This summer my group and I were preparing to make the long trek back to our rooms when I spotted one of my biggest pet peeves in the world: the irresponsible youth minister.  He had chosen to demonstrate his unprofessionalism by jamming nine of his students in an SUV and then topped it off by riding on top of the vehicle with his legs hanging in the sun roof.  I did not hear any ambulances in the next few minutes so I assume that he made it down the incredibly steep mountain just fine, but damage was still done.

There is a difficult balance that all student ministers must manage.  We want to be cool, hip, and laid back.  However, we also want to be respected and trusted.  Unfortunately, in trying to develop our appeal to our students, we tend to lose our influence with the parents and church leadership.  The sad part is that our lack of professionalism so often diminishes our effectiveness in ministry.  When it comes to acting professionally in ministry, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Being young is not an excuse.  This is the regular excuse that is offered for why youth ministers tend to do really stupid things.  I’m not sure why this would work in our ministry context when it would never fly in most professional careers.  Imagine if a young doctor or young accountant showed up whenever he or she wanted to.  Imagine if they were the people doing wild and crazy things in the office during business hours or in staff meetings.  How long would they have a job?  Why is our standard for accountants, store managers, or lawyers higher than our standard for ministers?

2. Being a minister means setting an example.  In addition to the fact that you are teaching and living out the gospel, you are also setting an example for your students.  You are responsible for showing your students what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.  This means that you must have personal standards that reflect faith in Christ.  It also means understanding that students are always watching you whether you are online or at a football game.

3. Just because you work with teenagers does not mean that you need to act like one.  Again, there is a difficult balance when it comes to working with teenagers.  I love to do some of the things that my students do like go to high school football games or play Call of Duty online.  I also realize that things that teenagers like to do such as pranks, breaking traffic laws, and listening to profane music are pretty much off-limits if I want to have influence.

4. Ministry jobs are actual jobs.  If you want to get paid and desire job security, it would probably be great to complete your job related tasks.  While ministry means hanging out and preaching the gospel, it also means planning, paperwork, and communicating.  If you don’t want to work in an office, become a volunteer.  I get so tired of hearing about youth ministers who are the class clowns of their church staffs.  Wouldn’t it be great if the student minister was the most organized one on staff?  Let’s raise the bar a little bit.

Dear volunteers,

I know that volunteering with students is a “hit the ground running” type of experience.  It is busy, intense, and tiring.  I appreciate that you have dedicated your time and energy to our students.  With all of the craziness, I want to press pause for a minute and let you know some things that you definitely need to know in order to maximize your ministry with these students.

1. The times before and after events and programs are extremely important ministry times.  Some of the best conversations that I have had with students occurred while they are waiting for their parents to come and get them.  There is tremendous value in the downtime.  We are geared to think that our task begins with the opening prayer or when the clock hits the start time, but the truth is that our task begins the minute that we come into contact with a student.  In fact, it might begin as we prepare our hearts the moments before we arrive at a program or event.

2. Never show that you are disappointed in attendance.  I want to set a record in attendance every time we meet.  Unfortunately, this is just not always a reasonable goal.  Inevitably we will have nights where only half of the regular crowd shows up.  We will have events where half of the registered students fail to show up.  The challenge is to push for every kid to come and then be excited about the ones who do show up.  Showing disappointment in attendance is a killer, and the students will shut down if they don’t think that you are excited that they came.  If I hear a student saying that the group seems small, I quickly let them know how excited I am that I will be able to spend more quality time getting to know the students in the smaller group.  The key is for you to also believe that and be happy about it.

