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GUEST POST: The Pareto Principle

Josh — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:27:50 +0000

you’ve never heard of the Pareto Principle, chances are you’ve probably experienced it. The Pareto Principle basically states that 80% of the effects are produced by 20% of the cause. In ministry, as it relates to volunteers, this is usually translated into 80% of the work is done by 20% of the volunteers or congregation. This has got to change, especially in youth ministry.

Why? One simple reason–it leads to volunteer burnout. You will undoubtedly weaken your ministry if your best volunteers are carrying the weight of the work. A weakened youth ministry is a disservice to the students that are currently in the program and to those students that have not yet stepped foot into your building.

As you think about your own ministry, here are some ways to reverse or avoid falling into this principle:

1. Don’t over program. The more programs you have the more they are going to need staff, leaders & volunteers.

2. Clearly communicate your ministry’s vision. Make sure every volunteer, student & parent knows the vision. If you want to know if you’re communicating the vision, ask them. If they don’t know, you’re not communicating it clearly.

3. Organize yourself. If you’re not organized, neither will your ministry. People will notice this right away. Disorganization can appear that you aren’t taking this seriously and then neither will they.

4. Reward your volunteers, often. Rewarding volunteers regularly is cheaper than hiring staff (you can tell that to the senior pastor)

5. You do the hard stuff. Don’t pass on the responsibilities that you don’t want to do or have time for to the volunteers (see number 3).

If you or your ministry is experiencing the Pareto Principle, we’d love to hear how you’ve overcome or dealt with this issue.

Kevin Cooper serves in student ministries at Meadow Park Church in Columbus, OH. Find his lifestream mini-blog at http://kevincooperblog.com

GUEST POST: What Keeps Volunteers Coming Back For More

Josh — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:59:10 +0000

Last night our Student Ministry team welcomed twenty new volunteers into the LifeLine family. It was exciting to look around and see the fresh energy and potential. As they drove away I couldn’t help but wonder what God was going to do in each of their lives this year, and how He will use them to intersect the lives and journeys of the students we serve.

As I laid in bed last night trying to fall asleep, my thoughts shifted from the new faces, to the familiar faces. The faces of those volunteers who show up every week, year after year to give of their creativity, time, and energy to love and serve students and other volunteers in the name of Jesus. It made me wonder, with all of the challenges that student ministry brings, what keeps them coming back for more.

As I processed this question, one particular volunteer came to mind. We will call him Scott, mostly because that is his name.

Scott has been around our ministry for eighteen years. In fact, when I began serving as a volunteer nine years ago, Scott single handedly ran the Jr. High ministry as a volunteer. While our ministry has grown and changed over time, Scott has selflessly served, lead and loved Jr. high students and leaders for almost two decades.

So, why does Scott continue to come back to LifeLine year after year?

1. He loves God… and He loves students. It seems so simple, but longevity in student ministry takes constant commitment to maintaining health in your relationship with God and maintaining a passion for students. When one of these is out of place, it’s easy to feel discouraged.

2. He believes that God made him for this. He believes that God has put Him where he is on purpose and trusts God to use him, even when he can’t see growth or change.

3. He believes in what we are doing. He believes that the mission is greater than the politics and keeps the big picture in front of him.

4. He maintains a spirit of humility and grace. If anyone would be entitled to have opinions about “the way things should be done,” it would be Scott. As a staff we realize that our volunteers are our greatest asset, so we work hard to consult their thoughts and opinions on much of what we do. While Scott often has thoughts, ideas, and wisdom to offer, he always brings them with grace and understanding. Additionally, when we make decisions as staff, he always respects them, even if he disagrees, even when we are wrong.

5. He has the support of his family. Scott has an awesome wife and four very cool children. His volunteering certainly comes at their expense from time to time. Over and over again I have seen their encouragement and understanding fuel Scott on.

Jon Grunden is the Jr. High Small Group Minister at Ada Bible Church in Ada, MI. You don’t subscribe to his blog yet?

SCL: The Youth Group Rules

Josh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:39:40 +0000

Enjoyed this post on Stuff Christians Like about youth group rules. Hilarious! Here’s a clip, lots more goodness if you hit up the link:

1. The youth group bus or van will not be purchased from a dealership named, “Vans that like to catch on fire & buses that break down in the middle of the night on the side of the road on the way to New Hampshire ski retreats.”

