Building Your Youth Ministry – Vision

I often get asked how to revitalize or build a youth ministry program. For the average person, this can be an overwhelming task. Questions like: Where do I start?, and What do I do first? are the types of questions that most people begin to ask. And these are exactly the right types of questions to be asking. Throwing together a hodgepodge of programs and events with no specific goals or outcomes might satisfy the immediate need of the church for the community, however this type of approach will never last the test of time.

Developing a youth ministry requires careful planning. For the program to be strong and effective, you must begin with a vision. Just as if you were laying the foundation for building a house, you need to lay a strong foundational vision as to what your youth ministry is going to be all about. Without this, all you have is a gathering of young people doing events with no central purpose. Proverbs 29: 18 states, "…Without a vision (purpose, plan, etc.), the people will perish." Why does your church have a youth ministry? If your only answer is "because we've always had one," then it's time to reevaluate. Unless you know what you're trying to do, you'll probably never accomplish it.

There are lots of ways to discover a vision or purpose for your youth ministry (too many to articulate here). However, a good place to start is be realistic as to where you are and cast a dream of where you want to go. Things to keep in mind are:

What are the needs of our community?

What are our kids needs?

What resources (money, time, facility, people, etc.) do we have and what do we need?

One of the best resources that I can recommend for churches who are struggling to rebuild or build a youth ministry and define a solid vision for that ministry would be the book by Doug Fields entitled "Purpose Driven Youth Ministry." This book provides a systematic approach at developing a solid vision that you can implement and evaluate easily. Churches where I have use this book it has been a great success. There is also a training kit that includes 5 strategic teambuilding sessions that can be used alongside the book to help make the experience richer.

If you are a member of the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church you can borrow this training kit from our resource center, Discovery Place (discovery-place.org) at no charge.