3. Engage. Engage. Engage.  There are two types of youth workers. One type gets the job done, keeps the peace, and assists with all necessary tasks.  The other type does all of the things above and stays engaged with the students.  We really want our volunteers to be the second type.  To become this, you need to know what engaging students looks like.  It means sitting with students around the table rather than congregating with the other adult leaders.  It means asking students questions about their week or what they are learning.  It means shooting basketball with them in the gym rather than watching from the sidelines.  It means participating with abandon during activities and games.  It does not mean always having to be the life of the party or having something cool to say.  You see, it is much easier to just be a chaperone, but we are looking for mentors.  We need volunteers to demonstrate love and concern for our students.  We need students to know that you are there for them and not there to make the program work.  The good news is that you can stay engaged with the students and still maintain crowd control or facilitate an activity.  In fact, the better the relationship you have with the students, the more likely they are to work with you rather than against you.  Sure, it’s draining to discuss the appeal of Justin Bieber or why the Clone Wars is awesome.  It is also incredibly rewarding to know that you have made an impact on a student’s life simply because you sat with them and were interested in their day.  Do you want to know the secret of my popularity with the students?  The secret is that I have invested my time in getting to really know them, and, because of that, they know that I care.  Use this secret and you too will be one of their heroes.  It’s actually amazing at how easy that can happen.

4. You are doing incredibly important work.  How can cleaning up spilled Sprite for the tenth time be incredible work?  How can playing capture the flag with students be important?  Sometimes volunteers feel like they are just filling space.  You are not filling a need, you are literally changing lives and drawing students closer to Christ.  In my mind there is no greater task.  As there are many parts of the body, there are many parts or roles that must be filled to meet the needs of our students.  Relish your role and the opportunities that God has given you to minister.  On a side note, when I begin to feel like I am simply making things happen and not ministering, I actually stop what I am doing and ask a student how their relationship with God is developing.  This allows me to gain focus on why I am doing these things in the first place.

5. You will have significant impact if you see yourself as a youth worker on our “off days”.  Go back to your high school days.  For some of you it might take a while.  Just kidding.  Now imagine that it is Saturday and you are sitting around watching a movie on TV and the phone rings.  It’s your Sunday School teacher just checking in with you and asking you how the game went last night.  How does that make you feel?  Loved?  Important?  Here’s the thing, if you want to really demonstrate investment in the lives of the students that you are mentoring, you will be more effective if you see the calling as something organic rather than something scheduled for Wednesday nights at 6:30pm.

Student Ministry in the summer is one of my favorite things in the whole world.  I love that the students are available to just hang out.  I love that we are able to mix up our schedules a bit and change pace.  I love seeing the growth that students experience from our summer programs and events.  I also love that it wears me out.

We had a great summer complete with an in-depth Bible study, camp, and mission projects.  It was fun, exhausting, and stretching.  As always, we wanted to spend some time thinking about what worked and what we can improve.  As we worked to evaluate the summer, there were a few things key things that I wanted to make sure that we accomplished.  Here are the questions we asked:

1. Did we help students grow in their faith in a special way?  Our goal was to give students opportunities to grow in their faith that they might not be able to have during the school year.  We wanted to take advantage of their open schedules and their energy.

2. Did we open the door for new students to become involved?  We wanted to do things that encouraged fringe students to get plugged in and find a connection.  We also wanted to create environments where students wanted to bring their friends.

3. Did we develop students as leaders?  One of the messages that we put out there this summer is that students, particularly older students, need to start realizing their leadership and the disciple making abilities.  We want them to understand their role as mentors and influencers.

4.  Did we find a balance between discipleship focused events and fun-oriented events?  Trips to Holiday World are great and provide positive memories and connection, but we did not want the summer to only be about being entertained.  We wanted students to also experience mission work and encounter a picture of faith that requires sacrifice and commitment.

As we evaluate, I feel like we accomplished most of what we wanted to accomplish.  We built momentum for the school year, and time will tell if some of the things that we did actually have born fruit for our students.  I am hopeful that the growth that we saw in the students will manifest itself into lifestyles based on Christ.

Over the past few months we have experienced a new dynamic in our student ministry.  We have started to see the need to spend even more time helping people understand what we are about and why we do what we do.  A few things have caused this to be the case.

