For others, Friday is their day off.

For some of us, we ask, “what is a day off?”

For me, Monday is a ministry work day and I usually get my day off on Friday. Since Monday is the first day of my ministry work week, I have found it imperative to start the week by focusing on priorities that are time consuming yet a crucial set up to the rest of the week. It should be a given that my soul care should be an everyday priority, but here are three practical priorities I focus on most Mondays.

1) Message Writing: First thing Monday morning I find my usual spot in Starbucks, plug in my headphones, and start message writing until early afternoon. I am usually working a week ahead in my messages and finishing off my current weekly message. (I often speak twice a week, so it can be a hefty message writing morning).

2) Planning: Monday afternoons are spent planning programs, events, and message series. (I usually am working 3-6 months ahead).

3) Email and Task List: Before my day is done I clear as much email as I can, create new task lists (I use google tasks), and try to create a plan for the rest of the week and the tasks I need to get done. It’s important to ‘clear the decks’ before Tuesday gets here…

You’ll notice that there are no meetings with students, leaders, or other staff members. For me, Mondays are my day to hide away and get great messages written, make good plans, and get caught up on email. The rest of week includes a great deal of contact time where I get to invest in students and leaders.

For me, it’s important to have one day per week when I can hide away and get a large chunk of message writing and planning done.

How about you? Do you have a day like this? What is your day off? What do Mondays look like for you?

Phil <><

TOMORROW and the rest of this week: YOUTH MINISTRY RESOURCE GIVEAWAY! Come back and check out what you could win!!!

1) Survey Your Students and Leaders: Don’t assume you know what worked for your ministry in the last school year, ask your students (and your leaders). I will actually be using a Sunday morning program to survey our students and celebrate the last year. Our survey is pretty detailed, (I’ll post it soon), and gives students a good chance for students to provide us specific feedback. We use this survey as a way to design upcoming Fall and Winter programs and events. Before the summer truly hits, it’s good to reflect and digest on where you have been. I will be sitting down with some of my core leaders to review the school year and plan the Fall.

2) Head For A End Of School Year Event: We always close out our school year with a big event that is promoted heavily and incorporates celebration and fun. It also acts as a beginning of summer event in some ways too. It’s good to have defining events like this that signify a change in schedule or programming. 

3) Promote The Summer Now: If you haven’t planned your summer AND begun to promote some of your summer program, now is the time to begin… Parents especially are already looking at what camps and activities to involve their students in. Your events and programs will get a back seat in the family schedule if you don’t promote now. It’s also helpful to get students sold on the summer schedule now. For us, we shut down our midweek program for the summer but add in other programs and events. For some students this can feel like a loss of sorts. However, if we start promoting the summer now, by the time the change actually comes, it is easier to accept.

4) Honor Your Graduates: Whether it’s honoring grads in your regular services or at your youth ministry programs, it’s essential that we celebrate our grads! Do you have a date on the calendar yet? We pick the same date every year as it works for us. It’s the Sunday before Memorial Day. Even though we honor them a few weeks before they graduate, we have found that we can get them and their family there before the open house season goes crazy. It also allows us to promote our college / career program and get them thinking about plugging in over the Summer before many of them head of to college in the Fall.

5) Honor Your Leaders: My leaders have been phenomenal in this last year! We have a leaders end of year BBQ on the schedule where I get to thank them and also ‘fire’ them. (I stole this idea from Doug Fields years ago. The premise is to ‘fire’ leaders on a yearly basis and allow them to walk away from youth ministry if they feel they need to. I would rather have deeply committed leaders rather than leaders who come back out of obligation or guilt).

What would you add to this list? What ideas can I steal from you? How are you finishing up your school year well? 

Phil <><

• It was an easy invite for students to bring their friends to: Having a local college athlete share their story is an easy way to get students to bring their friends. We saw a large number of visitors last night who all came with regular students to our ministry.
• A guest speaker can share the Gospel boldly: It’s not that we do not share the Gospel regularly, but there is something great in having someone else share the Gospel to our students. It’s not the same voice or same style and therefore the students tune in and hear the Gospel clearly.
• College athletes make a big impression: After last night, we will be doing this again sometime soon! All our comment cards from students shared how they related so much to the stories being shared and how much they appreciated their transparency.
• Students had a positive role model to look up to: After the message, our students wanted to hang out with the athletes, get photos, and ask questions. It was awesome to see our students getting excited about being around such good role models. So often our students look up to many athletes who are arrogant and involved in too many off the field antics. These athletes are the kind of people we want our students to be around…
• 3 students accepted Christ for the first time and 3 students recommitted their life to Christ: This made the night all worth it! Bruce Dishnow from Athletes in Action did a fantastic job in presenting the Gospel and our students responded to God’s call on their lives. Even students who were strong in their faith shared how they longed to dig deeper in their faith walk.

