3 Practical Ways to Do Student Ministry Right

Youth ministry can be a challenging but rewarding experience. To make the most of this calling here are some practical ways you can do that ministry.

1) Talk through the calendar before you go public with it.
One of the biggest things I learned at my second church was making sure you clear your ministry calendar with your family calendar first. This will save you a ton of headaches as you navigate little league, board meetings, and  those  pesky things like birthdays and anniversaries. The 24 hours it takes to complete this step are critical to success in youth ministry life. Trust me.

2) Establish some (mostly) non-negotiable family boundaries.
What night is your date night? How many nights of the week are you out doing church stuff? When is the best time for the family to be all together? There has to be grace and flexibility on a regular basis, but outline what are the non-negotiables and create some boundaries for yourself in ministry. If you skip this step, you’re going to say “yes” to everything and “no” to your family. (my family used to call me "Mr.-meets-a-lot")

3) Build a team and empower them to help carry the load.
Youth ministry is bigger than one person—if it’s all about you, prepare for burnout. You can hang on for a while, but while you hang on, you’ll also bottle-neck growth in your ministry and other leaders. You are cheating others out of the opportunity to become leaders if you micromanage your ministry. Empower others to take significant parts of the ministry so that you don't have to.

Great Youth Ministry Websites

Here are just a few web sites for adult youth works / parents of youth to check out.

Youth Ministry Exchange
By youth workers and for youth workers, YMX is the place to discuss all things youth ministry, with thousands of threads on every imaginable subject. Some sections are free, but a $5 annual pass gets you access to the whole thing—and it’s totally worth it.

The Source for Youth Ministry
Jonathan McKee started this site (formerly Jonathan’s Resources) as a labor of love for youth workers. Chock full of free resources and ideas (the game section alone is amazing).

The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding
This website, from CPYU founder Walt Mueller, is really for parents, but youth workers find it extremely helpful. It’s loaded with blogs, articles, links to relevant stories, and more resources than you can imagine to help you learn about youth culture

YouthMinistry.Com
When Group Publishing partnered with Doug Fields’s Simply Youth Ministry, they resurrected this long-dormant domain to create a new site, distinct from their two other sites. They’re just beginning to move from a commerce-only site to a content-and-commerce site.

Youth Specialties  

Truly my favorite for all things concerning youth ministry, with thousands of pages of articles, ideas, and free stuff—plus the most comprehensive youth-ministry job bank anywhere (with over 700 listings at any time).

Division of Ministrywith Young People (DMYP)

This is the United Methodist General Church’s web site for youth and young adults. It features youth ministry that is happening globally and how your local church can get involved.

Building a Team of Veteran Volunteers

Every ministry has its fair share of transient leaders-those volunteers who serve for a year or 2 before moving on to another area of ministry. Older high school students who volunteer during their senior year before heading off to college and parents of junior highers who serve for a year or 2 while their child is in the ministry, are the two predominant transient leaders in many cultures.

While there’s certainly no “silver bullet” for creating a team of ministry veterans, there are some things that you can do to be successful at building a team of veteran volunteers.

Focus on relationships more than on formal training.

If relational ministry is the type of youth ministry we acknowledge is best, then it would make sense that a relational approach to building a leadership team would take the same approach.

Empower like crazy.

I believe in the power of giving ministry away. As long as it fits within your purpose/strategy/mission/vision…Go for it! If you are a leader of a ministry team working with youth and young adults view yourself more as coach and encourager instead of a ball-hogging quarterback.

Share life.

As your team grows this becomes harder to do, but I found that a good chunk of our veteran leaders have stuck around because of the friendships that we’ve formed outside the walls of the church and activities of the youth ministry.

You are a Professional

Quality leaders want to be a part of something they perceive as being somewhat professional. Doing background checks, having good training, having clear guidelines, having their backs, and having a clearly articulated and understandable mission and vision. These are the kinds of things that quality leaders look for and want to be a part of.

Healthy, veteran volunteer leadership teams don’t happen overnight. Be patient, intentional in your efforts, and don’t quit when the going gets tough. Building a team of veterans is hard work… But it might be the most important and most rewarding hard work you ever do!

Think Big

There is a tension most youth workers face in a smaller ministry setting: They want their group to be bigger! Ironically most youth workers in a large setting face a similar tension: They want to be (or at least feel) smaller!  So if you are leading a smaller ministry, here are a few “big thinking” ideas that will help you where you’re at, and help pave the way for where you’re heading:

Think About Infrastructure
As you grow, how many volunteers will you need? Start recruiting volunteers now, so you are ready when growth happens. How will your follow up strategy need to evolve? Start tweaking it now! Do you have room to grow or will you need to ask to move your ministry to a larger broom closet? What will growth demand of your budget? These are just a few areas of infrastructure worth thinking about in bigger ways while you’re still smaller.

Think About Scalability
Look at virtually every aspect of your ministry and ask yourself if it’s scalable…in other words, can it handle a growth spurt? Pretend 10 new students joined your small groups—could your current system handle it?  Thinking big means organizing in such a way that growth can be accommodated without completely upsetting the apple cart. 

Think About Communication
More students, more problems! And one of the biggest problems larger youth groups have is in the area of communication. As your group grows, gone will be the good old days of calling every student once a week, or taking each volunteer out to lunch on a regular basis. You won’t be able to stop each parent in the church foyer to touch base.

The good news is we minister in an era that has seemingly unlimited tools and technology to meet our communication needs. Start experimenting now, so you are ready when growth arrives.

Prepare now for the students that God will trust you with in the future. Get ready…because they're on their way!

(I got these ideas from a weekly e-mail that I get about youth and young adult ministry)

Social Media's Impact on Personal Relationships

There is a great post over on ChurchMag.  They highlight the amount of time spent on social media and ask the question, How much is too much?  Check out the infographic and let me know what you think.