Are You Cool Enough

I was not the coolest kid in high school. I am pretty sure that I was not the 300th coolest kid in high school. I was a shy kid who, to a large degree, lacked confidence and cultural awareness. Like most high school kids, I wanted to fit in, and it was actually when I found a healthy student ministry that I finally found my niche.

As the school year starts back, it is time once again to head to the area high schools for lunch. I love these lunches, and they have made a really big impact for our ministry. The students love that I am willing to enter their world and talk to their friends, even the ones who don't talk to me once I am there. The food is terrible by the way, that has not changed in 11 years.

The funniest thing for me about going to the high schools is that on those days I suddenly become very aware of what I plan on wearing. On days heading to the schools I decide that certain clothes I have are not cool enough or not youth minister-ish enough. It would be hilarious if it wasn't a little sad. I was telling this to one of my high school students last week, and his response was, "Imagine if you had to do that every day. It's exhausting." Man I am glad that is over. It takes a lot of energy to be cool.

So here is the question: are you cool enough to be a student minister? After only being an official youth minister for about a month I attended my first get-together of area student ministers. While it could have been a great time for fellowship, I came away from the meeting extremely discouraged. Half of the other youth ministers had either a mohawk or faux hawk. The rest looked like they were taking a break from their rock band to attend the meeting. I just had jeans and a sweater on with brown boots. I definitely did not leave that meeting feeling cool enough to be a student minister.

It did not take long, however, for me to realize that being cool enough had very little to do with what I wore. I realized that being a cool student minster meant being a minister who was invested in the lives of his or her students, who cared about each of the students and demonstrated that care. To the students who I minister to, it doesn't matter that I can't play guitar or that I don't share their fashion sense. What they care about is knowing that I care. If you love your students, then you are definitely cool enough to be a youth minister.

Ordination

Next Sunday, January 17, we will be holding my ordination service. I have known that I wanted to be ordained since I began working towards a career in ministry when I was in college, but I suppose I had not spent a ton of time thinking about what it actually means to be ordained until recently. Here are some of my thoughts regarding ordination:

1. Ordination is a big deal, especially if you believe that it in some way relates to the ordination of priests in the Old Testament. I realize there are significant differences, but in some ways the symbolism is the same. The priests went through an extensive process of cleansing and devotion to prepare for ordination. It seems right to do some form of that as I prepare for next Sunday. When the first priests were preparing for their ordination, it took seven days of sacrifices before they were prepared to receive God's blessing. My hope is that in this week leading up to the ordination service I would be also see this week as a week to prepare and meditate upon what God has called me to do.

2. Ordination should be a major life event. We don't get many major life events. We have our first day of college, our wedding day, the day a child is born, or buying a first house. All of these are big days, life-changing days. I think that ordination should also be one of these. I think that after ordination life should seem different, just as it does when you realize that you are married. Of course you were a minister before and you are after, but ordination should change something about the way you see the world. I don't believe that ordination should be something that is simply done for the tax break or because it just the next step.

3. Ordination is something that you need to work towards. It does not need to be easy to become an ordained minister. I honestly believe that some theological education should be required. I think a knowledge of the Bible and theology is important. I think that to be ordained as a Southern Baptist, an immense amount of knowledge about the denomination, its history and doctrine, should be required. I also believe that experience doing ministry should be required. Before working in the church and ministering with people, my view of working in church life was extremely skewed.

When you consider the task that God has called us to, it is humbling. Out of the billions of people in the world, God has called us to serve as His special servants who are to lead people to Him. It is a high calling, and when we treat it as such, we will feel that more empowered by He who called us.

Know Your Role

During Christmas and New Years our offices are closed for the most part here at the church. This allows time for us as staff members to recharge and get a little rest. It also provides a time for evaluation. As a evaluation addict, I spend a ton of time thinking about how we can do things better, what needs reorganized, and what we might do differently.

Over the break I spent a great deal of time thinking about our programs. We are altering our formats a little by using a new curriculum for small groups and using that curriculum to also shape our Wednesday nights. I also spent a lot of time thinking of fun things for the students to do while on break, though not much materialized.

What all this thinking did was to help me realize that I do a lot of thinking. It got me thinking about what my role really is here at the church. I think that it is so easy to lose yourself in certain roles when it comes to ministry, especially student ministry. As I looked back at the past year, I realized that I have been spending so much time as the organizer and planner, that I may have missed the mark on minister. I realize that part of being a minister is the planning and vision casting, but another part of ministry is the actual ministering. I realized that many of my conversations with students stay on the surface. Spiritual and life things come up, but I must admit that it is not natural for me to ask spiritual questions of my students.

