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Too Busy To Breathe?

January 12, 2012 in Balance, Conferences, healthy ministry, Marriage, planning with 0 Comments

Have you had those seasons in ministry and life where you just don’t seem to get a time to breathe? The last few months for me have felt that way. Between a constant barrage of family sickness, more ministry “emergencies” than normal, as well as over extending myself in some areas, it has been a challenging couple of months. Maybe you can relate?

In seasons like this it’s time to breathe, time to learn, and time to look forward. 

TIME TO BREATHE: The last couple of months have been very busy, but it means everything to stop and be filled up instead of running on empty. The last two weeks I have had to be very intentional to calve out time to be alone, read God’s Word, and be silent. It’s not easy, but it’s essential. It’s challenging to slow down when there are so many things to get done and so many people to keep happy. However, hanging in the long-haul and being effective in the short-term depends on our dependence on God. We must be ruthless with our schedules and intentional about taking time to breathe with our Father.  Continue Reading…

Teaching Students God’s Truth: Can we teach it all?

November 9, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, messages, planning with 0 Comments

A long time ago I read The 7 Checkpoints by Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall. In this book Stanley and Hall outline the need to teach students the absolute essentials for their faith development. At the time I remembered agreeing with the premise that we only have so many hours per year of teaching time with our students. Therefore, the question we must ask is: What do we absolutely want them to know and understand by the time they graduate? Stanley asserts that the Bible is full of truth, but not all of it is applicable to teenagers. We can’t give them everything, so must consider what gets ditched and what do we keep and teach?

For me recently, I have been evaluating my teaching and programs and I am concluding that some of our teaching isn’t essential. It’s good yes, but essential, no. Given that my total teaching time with my high school students will be around about 50-60 hours per year, I must be ruthless in getting rid of teaching that could be good, but not essential when all is said and done. I am must work equally hard in adding material that is essential to the specific group of students I am working with. Here’s what I can do to ensure that I am hitting the most important and applicable areas:

1) ESSENTIAL AREAS OF TEACHING: Write down the top ten areas that every student in your program needs to know by the time they graduate or “move up”. Look at what you teach in a 3-5 year period and make sure these top-ten areas are included first. This process should take a few months to come up with as you prayerfully consider these areas.

2) ESSENTIAL BIBLE BOOKS: Write down the most essential books of the Bible that you need to cover in a 3-5 year period and map out a provisional a plan. Be sure to have a balance in Old Testament / New Testament material.

3) BALANCED PROGRAMS: Create a clear balance of programs that “fire fight” the issues students are facing as well as environments that help students to “fire prevent” by teaching foundational theology and doctrine. For us, we have two weekly meetings. One is topical and mostly issue related (I call this “fire fighting”), while the other is clearly foundational faith building (I call this “fire preventing”).

4) ASK STUDENTS: Every few months, ask them what issues they and their friends are facing and create a “moving plan” that will hit the felt needs of the students. When we hit their issues and felt needs, they usually will learn more. These messages are presented in our midweek program that tackles topical issues in students lives. I survey my students once a year and I ask them every few months what areas / issues / topics they need to learn about.

5) ASK YOURSELF: Are you simply following a curriculum plan that someone else created for you, or whether you are giving your students the essentials that is specific to your group of students?

6) INVOLVE OTHERS: As noted above, I ask students continuously, but it’s essential to gain the insight and opinions of other youth workers in your ministry. Ask God to speak through the people who are working with your specific group of students and evaluate what you need to change and tweak. It’s imperative that we realize that we need to create a custom program for our specific group of students and not rely on someone else’s research that worked for their ministry in a different context. Too often we rely on curriculum and a scope and sequence that worked somewhere else, but maybe not for us. With all this said, I do you use curriculum regularly, but I tend to pick and choose what I feel we need for my group and dismiss what is not needed…

A hard question I must ask you today is this: Are you simply going through the motions of using a canned curriculum, or are you really seeking to create a custom program that is best for your specific context, environment, and students God has called you to minister to?

Finally, feel free to share any ideas as to how you create a balanced program with essential teaching?

