Author Archives: Josh

Is It Okay to Have Fun?

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Is fun okay when it comes to student ministry? This question actually involves more tension than I ever thought. On one side you have student ministries who seem to have fun as their core value. Other ministries seem to hold fun as the unforgivable sin.  Here is where I have landed.

Who does not want to have fun?  Everyone wants to enjoy what they are doing.  What the question of “fun events” in ministry is really asking is if it’s okay to just do something because it is enjoyable.  When it comes to doing a fun event, if you are only doing it because it is fun, then the event may not be a problem but your approach may be.

Fun events can have several purposes if they are done with some intentionality:

  1. Fun events build community and connect students with one another.
  2. Fun events build excitement around the student ministry.
  3. Fun events help build relationships between adult volunteers and your students who are served by these volunteers.
  4. Fun events build memories for your students who will, later in life, remember positive feelings in their relationship with church.
  5. Fun events help bring in students who may not enjoy parsing greek verbs during Bible study (you guys all do that right?). 
  6. Fun events let you let loose, and they allow your students to see you having fun with them.

I will definitely agree that fun events should not be the foundational element of your ministry.  For us, small groups are really the place where we seek to do our deep discipleship, but our fun events, such as playing laser tag or going to the zoo, allow our students to be discipled in a different way.  The issue here is maintaining balance in your ministry and making sure that you are working towards your vision and goals.

4 Things That Will Happen To You

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It is always dangerous to speak in generalities, but I am going to do just that because a post called 4 things that might happen to you in ministry is not quite as compelling. It also might not be as honest. For those of you who have been in ministry for a while, I suspect that these things may have happened to you several times. For those of you who are just starting your ministry journey, the best thing that you can do is to prepare for when these things happen to you.
 
1. You will think that you can do someone else’s job better. I used to think that this is one of those things that you should repent of right away and feel bad for not being a team player. I have now actually come to a place where I see this as neutral. There are times when I look at the other ministries of the church and think of ways that I could improve them. Now, while many of these times I would be wrong, there are times when I have been able to give suggestions that helped the overall ministry of the church. The key is whether you will use you ideas to build the church and ministry team or whether you will use it to destroy the team. For example, I really did not think that we were doing the right thing in our service having an instrumental offering time. It slowed the service down and created some weird stops and starts for what we were trying to do. I could have chosen to build support in the congregation or criticize our worship team, or I could use the processes in place to offer a reasoned suggestion in our staff meeting. I chose the latter and the changes made sense so we are doing them.
 
2. You will think it is up to you to find the magic words to convert one of your students. In the past year we have had a number of students who are coming to our programs who are not Christians and have no background in church.  In a movie, I would say a particular phrase where, when hearing it, the student would then break down into tears and confess faith in Jesus and then become the next Billy Graham.  In real life, I will get to know the student, have some conversations about his faith, work with him through some issues he has with believing in God, pray often for his salvation, and in the end hope that he chooses to follow Christ.  There are no magic words and we must realize that we rely on God’s timing to bring people to faith.
 
3. You will be tempted to give advice way above your qualifications. I was told this would happen while a student in divinity school. It took about ten minutes in ministry for me to face this temptation. On one of my first Sundays at this church, I was asked if I would be willing to counsel someone’s 18 year old granddaughter who was pregnant and unmarried. She was not sure what to do with the baby, and I was being asked to give her ministerial advice while still having a hard time identifying myself as a minister. The best advice I could give was to tell her to contact a pregnancy counseling group here in town. I have also been asked for marital advice, how to help a kid with ADHD, how to talk to a teen about an impending divorce, and how to help a kid with extreme anger issues. While my advice or counsel may scratch the surface, if I am honest, I am not qualified to address most of these issues. There are people whose sole jobs are to help people with these circumstances. Counseling is just one of about fifty things that I do.
 
4. You will need to take a break. There are ministers who believe that in order to be doing all that God has called them to do, they must never, ever, ever stop working. If that is true, then I am in trouble. I need breaks. I need time to refocus and regroup. I am guessing that you do too.

Sorting It Out

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There are a lot of ways to get somewhere. There are a lot of resources in youth ministry. One of the things that I remember from my first week was the number of catalogs waiting in my mail box at the church. There was a stack almost two feet high with advertisements for small group curriculum, music, and conferences. I had mailings from magicians and gospel quartets. Talk about diversity. So here I was with all of these options, and I didn’t even know what my program looked like or was going to look like.

I must admit that I succumbed to some of the flashier flyers. I joined a video site, bought some books, and I even purchased a drum set for the band. If I had it to do over again, I would have waited before spending any money. It is tempting to buy material that looks so amazing that it will change the way that we think of church, but the reality is that it may not be right for your program or your group. It will take time to learn the culture of those you serve. You need to see where they are and not just consider them to be where you want them to be spiritually.

You also need to have a vision for what you want your program to be about. If you are brand new to student ministry, please understand that there are a lot of ways to minister to students. There is not one model or process that you must buy into to have success. However, you need to develop a process or a model that will work for your group. You need to have a vision about what your program stands for and how you will go about reaching and discipling students.

Once you have a vision for your ministry, then it is time to prioritize your needs. Something that can be difficult for new ministers to understand is the difference between budgeted money and money that you can spend. Most churches will give you a budget, but that does not mean you will ever actually be able to spend that much money because the church may not receive that much money that year. When you prioritize your spending, you will be able to maximize the impact that your money can make. Some things you will certainly need such as small group curriculum. Other things such as a couch or shirts are not necessary, but they could certainly have a value for your program.

Pitfalls of Ministry: Ambition

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We all want to be the best ministers that we can be. We all want to do big things and have a big impact. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, we should all want to excel in the ministry that God has called us to. However, what we sometimes think of as healthy ambition is actually a destructive desire for our own glory. Let’s look at a couple of ways that ambition can hurt our ministry and our careers.

