Good to Great Youth Ministry (part two)
How many times in our churches have we seen someone standing in front of the congregation pleading for volunteers to work with the youth? We have also read the announcements in church bulletins calling for people to give their time to the youth program. The truth is that neither of those methods produce lasting results and often they generate little to no response at all. Yet we cannot lead youth ministries without teams of leaders. Most child protection policies do not allow one adult to work alone with children or teens. Youth groups do not grow without leadership teams. Professional youth ministers do not last without the help and support of others in the congregation.
This series of articles based on the principles found in Jim Collins book Good to Great seeks to call our churches to raise the bar and move good youth ministries into the realm of great youth ministries. The challenge before us is to build on our strengths and become something far more than we have ever imagined or striven for. In this part, we draw our attention to Collins principle of “first who, then what”. The idea is that we first need to gather the right people into leadership and then determine the course of direction. Often we reverse this process and seek to find people to accomplish a predetermined set of goals and objectives. The latter is what Collins calls the ‘genius with helpers’ model. In reality, this is the norm in churches. We typically determine exactly what we desire to happen and then enlist people with the skills to make it work. The end result is good ministry but not great ministry and the model fails when the ‘genius’ departs. What we want to see occurring in our churches is the formation of teams who will construct a strategy to reach and impact the youth of our congregations and far beyond!
In my first few years of professional youth ministry I did the call for volunteers in many ways. Through pleas at new members classes, announcements in the bulletin, and letters to people I did not know, I faced the pattern of repeated disappointment. It seemed that no one wanted to get involved. Over time though my pattern changed. Was it Einstein that said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? What I discovered was this. If I met face to face with potential ‘volunteers’ and shared the vision of our youth ministry, then invited them to explore the possibility of getting involved, I saw results. While some did not sense a call to this ministry, even those who declined were excited about what we were doing. The maximum results came when I invited a group of potential leaders to my home, shared good food with them, presented the vision, and then invited them to pray about getting involved. Even then, the people I invited were not random. I had generated a list from observations and conversations with church leaders. What I was seeking were real spiritual leaders who might invest their time with teenagers. There is little point in asking someone to be a leader in a ministry if they show no natural leadership qualities. Likewise it is detrimental to ask people who lack spiritual maturity to invest in the lives of students! Where we saw really great ministry evolve was in the instances where the team was enlisted before the details of the program or strategy was developed. Those efforts remained in place long after I moved away.
There is a sense in which spiritual leaders do not volunteer at all. God calls people to lead others in the church. While we use the term volunteer to distinguish the non paid from the professional, the term itself is perhaps limits our perception. While not wanting to be pedantic, the terminology we use is actually important. It conveys so much about the scope of what we are asking people to do. For this reason, I believe the term chaperone is also unhelpful. Chaperones are for monitoring behavior at programs, it does not describe people doing ministry. Likewise I reserve the term ‘youth minister’ for the vocational (called, trained, and usually professional) youth ministry leader. We have an unhelpful tradition in our denomination of referring to the youth group leader as the ‘youth minister’ when in fact their function may be very distinct from a trained, called, and commissioned professional youth minister. We should get more creative with terminology that refers to the person who devotes a few hours a week to work with teenagers. The point is that they are in positions of spiritual leadership with students and we should not minimize that role by reducing it to that of volunteer, helper, or chaperone.
In moving toward great youth ministry, we must begin by building teams of spiritual leaders who will guide, mentor, and teach the Bible to the next generation. This does not happen with an announcement calling for volunteers. It begins when we prayerfully seek God’s direction in selecting the right leaders who will create ministry to teenagers. This team needs to be led either by a Youth Minister (called & trained professional) or a ministry team leader (unpaid) who will lead the congregation in it’s ministry to youth. The task of youth ministry in any parish, large or small, is the responsibility of the people, not simply a designated or paid person. Thus the first task in youth ministry is the formation of a team of individuals who will devote time and energy to reaching and impacting this generation. Once that is in place, we can create a strategy that may include programs and activities that will nurture the faith of students. The question is – first who, then what?
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