2. Only one “dude with an acoustic guitar” will be allowed per youth group.

3. If you go on a retreat and you’re boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t go, they should expect to get dumped when you return home. Cause that’s happening.

4. All youth group ministers should expect at least one kid to ask for a precise definition of “what it means to be a virgin.”

5. Only tankinis and swim shirts shall be worn on youth group beach trips.

6. All youth group retreats should be held at locations that could double for horror movie backdrops because it adds to the intensity of the weekend.

POLL: Working Hours in The Fall

Josh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:49:30 +0000

HSM is coming out of what is maybe the busiest season of the year: Fall. The school year has officially been kicked off, our big campaign is over, small group leaders are trained, small groups have been launched and everything else is really starting to roll. Of course, that meant work … and lots of it. I find the Fall fits into an extra category of busyness, sometimes with serious hours.

How about you? Vote in this week’s poll now!

Kingdom Assignment: Student Edition

Josh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:42:36 +0000

T3 is a cool new resource that is new this week at Simply Youth Ministry. If you’ve ever heard of Kingdom Assignment, this is the student version of that awesome adult series. We’ve done some work before with Denni and Leesa at our PDYM Student Leadership Conference this summer, and had a blast seeing what God could do with $1 and an afternoon. Here’s more details about the pack:

What would happen if your students took the Parable of the Talents literally for 9 weeks? What would they do if you put money in their hands and told them to exercise some creative stewardship?

Find out with T3, a 9-week small group curriculum based on the life-changing book Kingdom Assignment. You’ll help your students see that stewardship isn’t just about tithing, but it’s about using all that God has given them — their Talent, Treasure & Time — to make a difference for his kingdom.

Mountain Bikes and Discipleship

Josh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:25:56 +0000

Doug Fields has a great new article about mountain bike-riding and discipleship. I like his connection to help students “grow on their own” but walk with them down the path first. Here’s a clip, I think it’ll bring up some interesting conversations in your head today:

As I was riding and wishing for a safe and caring riding partner/coach I began to think about the teenagers in our ministries. What are we doing with all their questions? Do we even know the questions they’re asking? Or do we assume they’ll catch everything about Jesus as they begin their ride with him?

Like I need a riding coach, teenagers need a Jesus coach. While mountain biking is much more complex than “jump on a bike”…so is following Jesus much more complex than a simple “come to church.” For a month I’ve been riding every day, tinkering around at the local bike shop, reading magazines and Web sites to try to find coaching tips, downloading trail guides to my iPhone, and asking a lot of questions… And I’m still confused, frustrated, and wanting someone to coach me. I want someone else to care enough to care about me.

Could it be that our youth ministries have become good at getting teenagers to come to church… but we’re not so good at coaching them on how to walk with Jesus? Then, if they don’t know how to walk with Jesus, they graduate from our ministry and graduate away from church. Do the kids entrusted to your care (as a youth pastor over several or as a volunteer over a few) know that you want to coach them in the ways of Jesus? Do they leave your youth ministry knowing that there is a caring, loving and available adult who wants the best for them? Who won’t laugh at their questions? Who will walk beside them as they struggle and fall? If so…great! Way to go! Those teenagers are blessed. But if not, what might need to change within your youth ministry and your personal leadership style so teenagers will know that they’re not a number to be counted or a seat-filler, but rather a young follower of Jesus who needs a little help with the call of Jesus to “follow me”?

Simply Youth Ministry Podcast: Episode 115

Josh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:21:11 +0000

Episode 115 of the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast hit the web this week, we just recorded a really fun Episode 116 live yesterday, too. Just enough youth ministry to say that you’re working!

15 Signs a Church is in Trouble

Josh — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:39:31 +0000

Enjoyed reading the sometimes painful blog 15 Signs a Church is in Trouble by Perry Noble this morning. Good stuff in here, hope it stings us a bit so we fight against it! Here are a couple of them before you head there for the rest:

#2 – When the church becomes content with merely receiving people that come rather than actually going out and finding them…in other words, they lose their passion for evangelism!

#9 – The church is reactive rather than proactive.

#10 – The people in the church lose sight of the next generation and refuse to fund ministry simply because they don’t understand “those young people.”

#11 – The goal of the church is to simply maintain the way things are…to NOT rock the boat and/or upset anyone…especially the big givers!

#15 – When the leaders/staff refuse to go the extra mile in leading and serving because of how “inconvenient” doing so would be.

Looking for the Next Batch of GUEST POSTS!