The Need for Fame
It only took a few weeks in student ministry to realize that there are certain big names in student ministry. These people write books, have websites, or lead ministries. Other big name folks are those who serve at big name churches. It was really easy to fall into the trap thinking that the goal for me as a minister was to become one of these people. Once I had a website and a few books under my belt, I will have really “made it.”

The problem with this need for fame is that it makes ministry a means to an end–and an extremely selfish end at that. If any part of your ministry is meant to do anything other than to help people grow closer to God, you might need to rethink your motivations. There is nothing wrong with becoming a big name in student ministry or any other field, but there is a danger if making yourself known is more of a focus than making God known.

Playing Your Position
Ambition can also be a problem when it comes to career plans. One of the realities of student ministry is that there are those in student ministry who are working toward a senior pastor role. They need to start out somewhere, and student ministry is a great place to get some church staff experience. To be honest, I don’t see this as a bad thing at all. It becomes a problem, however, when a student minister fails to understand the importance of ministering where they are, rather than look forward to the next church or position. Student ministry is not the B-league of ministry. In fact, student ministry can be extremely difficult and is an intricate part of any church. It is obvious when a minister is simply “putting in their time” with students. It is important to be present in the ministry that God has led you to.

Another element of this is that many student ministers begin to think that they could do a better job running the church than the people currently running the church. I have seen young ministers go to churches and instantly think that they can preach better than the pastor, administrate better than the administrator, and lead worship better than the worship leader. It must be hard to be so gifted. If you feel this way, it will also be really hard for you to be a part of the team. It will also be hard for you to contribute to the health of the church.

Bigger May Not Be Better
One more way that ambition can get the best of us is in our programming and events. Yes, it would be cool if you had 500 students at your midweek program. It would be great if your students performed 52 service projects in one year. Here’s the problem: many of these things are just unrealistic. It is not bad to dream, but if you continue to set unreasonable goals, you will become very disillusioned when your plans fail. When I started here at Bluegrass I wanted to make my first full year a year of service with our students completing something like 30 service projects that year. I also threw in a special two week program and set a huge goal for our Disciple Now weekend. The problem was that I had no real foundation for these programs, and I really did not fully understand what our group was or what our group needed.

We have a tendency to think that if we had more students, things would be great. Sometimes we think that a new program or a better curriculum with be the answer to all of the problems in our ministries. The truth is that in our ambition we sometimes think of ministry as a sprint rather than a marathon. Having a five month plan is a lot more motivational than a five year plan, but the reality is ministry is usually about relationships and relationships take time. It took me nearly a year to get our group back on solid ground with students and parents having positive attitudes about our program. It took that same year for me to get to know some of our students. I would have loved to have come in and righted the ship in two weeks and three weeks later be able to have deep spiritual conversations with our fringe students. We need to be realistic about how ministry is done.

Healthy Ambition
Being ambitious is not a bad thing. We need to have a vision for our program. We need to have a desire to become a better minister with a bigger impact. There are plenty examples of student ministers who lack ambition and simply oversee a status quo program. However, going to the other extreme can be just as problematic. In the end, we need to rely on God to direct the paths of our careers and give direction of our ministries. When we do that, our impact will be greater than we could have ever imagined.

Pitfalls of Ministry: Thin Skin

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Doing ministry requires thick, elephant like skin. It’s true. It takes about two weeks in ministry to learn about this requirement. Without thick skin, you probably are not going to make it in ministry. Seriously. If a snide comment or offhand remark can destroy your day, perhaps God called you to a ministry where you don’t interact with hurting and growing people every day of your life.

Thick skin is especially important if you are in student ministry. This is true because it is easy to forget that students are still maturing and who knows what might come out of their mouth at any moment. Even in my short time in ministry I have heard things that could have ripped my heart out if not kept in context. I had a student ask why we never do anything fun in our ministry. Context: we had fun events but the student had chosen not to sign up for any. I recently had a student tell a group of people in the church that our programming was lame. Context: it was not lame until the girl that he hung out with moved out of town. I had a student who asked why we don’t do anything deep. Context: this student becomes ridiculously distracting if forced to sit quiet and still for more than three minutes at a time.

Each one of these comments could have sent me into a tailspin. Each one could have sent our program back to the drawing board trying to make things fun or serious or not lame. We could have changed everything to make this person or that person happy. We didn’t do that. We remembered that these students are still figuring things out. They have a narrow view of the world because they are still learning how to see the world. Because I have spent significant time praying and working towards a vision for the program, I feel secure in what we are doing.

There are other reasons that you need to have thick skin. Inevitably, you will encounter the student who leaves because they like something else better. Maybe they like the band somewhere else. Maybe they have more friends somewhere else. Maybe there are more single girls somewhere else. Are these good reasons to leave your church community? Probably not. Would you have done the same thing as a teenager? Probably.

One other reason to have thick skin is that in ministry you are helping people become mature in Christ. This means that the people that you are working with are learning and growing, but they are not holy simply because they come into your building or to your programs. The people who you minister to are not supposed to treat you like a friend and you are not supposed to treat them like your friend. The relationship is bigger than that. As a minister you are their guide, their prophet, and their shepherd. These roles do not allow you to leave them behind because they don’t follow or because they disagree the words that you speak into their life.

How do you grow thick skin? You find security in who you are and in what God has called you to. You need to be confident in who you are. If you are intimidated by students or your church members, you have already minimized the impact that you can make. Be confident in who you are, your gifts and talents. Also, be confident in your calling. God selected you over all kinds of other people to share His story with these students and parishioners. If God called you to the task, he has prepared you as well. So stop being lame and toughen up.