All in all, it was a great night for us. But what about you? What college campuses are nearby to you? Who can you contact to come and speak to students? Do you have an Athletes in Action group on your local college campus?

Phil <><

Maybe you can identify with some or all of them? What would you add to this list? What do you regularly pray for at your youth programs?

1. Please don’t let anyone spill their soda on the sanctuary carpet.
2. Please don’t let anyone’s cell phone go off during my message – and if it does, help me not to lose my train of thought.
3. Please let everyone bring their deposits on time.
4. Please don’t let the senior pastor come in here.
5. Please let me survive this night to fight another day.

Go ahead and comment. What would you add to your prayer list?

P.S – This isn’t Darren’s “serious prayer” list, it’s more for fun… well, mostly.

Here’s what I pray regularly at our weekly programs: 

“Thanks so much for the new faces here tonight, and thanks for the students who call this place home” – It’s imperative to communicate care to the new students as we pray for them and thank God for them. It’s also imperative that I thank God new people while also reminding our regular students that there are new faces here to look out for.

“Thanks to these incredible youth leaders who show up week after week to love students” – I have some of the most fantastic youth leaders a youth pastor could ask for! I realize this, but students don’t always consider the sacrifice their small group leaders make to show up week after week. In addition, it’s my job to help the small group leaders become ‘ministry heroes’ to the students. Praying for adult leaders every week truly helps students to see how much they are loved by these brilliant people!

“Thanks for this incredible place called ‘The Warehouse” – Our student ministry center is a converted warehouse on an industrial park. (It’s pretty sweet to see what we’ve done in there). Although new students think it’s awesome, our regulars can easily take this place for granted. But, here’s the biggest point: Whether or not we have a sweet place to meet or not, it’s important to help students give thanks for a place they can call their own.

“Help us to walk away tonight completely changed” – It’s paramount that we ask God to do the amazing in our lives and expect Him to show up in incredible ways. In some ways, this prayer sets the standard and expectations for the night. As a leader I must pray boldly and pray that students will be open to life change.

“Help me to be used powerfully tonight” – This is the prayer I pray privately as I get ready to deliver my weekly messages. No matter whether my preparation time has been great, or whether it has been a challenging week, I believe that God can and will work through my humble efforts. I need to remember that God can work in spite of my efforts too. It’s not about me, it’s about Him working through me. I know this might be a given for many of us, but it’s easy to think that God’s work totally depends on us when it is not…

What are some of the things you pray on a regular basis with your students at your weekly programs? How does prayer teach students students each week? What are you modeling through prayer?

• Mid-November prior to Thanksgiving and the Christmas rush, (now). 
• Mid-March just before Easter and a new Spring season. 
• Late May / early June as we are slowing down and getting ready for the summer.-
• Early to mid-August as we evaluate the summer and get ready for the Fall kick off. 

Here’s some thoughts I have been considering. Feel free to give me more ideas!!!

1) Create Bible Study Opportunities That Will Place The Burden On Students: We are currently doing a summer series Bible study in the 1,2,3 John. At the start of the study we have given students a packet that has questions about the passages we are studying through. We set the expectation that everyone should be reading ahead on a weekly basis and showing up thoughts and ideas about the study. We communicate the excitement of group learning when we all show up with great insights!

2) Use Phrases That Constantly Communicate Self-Feeding Principles: Here are a couple I use: Christians are self-starters and self-feeders. We’re not here to help you become big fat baby Christians who are spoon fed, we are here to help become self-feeders. In many ways, it is about communicating a vision of self-feeding by constantly using key phrases to remind students of the expectation.

3) Give Students Bible Study / Devotion Materials To Take Home: This year I have been creating and adapting simple 30 day devotions for students to take home to use and study. The feedback I have been getting has been fanastic! In fact, when I don’t make these available now, students complain!

4) Have Self-Feeding Students Promote Self-Feeding: Here’s what I mean by this: There’s always students who are already reaping the benefits of being a self-feeder. They are growing in faith and experiencing a closer relationship with God as a result of self-feeding. My job is to find opportunities to get them in front of the rest of our students to talk about how, why, and the benefits of being a self-feeder. Recently, we did a series called “Slice of Life” where we interviewed students who shared how God has been working in their lives. In each video interview I asked every student what habits they practice to feed and fuel their faith. It was great to hear the many different and great ways that students are fueling their faith…

5) Involve Parents: Part of my ministry should be to partner with parents. One of the ways I try to help students become self-feeders is to involve their parents in the process. This involves casting vision for expectations that their kids should be benefiting from daily habits. It also will mean great communication with parents about resources we are providing their kids to help developing self-feeding habits as well as letting them know what we are teaching their kids on a weekly basis.

