I came across this great post today by Andy Blanks of YMIN 360. The post asks the question “When is a youth worker too old to be effective”. I won’t give away his conclusion but as a Youth Worker I was encouraged by this article. Over the years some of the most effective youth ministry I have experienced has been done by those in their 40s, 50s, even 70s. You can check out his article here..
Posted in leadership
Consideration should be given to how frequently you will meet with your interns. It is important to meet at least once a week. Before your first meeting, consider how you assess the skill’s your interns bring with them (Click Here for an Assessment Guide). By assessing their skills you will be better able to set an agenda for these meetings and better able to teach to their strength and their skill deficits. As part of their internship, consider how you will care for their spiritual needs. I know some youth directors who practice spiritual disciplines with their interns. It is important to find a way to incorporate spiritual practices into their internship. Many great resources can help you to do this (Here is a Short Resource List).
After you have assessed the skills of the intern or interns it is helpful to next set goals for the internship (Click Here for a Goal Development Guide). There are at least three areas of ministry to consider, activity leadership, relationships and teaching. It is helpful to break activity leadership into two different areas, games and events. By the end of an internship a student intern should know how to lead a game (if that is part of your youth ministry culture) and the intern should know how to plan and execute a major event.
Developing goals around relationship building help interns to develop healthy relationships with students and their families. The goals need to focus on that student’s eco-system. An eco-system is the world in which student lives. Too often student ministries have focused on the students and neglected the student’s larger world. This has been extremely harmful to the church and to youth ministry. As youth workers, remember that parents are the primary ministers in the life of a student, we need to support, and resource parents for that role. Resist the temptation to narrowly focus your ministry.
Finally, develop a teaching goal. Teaching should be a primary focus of every youth worker. After you developed a teaching goal, it is important to provide timely feedback to your student interns. They need to hear your constructive feedback (Click Here for a Teaching Feedback Form). You can also have some of your leaders give feedback as well. This feedback needs to be given in a well thought out loving manner, you are launching students into ministry and they have not yet developed the thick skin ministry requires, so be sensitive.
Join us next time as we discuss advertising and sustaining your internship program over the long haul.
Posted in leadership
When launching an intern program, first consider how to make this program mutually beneficial for both your church or ministry and the intern. Launching an intern program is not just about what you and your congregation have to gain from their gifts and labors, but also about how you and your congregation can invest in the spiritual nurture and development of future church leaders. Many youth workers begin this process with unrealistic expectations Continue reading
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I had the pleasure this week to sit down with Darrell Pearson, Associate Professor of Youth Ministries at Eastern University; we had a wonderful discussion about some of the keys to developing a healthy youth ministry internship program. Darrell felt that a healthy church “is a church that is looking to help a student not looking for a student, to solve their problem”. He also has experienced many churches that have unrealistic expectations for student interns often expecting them to run the church’s youth ministry. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Posted in leadership
I thought this was an interesting blog post from Erin Lane entitled “Youth Ministry is not the future. It is the church right now.” I could relate to this for several reasons; first I have met several Senior Pastors who begin waxing nostalgic as soon as they find out I am in youth ministry. Second Continue reading
Posted in leadership
Before you begin a youth ministry internship program there are a few things you need to consider first. Over the years, I have seen many unhealthy intern programs whose only reason for existence was to find an inexpensive way to meet a need in the church. I have witnessed churches start intern programs because they thought an intern could do the job of a youth pastor.
I really believe there should be only one motivation for launching an internship Continue reading
Posted in leadership, Mentoring
To live a creative lifestyle is to model our life after God. One can’t help but look at the world around us and marvel at God’s creativity. Here are a few things to keep in mind to enhance the creative process in your own life. Continue reading
Part of our calling as youth workers is to mentor students in our ministry. Youth workers often call this by all sorts of things such as student leadership, discipleship etc. One of the most important things to remember is you CANNOT mentor every student in your ministry. Some may hear this as freeing, others may still feel the twinge of guilt in the pit of their stomach. Either way as youth workers we need to be honest about what we can do with our limited resources. This means selecting those students whom you either connect with or you see leadership potential in. It is so important to have adult leaders involved in your ministry; just because you can’t mentor ever student doesn’t mean you can’t find a mentor for every student. It pays for the long term health of the church and the youth ministry. Many of these adult leaders will be there long after you leave. If these adult leaders have positive healthy relationships with students it can ease transitions in leadership and help to stabilize a wobbly ministry.
If we decide to try and mentor every student on our own, we are doing a disservice to our ministries, our students, and our family. Going it on our own might sound appealing at first because it is easier but it displays a lack of trust in our volunteers and eventually leads to burn out. So find the students you connect with and train your volunteers to pour their lives into the other students.