Phil <><

Youth Ministry Management: Eat that Frog!

October 12, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, Leadership, planning with 0 Comments

My most important lesson in getting tasks accomplished? Simple: Eat that Frog!

Eat that Frog is a fantastic book that will serve you well in your ministry. The premise behind the book is this:

There’s a saying that says, “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long! Your ”FROG” is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it now…” 

It is also the task that is the biggest task to get done and is easy to put off for easier tasks… But doing the easier tasks will not help you in the long-term… By eating that frog in my ministry, I am finding that I get more done these days.

Check out the website for this book. There’s a cool video that will give you greater insight too: http://www.eatthatfrogmovie.com/

Youth Ministry Management: How to Get Stuff Done, When Stuff is Piling Up!

October 11, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, planning with 7 Comments

We are a few weeks into the Fall season and for me this has been one of the busiest seasons I have encountered in a while. It’s usually about this time of year when the non-stop busy schedule has created a backlog of tasks and to do lists that seem to keep growing and growing. (At least, that is the case for me).

It’s times like this when it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like we are drowning in a sea of administration and programatic mess. It’s times like these when we have to become ruthless and focused to get back on top of youth ministry management. Here are a few things I am doing to get back on top of things:

1) Take Regular Rests: Not what you were expecting? But, this is the most cruciall step for me. It’s been a busy season and it’s easy to become inefficient and sloppy when I get tired. At times like this I need to ensure that I am resting in order to work more effectively, efficiently, and conscientiously when I am in the office.

2) Be Ruthless: At the beginning of a typical week I take my google task list and move all the most important tasks to the top of the lists. For me, these always include: a) Contact time with students and leaders. b) Message writing c) Meeting planning. Everything else gets bumped until the major things are done. It’s then I get to my admin and emails etc.

3) Check Email Infrequently: If you have email on your phone this is a hard one to do. However, I find it best to check my email in chunks at certain times of the day. Usually I would check it 4-5 times a day when I have more time, but for now I find myself checking email twice a day. It’s also worth noting that we can become easily unfocused by constant new tasks that come our way through email. It’s better to dictate your email than let email dictate your task list…

4) Don’t Reply to Every Email and Phone Call Instantly: There are some emails and phone calls that are important, granted. However, not every phone call is an emergency and not every email needs immediate attention. Wherever I can, I try to add the emails and voicemails to my task list and “chunk them out” at a later time.

5) ‘Chunk Out’ Emails and Phone Calls Together: As I said above, I try to add emails and voicemails to my task list and get them done together. I typically have Tuesdays as my admin and meeting day. It is here where I try to get back to people and ensure they hear from me.

6) Communicate Your Schedule: Ensure that key people know you are in a crunch and will likely take a little longer to get back to them in the next few weeks while you get back on top of things, (Just don’t take a few weeks to get back to them though)!

7) Don’t Waste Your Time: I often here people complain about being too busy to be able to catch up, yet they are still able to write on everyone’s Facebook wall or play XBOX 360. In seasons of busyness, it’s imperative that we ruthless in every way. It also means giving up a few home comforts in order that we can get back on top of things.

8) Delegate! Recruit people to help you with as many things you can hand off. Know that it might not be done the way you want it to be done, but at least it’s getting done. I am always presently surprised how much ownership and fulfillment it brings to people when they know have helped me at busy and messy time. Bless someone by letting them help you!

Well, that’s what I am working on… How about you? What tips do you have? 

Phil <><

Youth Ministry Myths: Part 3 – ALL Youth Workers Are Disorganized…

August 11, 2011 in Leadership, planning with 2 Comments

My previous posts have taken a look at youth ministry myths that I see many youth workers frequently facing. Here’s the myth we are looking at today:

If you are a youth worker, you and your ministry will be disorganized… 

I never forget a one of my former students commending me for my organization of an event saying,”wow, for a youth pastor you are pretty organized, I didn’t expect that”! And, here are some more examples: 

  • In youth ministry circles, we proudly brag about our amazing ability to be able to “wing” anything. We almost wear our disorganization as a badge of honor…
  • How many times do we start writing a messages just a couple of hours before we meet with our students?
  • How many times have we been chewed out by a parent for our lack of communication?
  • How many conflicts have occurred in our marriages because we left something to the last minute and took away hours from our loved ones?
  • How many times have we double booked ourselves needlessly? 