For a while I found it important to establish relationships with the students before venturing into the deep waters of spiritual advice and especially spiritual correction. Now I find that I have those relationships and need to initiate those conversations. Much of this goes back to asking what it means to be a minister. I have a whole lot of roles in our ministry--teacher, planner, janitor, driver, friend, and counselor. However, the most important thing that I can do is to help my students grow in their faith. The other roles need to serve this role, not be in addition to, and especially not take away from it.

I want to think about this next year from this angle, what do I want students to know me as. Do I want students to know me as a fun event planner, a good speaker, a friend, or as someone who helped them grow in their faith? Hopefully this question will help shape the year's priorities and practices.

Teaching

I really enjoy preaching/teaching. I like the preparation. I like the creativity in crafting the sermon/lesson. I like the talking in front of people. I like the imparting of God's truths to people so that they can live the way that God would have them live, but I hate having certain discussions about preaching, particularly this one:

Person 1: "I preach expository sermons where the Bible speaks for itself. You make the Bible fit your topic. All that you need is to tell people what the Bible says."

Person 2: "Well, I preach topical sermons from the Bible, and I use certain concepts drawn from the text. I use the whole counsel of the Bible to teach people how to live out their faith."

I am not either person, necessarily, but I know that the end of the conversation has Person 1 and Person 2 declaring that the other person is not preaching correctly.

These types of conversations make me crazy for several reasons, but the main one is the naive belief that there is only one way to communicate God's truth. In Divinity School, I had three professors who taught preaching. Dr. Miller was extremely poetic and creative. Dr. Ross was extremely exegetical (like most OT professors would be). Dr. Smith was a combination of the two others and added a spice of African-American preaching. My conclusion after all of these courses is that there is no one particular way to communicate.

I think that the Bible needs to play a key role in any sermon, but that does not mean that it must to be a verse by verse exposition. I think that a sermon needs to at least have some creativity as well as organization around a central theme or topic to have even a little impact on the hearer. This places what I think a sermon should be somewhere between a lecture on the Minor Prophets and reading a Max Lucado book out loud. Fairly broad ground, I suppose.

I also disagree with the statement that the expository style allows the Bible to speak for itself. The speaker is speaking for the Bible in any instance that the Bible is not simply being read out loud. Exposition is based on research and interpretation. We simply cannot claim that exposition is somehow the purest way to present a text. It is also hard to see how a sermon can be about Scripture but not utilize it. I understand that a sermon on love is founded on Biblical concepts, but it is also important to utilize Scripture to define what you are talking about.

Communicating God's truth to people is no light task. It is something that we should reflect on and work through, but at the end of the day, I suspect that we will find that our definition of teaching/preaching should be anything but narrow.

Just Passing Through

Being a minister is temporary. Now, I am not talking about the fact that ministers change churches frequently or leave the ministry. Our roles are temporary for two reasons. First, the places that we serve were there before us (unless of course you planted it) and they will be there after us (unless of course you killed it). Second, the people you minister to will change. They move away or change churches. Whether we like it or not, our roles in the lives of the congregations and the people we minster to are temporary.

What does this mean for our ministry? Does it affect the way we do our jobs? I hope that it does. I keep a picture of my church's youth group from the 1980s in my office as a reminder that I am part of something that is bigger than my time here. It helps me to remember three things.

First, I need to minister with a sense of urgency. I am all about building relationships and gaining trust, but I have to be reminded that I don't have forever to bring up spiritual stuff with students. I have to be careful that I continue to be a minister rather than a friend. Praying for boldness helps here. Not only does urgency help me with minister to the students, I also focus more on strengthening the program. I want to make things happen as fast as God will allow, and that means positioning the program for success.

The second thing that being temporary helps me to understand is that this student ministry needs to be sustainable. I could build a program around my gifts and energy, but the truth is that there are no guarantees that I will be here forever. My desire is to create a program that is not dependent upon one person or even one resource. This means establishing a culture where leaders are those in the church, not just on the staff. It also means simplifying certain aspects of ministry. For more information about this topic, I recommend Sustainable Youth Ministry by Mark Devries.

The third thing that I remember when understanding that my role is temporary is that I need to have thick skin. A friend of mine in college ministry recently changed his area of ministry because it was simply too difficult to see students come and then leave after four years. His heart was broken every May and he had started to dread August because the cycle started over again. This week we will say goodbye to a student who has only recently joined us but has made a huge impact on our group. For five months we have poured into her life and watched God do some great things. As her family relocates for a new job, it breaks my heart, but I also know that I have done what I was called to do--minister to whoever God sends my way, even if it is for a little while. Even playing a small role in someone's life is an honor.

Understanding that you are temporary is so important in ministry. Not only does it keep you balanced, but it keeps you on your toes. As you watch students head to college or as you think about the people you have served in the past, I hope that you always rejoice that God has used you and will continue to do so.