1. The honeymoon has faded.  I was blessed to have people excited that I was coming to BBC to serve as student minister.  I worked hard to have a plan for the student ministry and wanted people to see me as both professional and relational.  This worked to essentially give me free reign as I started shaping a student ministry that had experienced some challenges and decline.  I had a great deal of support, and I was given freedom to grow as a minister.  Three years later, we have to continue to keep our vision and values in front of people.  Our parents need to be reminded that we still have a plan and a purpose for what we do.
2. New people showed up.  Again, this is a huge blessing.  Whether it has been the new students coming to our church or the students moving up from the children’s ministry, we have a ton of new faces who have parents who did not get to hear all of my fun ideas and hear my heart for students three years ago.  These parents don’t automatically have trust or understanding of what the student ministry is all about simply because it is new to them.
3. Student ministry is always changing shapes.  As we grow and develop our strategy in the student ministry, there are always areas where we are tweaking and improving things.  This means that programs have changed over time or have been replaced based on the needs of the students.  While our core values are the same, some of our events or programs now meet different needs in our student ministry.

So what do you do if you need people to buy into your ministry and the difference that it can make in the lives of the students?  I have found a few things that have really worked for us.

• Over-communicate as much as possible.  Have information in the hands of the parents as often as possible.  We send multiple reminders about programs and events to the point that I assume people are sick of hearing from me.
• Make the entry easy.  When someone enters our student ministry, we go heavy on the introductions to what we do and why we do it.  I typically touch base with new student ministry parents about three times in the first couple of weeks.  When students are entering middle school, I try to touch base individually with each set of parents to let them know a little about what to expect.
• Get questioning parents involved.  We have some great stories of parents who were not sold on our ministry becoming total advocates for us once they plugged in began serving alongside us.  Sometimes there are simple misunderstandings.  Sometimes parents have not considered all of the angles to why we do things the way we do them.
• Cast vision regularly and be available.  These two things have made a huge impact.  Most of the time people just want to know that you know what you are doing and have a reason for doing it.  When parents hear the vision, often they are impressed that we have spent time thinking about their student’s growth to the degree that we have.  Similarly, when parents know that they can ask questions, they have a much greater chance of coming to you with a problem before it grows into a ministry problem.

Here’s a hard truth for us as ministers: sometimes a conversation is not good enough.  In an age of relational ministry, sometimes we think that this approach means that all we have to do is talk to our people about the weather or sports or how school is going.  If we complete a good round of small talk, then we have done our relational duty and have gotten our folks on the path of spiritual growth.  Because the goals of relational ministry can be difficult to define, we often settle for much less than the best.

There are certainly some very positive aspects of being relational in ministry.  I would be much less effective if I only spoke at my students rather than with my students.  I value the opportunities to demonstrate concern for my students by asking them about their lives.  In fact, I frequently mention to our volunteers that some of the most important ministry times are those times before and after an event.  Demonstrating our concern and interest in people’s lives is definitely a calling for ministers, but sometimes it is not enough.

As you read through the Bible, it does not take long to see that those who were specifically tasked with doing God’s work often had to speak difficult truths, say unpopular things, and confront in uncomfortable ways.  We also see that we are asked to speak truth in love to people.  As ministers, we are called to do these same things today.  When we fail to do these things, we are essentially giving our stamp of approval to the way that students are living their lives, even when it does not honor God.  We must be willing to put light onto the areas where they can grow so that they can advance in the journey of their faith.

Here are a couple of examples of what this might look like.  We had a student who was in a very unhealthy romantic relationship, and it was obvious that this student was heading down a destructive path.  With all of the love and concern I could muster, I simply let the student know that I was concerned and that I would love for the student to spend some time considering where the path that she was taking was leading.  Another student we work with has had a difficult time with the issue of cheating.  While it was uncomfortable, we pointed out that this was not something that would help the student in life or in the student’s faith.  In both of these cases we did not seek to condemn or to shame, but we wanted to simply do our part in sharing truth with the student so that they might be able to make the right decision.

Speaking truth is difficult, but it is our calling.  Sometimes a conversation is not good enough.  Sometime God has called us to do more than that.  However, if this is going to work, we had better be sure that we have established a relationship with the student through a heart of ministry and a God-given desire to see the student become all that he or she can become.  It may be that the truth you speak will change the course of their lives.  What an honor.