If you are like me, being disorganized in youth ministry has been something I have laughed about, but it has also been the source of great pain. For some of my youth ministry friends, it has also been the source of losing their job. But, does it have to be this way? Are all youth workers naturally disorganized?  If we are not the “organized type”, should we simply accept chaos as part of our ministry reality? The answers to these questions should be NO!

Whether you are naturally organized or not, we do not have to live out the myth of disorganization. There are ways to improve and raise the bar of our ministries through good organization. Ultimately, if we want to have an effective ministry, we should work on our organization…

Here are some ways we can beat the disorganized myth:  Continue Reading…

GUEST POST: Self-Feeding Youth Ministries – By Darren Sutton

August 2, 2011 in healthy ministry, Leadership, Parents, planning with 3 Comments

Youth ministry can be a lot like parenting.  No, youth workers are not replacement parents.  But there are some striking similarities in the ways we ‘rear’ the kids.

I remember how easy it was to feed my kids when they first came home from the hospital?  They cried and I just popped a bottle in there and the noise magically stopped.  And then there was the initial excitement when they started holding the bottle on their own!!  FREEDOM!  Not only could I pop the bottle in to stop the crying – now I could walk away!  My kids were finally feeding themselves!!

Then I realized the shocking truth!  It was only an illusion of self-feeding.  Just because a baby can hold his own bottle does NOT mean he is feeding himself.  I was still prepping that bottle for him – making sure it was disinfected and the contents were fresh and safe.  The milk was safely contained – only available when the baby applied the right amount of pressure in the right places.

Is that my youth ministry?  Give the kids a bottle so they don’t make noise…and if I’m really progressive, let them hold their own bottles?  What happens when that safe, prepared bottle runs out of milk?  Just refill it and stick it back in?  If you’ve ever parented – you know that doesn’t work for long….

Eventually babies grow up.  Milk is no longer enough to satiate their appetites.  I vividly remember the day I first started giving my son a little cereal with the bottle?  He was growing up and I was so proud!  He was finally getting REAL food.  Man food.  He would soon be a carnivore!!  Maybe, but it was still safe – spoon feeding – baby food.  It was easy to swallow.  Knowing that nothing on earth would make mashed up peas from a jar attractive to my son, I packaged it in the fun of a spoon becoming an airplane flying into the hangar.  And lo and behold – he was still fully dependent on me.  I made the cereal.  I bought the baby food.  I sat at his high chair and made it attractive.  I shoveled it in…

Is that my youth ministry?  Play games and shovel in food, whether the kids like it or not – and just hope and pray that they get some of the nutrients they need to sustain themselves? Sooner or later, kids want to crawl out of that high chair and make their own food….

Using a parental perspective on youth ministry, helping students self-feed might look a little bit like this.  After we progress from the bottle and baby food, we give them Cheerios.  It’s virtually mess-free.  It helps improve their dexterity.  It’s easy clean-up and not ridiculously unhealthy.   We remove the bottle and offer them a sippie-cup instead – it still offers the protection of a lid, but kids have to learn a new way of drinking from it.  And if they leave it sitting improperly, it could get messy.  We start moving in spoons, plates, lid-less cups, bibs…and it gets messy.  They throw food on the walls.  They miss their mouths.  They may even occasionally give up and go back to eating with their hands for a time.

And what do we do as youth pastors?  We embrace that!  We LOVE that!  We facilitate that.  We sit near the high chair and watch as they learn to become self-feeders.

My kids are all in high school now.  If they’re hungry – they make a sandwich.  They can cook.  They clean up their dishes following a meal.  They know how to use napkins if they make a mess.  And I am here to help them when they try out new dishes….

