Category Archives: LEADERSHIP

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My Student Ministry Journey | Vision, Values, Vocation

Student ministry is one of those vocations that sometimes perplexes people. I often get asked, “So what do you do?” I love it when people ask me that because it gives me a free 30 seconds or so to promote and advocate for what I believe is one of the most important ministry priorities for any church or para church. I want to see every young person in every city of the world have an opportunity to meet Jesus, grow in their faith, and to grow as a leader to impact more young people in their arena of influence.

having a vision for reaching youth of cities

I came to Christ as a high school kid through Young Life and then served for 15 years on staff with YL in Arizona, Colorado, and New Zealand.

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Church-Based Leadership Farm Systems for Church Planting

My good friend, Tom Harcus who started the Crossway Chapel church planting network offers some great insight on building relationships. Whenever you want to break ground and build new relationships, these principles will work. They are especially insightful and valuable to me because if you carry out these principles you will not only plant churches, but they will likely be new churches with a fun and inviting student ministry DNA from the get go.

Church Planting - 10 step process

MVC’s Student Ministry Leaders Juggle a ton to give 7-10 hours a week to serve students!

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You Can Succeed in Talking with Students Anywhere, Anytime

Love without conversation is impossible.  –Mortimer Adler

After reading this, would you be willing to share this and offer a comment below? I respond to each comment.

I remember meeting the philosopher, Mortimer Adler when I was a middle school kid in Aspen, CO. And the one thing I remember about him, besides he is really smart, is that he talked to me, even though I was probably the youngest person in the room. In all my years of student ministry, I believe if you can learn just 3 skills you will impact more students than you can possibly dream of. If you want to have a dynamic student ministry then simply help your leadership team excel in these areas and then the rest is gravy. I’ve attached at the end of this post a 1 page resource you can download that will help you keep meeting new students and following up with them well.

talking with new kids is essential to student ministry

1 – BEING THERE

You may be able to recruit people to serve in your student ministry. You may even be able to get them to commit to training. But to get them to commit to going to a middle school, high school, or college campus 1-2 times a week to meet students and build relationships is what separates the prairie dogs from the pandas.

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5 Ways You Can Lead a Great Student Ministry Team Meeting

With vision, strategy, and tactics your team will thank you for leading meetings well!

Leading teams requires meetings. Hopefully not too many of them, but you can’t organize movement and growth of a team of people without regular time together to accomplish unity in vision, clarity of strategy, and rehearsal of tactics that will work.

Great Team Meetings

TEAM MEETINGS MUST UNIFY YOUR TEAM ON IT’S VISION

Visionary leaders see clearly where they are going and constantly remind their team, with very simple words and word pictures what that vision is (i.e. a vision statement). If the vision of your team is a bit mirky for the team leader, then you can expect that the vision will be muddy for the rest of your team. By contrast if the team leader has a very clear vision that they talk about all of the time, then they can expect that even if the vision is a bit cloudy their team is still onboard. The Great Commission is a classic example of how Jesus encapsulated his Kingdom vision into a memorable vision statement that has obviously changed the world ever since:

And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ -Matthew 28:18-2-0

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How Youth Ministry Attracts Kids to Jesus

Jesus Christ appeals to every kind of person. The young, the old, the fisherman, the tax collector, the scribe, the rich, the blind beggar, Mary and Martha, and the woman caught in adultery; all heard him and were drawn to him. One reason people are drawn to Jesus is because we can relate with him.

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YOUTH MINISTRY HELPS KIDS RELATE TO JESUS

Jesus knows what it is like to grow up. He was a baby, a boy, a teenager, and a mature adult. He worked in his father’s shop just like boys today learn from their dad or grandfather how to fix a car, work with tools, or plant a garden. Just like adolescents today have to patiently study in school, learn life skills, and wait to set sail out into the world on their own, Jesus spent many years in Nazareth as an adolescent before his official ministry was launched. We need to remember that although Jesus was fully God, he was also fully human.

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The Appeal of Jesus: A Youth Ministry Book by Ashley Denton

Young people need someone who is crazy about them. – Walter Brueggemann

Personality of Jesus

The first youth ministry book ever written was Francis Clark’s, Christ and the Young People. Clark spent enormous amounts of time with kids. He studied them and discovered that there were certain things that they were drawn to in their adult leaders. His vision was to see the development of a robust youth movement that modeled the personality of Jesus. He was convinced that making his dream a reality would depend on recruiting and then training volunteer youth leaders to have the heart and skills of relational evangelism….

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How to Create an Environment of Authentic Missiology: Good Theology Escalates our Ability to Solve World Problems

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
― Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

missiology in NepalYouth + International = Authentic Missiology

Crossing into other cultures (and subcultures) often raises questions. This is good for our theology. Theology is simply asking questions and seeking the answers to those questions in the Bible. Engaging in relationships with people across ethnic and geographic boundaries forces us to use our energy to think authentically about theology. I find this especially true among young people internationally. They have keen insights if we take the time to ask them. Relevant local theological development begins to happen when we engage in cross cultural missions. We discover new questions and we have to go to the Bible to search for answers.

For example, if you look at the past 10-15 years of evangelism among youth in Nepal, local youthworkers would tell you that it has actually been fairly easy and fruitful so far. But the process of helping them to grow in faith is very difficult. If a parent discovers that there child has become a Christian, they can become very angry. They may even stop their child from going to church forever.

Nepalese youthworkers wrestle with what they can do about this problem.

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5 Priorities for Mentoring Chinese Church Leaders

If I had a thousand pounds China should have it- if I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour? -Hudson Taylor (circa 1900)

5 mentoring needs of leaders in China

The church in China has been growing rapidly for many years. We know some things about the development student ministry in China but it is still somewhat of a mystery to the outside world. Yet one thing that China has a lot of is students. So what challenges will the Chinese church face in the coming decades as they raise up the next generation of young leaders? How will they provide the needed mentoring to grow the church and reach the millions of Chinese who do not yet know Jesus? Here are 5 current needs for mentoring among Chinese church leaders…

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8 Ways to Recruit and Retain More Volunteers for Your Church or Non-Profit

Non profits and churches depend on volunteers. A non-profit organization without a growing community of volunteers is like a ranch without enough ranch hands. Things break down and eventually the ranch goes belly up. A great vision or cause gets a non-profit started or a church planted, but without teams of healthy, motivated, volunteers to help, you will likely not go the distance. To finish what you have started you need a steady stream of volunteers joining in and remaining on board.

How to recruit and retain volunteers

Volunteers freely offer to undertake a task. They want to do what they are doing or they wouldn’t be doing it. So can you recruit and retain more volunteers for your mission? Here’s how…

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Burned Out? Ministry Longevity Depends on Proper Motivation

burned outBurned out? Leaders who last focus on impact, not activity. Longevity depends on having the right motivation.

Did you know that the average tenure of a youth pastor is somewhere around 9 months?  My friend Mike Dodge, with Canterbury Youth Services tracked the ministry of youth pastors for several years in New Zealand and he verified this statistic. It doesn’t take a rocket science to look at that number and think there must be some sort of a problem in the system.

If you invest in young people as a parent or youth leader, if you are a youth pastor or know a youth pastor, then this article is for you. I could suggest many reasons why youth pastors and youth workers on average don’t last very long in ministry, but I would rather approach this from a more positive angle. Young people in every culture and every city need committed leaders to pursue them with the Gospel. We can’t afford to avoid the topic of sustainability in youth ministry because it is one of student ministry’s greatest threats.