Mentoring a student looks different depending on your context but there are at least three marks to a healthy mentoring program. The first is that the program should be goal oriented. Students and leaders should work collaboratively to write age appropriate goals. These goals must be ownable, reachable, and measurable. Second, the mentoring program must have an articulated purpose. In the church we often create programs without an articulated purpose; we wrongfully assume everyone understands a shared purpose and is working towards the same goal. Lastly, leaders and students need to be held accountable for their mutually agreed upon goals and responsibilities. Leaders should fully understand what they are being asked to do and they should be held accountable for it.
Mentoring is the heart of youth ministry and I believe every youth ministry should work hard to help students engage with loving and caring adults who want to see the best for them. I would encourage you to see how you can incorporate mentoring into your youth ministry program.
Posted in leadership, Mentoring, Mentoring, Programming
Tagged Jesus, mentoring, Youth Ministry
Derek Zoolander said it best, “ who am I? I don’t know I guess I have a lot to ponder.” Many ministries really never stop to ask the hard question, “who are we?” Most times we plug in programs and activities into our Ipad’s or Iphones and soon wonder why we are not fulfilling our mission. I am a young youth worker, but I seem to think that we look far too much at what we are doing and not enough and why or how we are doing it. I think this is a church problem that impacts youth ministries. Years ago huge outreach events ruled the world, bring in a band, speaker and guaranteed hundreds of kids would show up. Soon more concerts, more outreaches, more events, more, more, more. Churches saw this model and said, “we want numbers, do what that guy does” and the event model was born. This is a quick fix answer that produces no long term results. Visioning is not about a quick fix, it is about a systematic strategy to reach your goals long-term.
Here is process that I ask myself when I set out to vision.
1) What do I want long term? (Set a time frame on long-term)
i. Growth model, excitement model, education model, family style
i. Adult Leaders
ii. Students
iii. Director/ Staff
2) Who is going to help me fulfill our long-term Goal?
i. Where do we find them?
ii. How do we reach them?
iii. What is our strategy and developing them?
3) What is our strategy once they are there?
4) What parts of our strategy am I the only one who is capable executing?
5) What is the natural outgrowth of this?
6) How do we keep it simple and sustainable?
My ministry model for just my high school
Here is process that I ask myself when I set out to vision.
1) What do I want long term? (What we want determines why we do things!!!)
i. Growth in Jesus produces excitement, fellowship and eventually growth in numbers. i.e.- The book of Acts
i. Invest in students on a life to life level
ii. Students
i. This begs the question-Who am I going to specifically invest in?
2) Who is going to help me fulfill our long-term Goal?
i. Abby- Teach Sunday school, Wednesday small group
ii. Kendra- Help plan event and ministry promotion
iii. Manny- Teach once a month
iv. Betty- Teach once a month, help plan events
v. Janet- Lead games and fellowship time
vi. Beth- help teach confirmation
i. Contact time at games, plays, school and community activities
ii. Go out for food after
iii. Get them plugged into High School ministry and eventually a small group
3) What is our strategy once they are there?
4) What parts of our strategy am I the only one who is capable executing?
5) What is the natural outgrowth of this?
6) How do we keep it simple and sustainable?
The right questions make everything easier. The strategy for great vision is great help and adult leaders. Investing in your adult leaders opens the doors to more growth and flexibility in ministry. Take time to vision and you will soon find yourself focused less on events and more on changing lives.
A little about Colin Cannon
I am a youth director in Downingtown, PA. I was born in Ohio and grew up in Connecticut. I am an avid sports fan and love all Cleveland sports teams. I enjoy playing guitar, watching movies or TV and really anything that involves as little movement as possible. I am currently engaged to a beautiful woman, Kelsey and we are getting married next year. I love ministry and helping students understand God’s personal love for them and the impact that living for Jesus can have in one’s life.
I just listened to a great podcast about self-care for clergy. The podcast is titled “Choosing to Cheat” by Andy Stanley. It is part of Andy Stanley’s leadership program. I highly recommend it and best of all it is free. Self-care is difficult for most clergy and Andy Stanley shares his experiences as a minister. The podcast is based off his book of the same title. Enjoy! Click here or on the image for the link!
Posted in leadership, Parenting
Tagged family, Leadership, self-care, youth worker care
Directions in Youth Ministry is a consulting company operated by Joshua Gill. Josh has been in the youth ministry field for nearly a decade. He lives in Downingtown, PA with his beautiful wife Vicki and their son J.D. Take some time to check out the services Directions in Youth Ministry offers or to learn more about Josh.