THAT’s true youth ministry – and the kind I want to perpetuate!  I want to be a youth pastor that sits next to the high chair while they make a complete and utter mess of ‘learning’ how to feed themselves. And that’s really dirty business that usually sees a lot of stains and requires a lot of clean up along the way. And that’s OK – I like messy. I love the ‘AFV’ moments where the kids have spaghetti in their hair, on the wall, coming out of their nose. It’s then that I truly see their faith maturing, growing, and becoming their own.  Soon, they’ll become truly independent….completely feeding themselves.  And I am quite confident that their ‘messes’ will have equipped them to teach someone else how to hold a spoon…..and that’s the mess – and beauty – of true ministry.

Darren is a veteran youth pastor in Corpus Christi, TX, and co-hosts a weekly podcast for parents of teenagers (http://www.facebook.com/mipodcast) with his wife, Katie. You can catch his blog at www.everyonescalledtoyouthministry.com and follow him on twitter @darrensutton.

 

 


The Lesson I Learned When My Laptop Crashed During Sermon Prep

July 15, 2011 in messages, Mistakes, planning, Review what we do with 5 Comments

Today my Macbook Pro crashed!

It was a BIG crash! The good people at the Apple store told me my hard drive is not recoverable. Ever have that happen? Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever had a computer crash in this way… But here’s the bigger problem:

I AM PREACHING IN CHURCH THIS SUNDAY AND I JUST FINISHED WRITING MY SERMON ON THAT LAPTOP.  No back up, just some notes I had gathered on Evernote.

So, apart from backing up my sermon as I wrote, or writing it on a web-based application like Evernote, here is my BIG lesson I have learned:

“Owning” The Message And Preparing Well Is Helping Me Now:  It’s a pain to have to write it again, but ownership of the message will make it easier to write again.  In Communicating for a Change,  Andy Stanley talks about the importance of “owning” a message and internalizing the core of the message. He even goes so far as to say, why should people listen to us if we don’t own it ourselves? Since reading the book I have tried to ensure that I prepare in such a way, I could preach without notes if needed.

So, even though I have to write my sermon again. And even though I am crammed for time to do it before Sunday, I am thankful that I feel fairly confident that I own the message and have the big idea (and most of the points) in my head… Owning the message is imperative for our audience, but I found out today how helpful it is to write the same sermon again!

For now, here are 5 simple things I do in my writing process to help me “own” the message:

1) Pray: Obvious, yes. Crucial, for sure! Good prayer time saves time!  It’s easier to discern what God is wanting me to say. So often it’s easy to jump into research or even writing without considering what direction The Holy Spirit might want me to look in.  

2) Prepare: Lots of reading of commentaries around the passage or topic. (This really helps to solidify what I own and know). I use Logos for Mac.

3) Plan a Map: This is where I outline a starting and ending point for my message. In many ways, we take people on a journey with us. It’s important that we consider how to get them on the journey, how to keep them on the journey, and how they land at their destination.

4) Put it Together: I don’t write every word, I write an outline that is a detailed version of my map. (This is the part that is lost on my hard drive at the Apple Store).

5) Practice: This is perhaps my best way to own the message and internalize God’s Truth for myself as I preach. It also helps me to iron out transitions and make tweaks as I go. When I practice, I actually talk out the whole message from start to finish. I particularly focus on the take off and landing…

So, there you go. Not rocket science, but perhaps you have struggled in putting sermons together in the past. These 5 points really help me a great deal. Hope they can help you too in case you don’t backup your sermon as you write it!

Phil <><

UPDATE:

  • My Macbook Pro will be in repair for a few days getting a new hard drive
  • I backed up my Macbook 3 weeks ago…
  • I started using a our student ministry Macbook Pro to finish my sermon… It crashed. Not kidding. Can’t get the thing to work!
  • I wrote this post on my lovely wife’s laptop. Unfortunately the laptop is not very lovely. I need to buy her a new one!

8 Reasons Why My Second Office is Starbucks

June 3, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, messages, planning, Relational Youth Ministry, Volunteers with 2 Comments

If you follow me on twitter or foursquare, you will regularly see me checking-in at my local Starbucks or a similar coffee house. Recently a lot of youth ministry friends have suggested that I have a coffee addiction and need serious help. Often my reply is, “we are in youth ministry… we all need help”.