Church Politics

I don't have tremendous profiling skills when it comes to who will make for a great minister, but I have discovered one sure fire way to tell if someone is going to struggle in ministry. I will now reveal that secret to you. On a completely unscientific and data-less basis, I can tell you that 95% of the people who use the phrase "I don't play church politics" will struggle in their ministries. Now you know. I don't know about the other 5%, but God does work in mysterious ways.

Here's the thing, most of the time what people mean by church politics is people skills. What they also typically mean is that they don't care what people say or think, they will do things their way. Sure churches have politics with people and groups vying for influence. Is it the ideal way for a church to operate? No. Is it going to change before Jesus comes back. No. So let's work with what we have.

Something that I really like about youth ministers is that they are often bold and innovative. Something that I really dislike about youth ministers is that they fail to appreciate the importance of people skills in a church when doing things that are bold and innovative. You can have a great idea for the youth room, but before you knock down walls, think about getting some support behind the idea. To do that, you will need to be able and willing to give your rationale and how it fits into your vision for the ministry. This of course takes time while just knocking down the wall takes like 30 minutes. You know what else takes 30 minutes, packing up your office. So make the time to communicate and get support.

Developing people skills also earns you goodwill. Attending the senior citizens banquet allows you not only to get to know your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, but you can also set the stage for asking for their help down the road. Developing a good relationship with parents gives you the benefit of the doubt when you and the students get back to the church 45 minutes late for pickup.

Let me give you another example of why it is important to develop relationships with all of your constituents. I know of two youth pastors who were let go (and several others who lost significant support) after addressing the inappropriate attire that some of the girls in their groups were wearing. It seems like a small matter, but when you lack the confidence of the parents, stories like these take a different shape. The minister is looking out for the boys of the group and trying to encourage the girls to be more modest. What the parents hear is that you are at worst staring at their daughters and at best challenging them on what they buy for their children. If there was some goodwill stored up from spending time with these parents, then perhaps what the parents would think is "maybe kid does need to dress more appropriately."

People skills go a long way with other groups whether it is your personnel committee, deacon body, or other church staff. What happens so often is that people think that working in a church should not have any of this political stuff so they will just rebel and refuse to play. But, it does not make you more spiritual to refuse to develop relationships in the organization. What it does make you is the person most likely to find a new place to work.

Clutter

With two kids my house seems to default to a state of clutter. Like most people, I really hate having a cluttered house, but picking up after each kid is like living the movie Groundhog Day. It just starts all over again.

Just as our homes can become cluttered, our ministries can also have a ton of clutter. While we have good intentions, sometimes we put events and programs all over the place just trying to have the maximum impact and outreach. However, the problem with clutter in our ministries is the same as it is in our homes, it is distracting and unorganized. Clearing up this cluttered approach to our programs allows us to focus and plan in ways that we never dreamed possible.

So what are the signs of a cluttered program? If planning the next six months would be impossible for you, the the program may be cluttered. If you have more "spontaneous events" than planned events, then there is clutter. If you lack any real process of discipleship or even participation, then the clutter may be accumulating.

So how do you clear the clutter? First, you need to evaluate whether your events have a purpose and if they fit in your overall plan. Sure the purpose of paintball is to have fun and maybe grow community as long as no one get shot in the eye, but does it fit in an overall plan to grow community? The goal is to have a goal, or at least to have all of your events working together.

The next thing to do is to have an overall process for your ministry. This is where ideas from Simple Student Ministry or the Orange conference can really help you decide upon a strategy for reaching and discipling your students. Having a clear process for your students means integrating events with one part of your program leading them to another part. It also means balancing what you do for clear impact. If 75% of your program is built on fun activities, then it may be time to balance that out with discipleship and service opportunities. If 80% is Bible study then perhaps you could consider implementing some community building activities. This is also true if you are duplicating your efforts in an area. We realized that we want to do small groups at night, but we also offer a small group Sunday School. If we want students to see their evening small groups as their primary discipleship opportunity, then we needed to look at what Sunday School could become so that we are not overlapping.

The next thing to do is hard, but really necessary. You need to plan. Look, I am one of those people who thinks I write better when the paper is due the next day, but that will not cut it in ministry, not if you want to reach your true potential. Plan your big events at least 6 months out. Right now in December we have scheduled all of our big events for next year such as Disciple Now, M-Fuge, and our Fall Retreat. We have penciled in smaller events like lock-ins and Christmas parties. When these smaller events are three months away, we will have fixed dates that we can start to advertise. By the end of this year, we will also have crafted our teaching topics for January through June. Doing this planning now means that we have a ton of time to be creative and gather resources. We can also create a brochure with relevant dates and details that gives everyone a sense that we know what we are doing. The level of confidence and credibility we gain is worth the time spent in planning. This does not mean that we will not do spontaneous things or that some dates may change, but we do have a plan to go by.

Clearing the clutter has so many benefits from helping you to streamline and use your time more wisely to allowing you to maximize the impact of particular events. Good luck, now I need to go pick up some more toys.