These are just a few methods I employ currently. What do you do? What ideas do you have? What should we be looking ahead to do? I would love to get your ideas on this. I truly believe that this is one of the most crucial elements of the ministries we oversee…

Phil <><

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!

For now, I think I could be thinking and writing about this question for a couple of weeks. I don’t think I can channel all my ADD thoughts into one post. Therefore, here’s a snapshot of some of the big chunks I have written about before that I consider youth ministry to be about. Let me know what you think?

1) Jesus Centered - Without Jesus being our center for all we do, we might as well be a club. I am sure that we all say that we are Jesus centered, but let’s be honest… It only takes a short while to get back to “what we know” and depend on our methods and skills. Soon, Jesus is taking a back seat. Numbers can increase, accolades can be given, but Jesus is the only one who will bring lasting change to our students lives.

2) Student Focused - Being student focused means taking a lot of time to get into their world and listen. Again, so often, it is easy to resort back to what we know and what has worked in the past. However, I find that God moves best when I listen to the heart of my students and what God is saying through them. In many ways, it’s similar to what Rick Warren says and how we should be catching the wave of what God is doing, rather than trying to create the wave. Some of our best events, service projects, and Bible studies have been a part of, have come from students.

3) A Greenhouse for Self-Feeders – I have a series coming up in a couple of weeks to talk about this more, but for now let me say this: Unless we are helping students to learn to become self-feeders who spend time with God when they are not with us, we are missing the point. Are we helping students to develop life-long habits to help them feed on God’s love, truth, and wisdom, or are they dependent on a weekly youth group meeting? If students are consumed with our weekly meeting but are spiritually starving during the week, we have missed the point… Just my opinion of course. More to come in a couple of weeks on this…

4) Parent Partnered – Parents spend so much more time with their kids than I do. So many parents under estimate their impact on their kids too. I firmly believe that I should do all I can to make parents the hero to their kids, not me. The more that I can encourage, support, and equip parents at home, should result in greater growth and impact for our students. If I am honest, this is one component I see to lacking in so many ministries. Personally, I am not happy with how much we currently do… It is a goal of mine this year to partner with parents in greater ways…

What is Youth Ministry to you? What did I miss? There’s a whole lot, I know! For now, these are my big chunks… What are yours? Post your comments!

Phil <><

1) Spending Quality Time With My Family: I am off for two days,  which also means my phone is off, my Facebook is closed, and my email has not been touched. I was away from my family for a week and I was busy prior to the trip. Therefore it’s imperative they get the best of me now that I am home. (As I write this, my kids are in bed, and my wife is working, which means no time away from them, just in case you wondered . Giving my family my best and complete attention is imperative. While I was away doing exciting things in Tennessee, they were back home missing me. Therefore, they should not have to “miss” me now that I am home…

2) Rest: Working everyday for 16 hours over a week can take its toll… I loved every minute, but I was beat when I returned home. Leading a large team of students and leaders meant being “on call” continuously. My goal this week is to spend time “calling on Him” and rejuvenating.

3) Thank You Notes: So many incredible people gave so much to make this trip happen, especially a dedicated team of volunteers who took time off work and their own families for the week. It’s imperative that I let them know how much I appreciate them! When I get back into the office, this is a priority for me.

4) Making Videos, Sharing Photos, Telling the Stories: After the trip is over, it’s imperative that parents and supporters continue to hear the stories of what was achieved on the trip. Again, once I get back in the office, I will be working on sharing videos, photos and stories. We have a Facebook page and mission trip blog for this type of stuff and we will also have an opportunity to share with the whole church at later date.

5) Reviewing: This week I will be writing notes about the trip and ensuring that key learning’s are noted while they are still fresh for me. So often this is something that is missed in the mission trip process. However, this is a crucial step that can ensure a more effective mission trip for the future.

UPDATED:

Well, there is one very important thing I missed out of this list that my wife has reminded me of… Today, I am finishing up my laundry and getting my bags all unpacked. The last thing my lovely wife needs when I get home is a huge load of stinky, bug infested laundry, (we had a lot of bugs in our cabins… a Daddy Long Legs walked across my face one night… nice)!

What are priorities for you when you return from a mission trip?

Phil <><