Before I go on, it’s important to point out that I do spend a good amount of time in my office at church, and I love working with a great team of people. It’s also imperative that I spend a good amount of time in the office to stay connected and communicate what is happening in my ministry while also hearing about others ministry areas. But, for now, let me share 8 good reasons for why I think it’s also important for me to spend time working at Starbucks too… Continue Reading…

Back to Basics?

April 27, 2011 in Balance, healthy ministry, Leadership, planning, Relational Youth Ministry with 4 Comments

Has youth ministry become more complex than it needs to be?

Do we get swept away by the complexity of adolescent lives and feel the need to provide complex answers and solutions?

Have we become too focused on other ministries ideas and try to copy every idea for our own ministries?

Do we personally cram in way too much into our ministry schedule, our personal schedule, and our family schedule?

Have “blessings” become “curses” for us who are in ministry?

Are we in search for the newest or latest thing, but miss out on oldest yet, brightest truth?

Does it feel like we have “knock the ball out the park” every week to be successful?

Back to Basics? Does youth ministry really have to be so complex and stressful? Is it time to step back and take a fresh look at what we do and what matters most? Is it time to see that the best answers in youth ministry can be found in the most simple, yet powerful ideas and practices? For me, whenever ministry gets complex and overwhelming, I have to remind myself to come back to these foundational ministry values: 1) Students need Jesus, 2) they need my time, 3) they need my ears… Coming back to these basic principles is my compass in the storm of complexity…

1) Jesus Centered: Will we make a greater impact when we get back to basics by telling students who Jesus really is without having to make Him great. As Doug Fields said recently at SYMC, “We don’t have to make Jesus awesome, He already is”. Is it OK to strip away all the media and glitz and tell His story as it is? Do we somehow believe that His life and teachings are not enough on it’s own?

2) Take the Time: So many students have busy families and crave quality time. They need leaders and caring adults who can take the time to encourage them and build them up. Recently someone asked me, “what is the best way to minister to students?” My answer was simple: “Give them something the world cannot offer them… give them your time…”

3) Listen to Them: This might seem so simple that you might be tempted to think it’s pointless to read further. However, do we really listen to students? Are our conversations more about talking to them, than asking about them? If we want students to listen to our messages and insights, we must first listen to them and give them our ears first. This is so simple, but when we truly listen to students we get an insight to their heart, their hurts, and their dreams. From there, we can more effectively help them. How well are we truly listening?

There’s always more to do. There’s always someone to keep happy. There’s always a new idea or new program. When I get overwhelmed it’s important for me to come back to basics and concentrate on what matters most. When all is said and done, what one or two things should be your “back to basics compass” in the storms of complexity?

Phil <><

 

Scheduling What Matters Most

April 18, 2011 in Balance, Family, healthy ministry, Leadership, planning with 2 Comments

“If you never did ministry again, I am not sure I would care at this point!”

These were the hard, but truthful, words my wife spoke as she shared her frustrations of being married to an overscheduled youth pastor.

It wasn’t like I didn’t see it coming… Over many months I had blurred the lines of ministry and family. I had created an unhealthy ministry schedule in a church that was exploding with growth. My overscheduled ministry had become the enemy of healthy family time. I knew in my heart there were things I needed to change.

I had been to conferences that told me to create boundaries and to take care of my family. Even though I knew simple changes would make all the difference, I was allowing the complexity of ministry to lead the way for my family. It took a difficult reality and painful words to begin a new direction…

Here’s what I discovered: When I schedule what matters most for my family, we stay healthier and I minister from a healthier perspective. Therefore, it is imperative that I live by some simple, (yet powerful) ways of planning family and ministry. We do this by picking a regular day to make a plan. For us, it’s Monday evenings. We have dinner together and look at our upcoming schedules. During this habitual planning time we are intentional about setting aside family time.

Here’s how we schedule what matters most:

(Continue reading the rest of this article over at youthministry.com by clicking here)

 

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