’s not about you. It’s about God!” - Rick Warren. Before you embark on a new journey, you need to know exactly what kind of shape you and your youth ministry is in. Essentially, you need to develop an entire ministry plan with full SWOT analysis in order to successfully chart your new path. That takes time, will, and, most importantly, a healthy balance sheet that is both spiritual and physical.

Be Prepared to Spend
We all know it’s true that you have to spend money to make money. But you have to spend your budget smartly. Consider consolidating your budget resources: spiritual gifts of your ministry team,volunteers, finances, recruitment, students, parents, and the church leadership team. That way you can track all of the resource categories that you can expect to surge as you start to walk this new journey.

A Few Good People
It can be the hardest and also the most rewarding part of ministry – hiring and managing your team. (Yes, you do hire volunteers) But the people who come on board with you are key to your success, especially as you grow. You will need to have processes and policies for dealing with mundane stuff such as vulnerable protection, volunteer role descriptions, expectations and benchmarks. You don’t want to spend your valuable time on these details, but they are very important to your people. Also, software solutions are easily accessible; Evernote, Google Drive, Google Calendar, are great places to start keeping your team organized.

Making Your Move
Do you need a bigger space, either for an office, lounge or gathering room? This may be the most formidable part of your expansion plan, and will entail a lot of site visits around your facility, negotiation with others staff/program leaders. Especially if you’re considering expanding to another part of your facility. Remember that you need to choose the best location based on the needs of your ministry, not just your wants. Off sight might even be something to consider. Creativity is your greatest asset in making your move. Surround yourself with 2-3 creative people and 2-3 people who have the spiritual gift of faith and see what happens. 

If your youth ministry is growing, it’s a sign that God is using you and those on your team – and feeling positive, even celebratory, is perfectly natural. But it’s also important to understand that growth is a disruptive force. A period of significant growth will impact every single aspect of youth ministry – which is why you need to adopt a strategic mindset. Ask youself, “Is my youth ministry ready to grow?” If so, the time to plan is now.

@jeffsmyth

coordinator of community initiatives - scarborough

youth unlimited (tyfc) 

Stop Developing Leaders????

For the last 15 years, North American Christianity has been fixated on developing leadership. Don't get me wrong... this has been a fantastic thing! The resources and training available is brilliant! 
But, think for a second. As great and as important as leadership development is, I have problems with this crazy level of emphasis we are putting on it.

(pic is from google images)

I want my people to be followers. 

What has happened that we put more emphasis on training leaders than we do on training people to be great followers of Christ? This is called discipleship. Did Jesus train his 12 to be leaders? Yes, but I think primarily, He was training them to be followers. Am I wrong? We sure use that discipleship word a lot, but I see a heck of a lot more intentionality in leadership development than I do in followership development. I want my people first and foremost to become examples of Christ in character, attitude, purity, thoughtfulness, depth, boldness, prayer, listening to God, service, humility, etc, etc.  

I want my people to understand and step into who they are in Christ. 

We constantly look for up and coming leaders, we call for leaders, and we encourage people into leadership. Leadership, as I see it, is ONE of the many gifts of the Spirit. Isn't it true that as people become good followers, as they understand themselves and the way God has wired them, gifted them, and placed them, then we will begin see who the real leaders are? What if we gave 'giftedness' that the crazy level emphasis that we give to 'leadership' development?  As people live out their own followership; the God-gifted leaders will be discovered because they will naturally rise. THEN, once we determine who the Holy Spirit has gifted that way, let's focus on training them to be great leaders AS WE train the hospitality people to be great hosts, the shepherds to be great shepherds, the evangelists to be great evangelists....  Should we treat leadership as equal to the other gifts? In the church tradition I grew up in, we criticized others for putting too much emphasis on some specific gifts; now, I think we are doing the same.

Spend the same intentional time and energy in training all people in their giftedness.

So, I actually don't want all my people to become leaders. I want them all to be great followers of Christ.

Will this era go down in history as the one that spent so much time and energy on leaders that we left the rest in the dust? Will people leave our churches in droves because they feel that there is no place for them if they are not leaders? If there is no place for thier gits to be used? Jesus took rabbi school rejects (young men not culturally designated for leadership) and made them into great followers. These followers became.

I know that this is overstated. I simply want to make us think. 


In youth ministry, I have only seen a few situations where students are really trained in the areas of their gifts (in a real breadth of gifts). I do see lots of places where kids are challenged towards leadership - and in most of those places, leadership means "be my slave, finish these tasks, run this game..."    

Let's not be known for developing great leaders. Let's be know for calling out God's uniqueness in each kid, recognizing the gifts of the Spirit, and pouring into them in "the way they should go"... they won't depart from it. 

Stop training leaders??? No. But let's put it back into its proper balance.


Dave Brotherton was a youth pastor from 1984-2006 and now teaches youth ministry at Ambrose University College in Calgary. Dave is also the National Youth Guy for the Alliance churches in Canada, the director of Legacy Youth Conference, and a junior high volunteer in his church. Dave is married to Lisa and they share 2 of the greatest kids in the world. Fishing, camping, and cheering on the Leafs are some of his favorite things. 
This summer, Dave is transitioning to lead the ministry of Sauble Christian Fellowship, Sauble Beach, ON. 
twitter: @oldbrotherdave 

Leadership. Seriously!?!

Teaching on leadership in youth ministry is sometimes like buying stock in the Green Bay Packers for Canadians, WORTHLESS!

We teach on the character of leadership, leadership traits, develop leadership teams, buy leadership curriculum to take our students through so they can be better leaders. WHY?

Because leadership is the new buzz word in church and I think we drank the Kool-Aid without thinking.

Leadership, in it's essence, is a spiritual gift given by the Holy Spirit from God to his children.

Do you focus as much time, energy, study, preparation, research and conversation with other on any of the other Spiritual Gifts that your youth would have received?

When we give our youth examples of anyone they should look up to we instinctively parade before them "leaders" and 9.5 out of 10 times they are male. Why?

Do we not know any women who lead in the history of Christianity? Where have all the women gone in our stories, in our conversations? Why do we always need to be reminded of the women of faith and not just remember them?

Women who have the spiritual gift of leadership or any of the other spirit gifts for that matter. Start using them as examples as you speak to your youth. Know the history of the women of the Christian faith.

An focus more on the spiritual gifts then on the office that someone holds.

Here's a brief movie clip about a movie that has a female hero in the lead role for the first time in the history of PIXAR. It's time that we start sharing about the female heroes of the Christian faith as well.

BRAVE

by Disney/PIXAR