(Good to Great Youth Ministry Part Five)
“Keep up the good work” said Tom, “you are making great progress here”. I could not believe the words I was hearing. Tom was not known for empty words of praise. “What do you mean?” I asked. He went on to comment on how the youth ministry at this church had been doing the ‘same old, same old’ for more than ten years. They were in effect stuck in a rut. That is not to say it was without fruit, but there was not significant growth taking place. The same group of students went on the same trips and retreats year after year. Weekly programs were so full of traditions that any new ideas were a shock to the system. However, what Tom was pointing out was simply that we had managed to entirely change the direction of the ministry. I was struck by the fact that I had not really noticed. Because my eyes were on the long term vision, I did not recognize the short term progress.
This series of articles are looking at the transformation of youth ministries from good to great, based on the concepts in Jim Collins best selling book. In Good to Great, Collins makes the following rather stunning observation. “In building greatness, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”
Pushing a flywheel
According to the Hedgehog concept explained in the previous article in this series, we need to build our ministries on our passion, uniqueness, and vitality. Collins compares this relentless pursuit of the vision to pushing a flywheel. We build greatness through a steady persistence of that which is most important. Sadly, the profession of youth ministry is known for following trends at the expense of persistence. Rather than identifying the core components of what will grow our ministries and transform lives, we latch on to the latest fad or idea that publishers or resource companies sell us. What we hope to find is the grand program or killer innovation that will change everything. In the process, we fall into the most subtle rut of them all, namely trying everything new under the sun and never settling into a consistent pattern that will lead to greatness.
Two churches
Now, this may sound like a criticism of creativity and innovation, but it isn’t really. Consider two neighboring churches. One tries all the latest gimmicks and trends to attract students, invests considerable time, money, and energy into new programs with the hope of making an impact. Once they have tried something once, they move on to new ideas. The pattern people experience is constant change, innovation, and fresh ideas. The second church runs a steady pattern of programs that meet core needs and produce measurable fruit. New creativity may be injected into programs but the core essence of what they do remains the same. The pattern students experience is consistency in core values and creativity in peripherals. The first church is the one desperately seeking the grand program that will finally “bring them in”. The second church is pushing the flywheel and will see long-term results. This is not only true in youth ministry but we see these patterns in congregations as well. In the first church described, people run out of energy trying to keep up with the change, while in the second people are freed up to be more creative because they understand the core essence of what they are trying to accomplish.
I recently had the opportunity to visit a large vibrant congregation in Canada. Three years ago the youth ministry at this church was all but dead. They had been trying all sorts of game nights, activities, outings, trips, and innovative programs to attract students with little results. When they hired a new youth minister, he arrived and described a program built around Bible teaching, prayer, and worship. You might be able to imagine the response. They wanted to run him out of town! In a church known for great Bible teaching, prayer, and worship, the people expected that the only way to do youth ministry was to focus on fun and games. Then those students who stayed around could be drawn into the spiritual stuff. This youth minister reversed the process and focused on the spiritual development of students. The fun was experienced alongside because the group enjoyed spending time together. Now the youth ministry is growing by leaps and bounds because students find deep meaning and substance in being part of the youth groups.
Core Components
We build real momentum in youth ministry by focusing all aspects of our programs on two core components. Perhaps together these form our flywheel. First is the content of our ministries. The content must be the gospel as found in scripture. It must inform and guide all that we do and how we do it. This means not only teaching the Bible faithfully week after week, but also running youth groups in a way that is Biblical. Descriptions of the early church such as found in Acts 2 should direct our meetings. The second component is our context. Our context must be authentic community. By that I mean giving students an experience of the body of Christ. This is also seen in Acts 2 and throughout the New Testament. With the content of the gospel and the context of community, we are able to build momentum. By ‘keeping the main thing the main thing’, we are able to release creativity and become innovative in a way that helps us. No longer do we have to pour massive amounts of energy into getting people fired up for every new thing we seek to do. Now that should be a relief!
Leave a Reply