Josh — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:30:32 +0000

Every weekend I post a GUEST POST written by … you!

This past weekend was the last one that I had in my ready-to-post archive of articles. The experiment this past couple of months has been fun – would you like to submit an article? I’d love it if it was written specifically for the MTDB audience, but if it played well on your blog or another site and you’d like to get more exposure to it, I’m in!

Shoot me a note and attach your submissions – I need one for this Saturday!

Buy 1, Give 1 Youth Ministry Resources

Josh — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:14:16 +0000

I really like this drive that Simply Youth Ministry is running this month to help get resources in the hands of some youth workers who can distribute them to churches in need. Buy 1, Give 1 – all this month on selected products. Very cool, I think I’m gonna toss up a banner at the top of the blog for a couple weeks in support. Nice!

How to Get Out of the Message Rut

Josh — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:40:10 +0000

Really liked this article over on pdymcommunity.com called The Message Rut. It gave some tips for message prep when your talks all start sounding familiar. Good stuff, here’s a clip of it:

Change up your Prep Routine
If you do the same thing week in and week out you get set on a routine for getting everything accomplished on time. My typical routine is 100% on my computer. Sometimes the place it happens changes, the exact day it happens changes, but my laptop is always involved, from beginning to end, no matter what. Last week, instead of starting my message staring at a blank document on the screen, I sat down with a yellow pad, a pen, and my thoughts. It definitely took a little longer to get the end result of a printed outline and finished PowerPoint, but the change in routine was refreshing.

Surprise the Audience
This is similar to mixing up the illustrations, but different. Once people (students and adults) have been attending church for a while, it seems that when someone steps on stage to speak, they check out. They go into the ‘I have heard it all before’ trance and don’t hear anything you say. Your message, no matter how good or creative it is, will have no impact if they don’t hear it. If you do things that they aren’t expecting, they will listen. A few weeks ago, part way through the message I walked off the stage and walked around in the audience. I just kept talking like normal but just walked around. Then I finished the rest of the message from the back of the room. It definitely got their attention.

A Glimpse Into Halo-ween

Josh — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:48:59 +0000

Had a fun 4-hour niche event this weekend playing “Halo”ween. Here’s a video of the setup taken by one of our volunteers, and we even had a guest appearance of another as Master Chief. So much fun!

HSM Weekend in Review: Volume 72

Josh — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:32:54 +0000

Weekend Teaching Series: none, between series
Sermon in a Sentence: Biblical leadership requires serving.
Service Length: 77 minutes
Bible: John 13

Understandable Message: This weekend Jason Petty (HSM discipleship pastor) taught the passage about Jesus washing the disciples feet. He asked a strong question: What do you do when you’re the most powerful person in the room? He talked about Jesus’ serving as a model for us to serve, and how so many use their influence for their own gain. He also announced the start of Student Leadership this year, too.

Volunteer/Student Involvement: Students made up the band and ran lights, camera, sound and the control room. We had a volunteer help run one of the games on Sunday morning, and other volunteers positioned themselves as greeters and helped everyone feel welcome.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: We had a costume contest on Saturday night that had some good energy (Sunday not so much) - the kids dressed as John and Kate + 8 did very well, I might add. We also played a “throw it on the ground game” called Smashing Pumpkins where we tossed the PumpkinFest decorations toward targets and watched them splatter. Fun shooting a live bit outside of the High School room, too.

Music Playlist: Everything, You’ll Come, Center

Favorite Moment: This weekend was the last weekend for HSM team member Zack Barker. He’s a great music/worship leader and is asking God what is next for him. He’s praying about leading music and letting God lead. Great dude, happy for him heading toward where God is leading, but very sad to see him go.

Up Next: A new 3-week series called “Do Something” starts next weekend!

HSM Halloween JibJab

Josh — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:11:14 +0000

Silly video for this weekend’s service featuring some of the HSM staff.

GUEST POST: 8 Reminders When Planning An Outreach

Josh — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:02:08 +0000

One of the things I LOVE about our church is that we really try to get out in to our community and do our best to share the love of Jesus. One of the things that is said often around here is that, if our church ever moved … would we be missed? So, it’s just part of our DNA to get out and love on people and share Jesus with people. Loving God can be shown by how we love others.

Anyway, above are a few of the logos from outreach events that we’ve done in the past. Below is just a brief explanation of how we try to think through ways to reach our community:

1. Pray. We are always asking God to give us fresh ideas on how to effectively reach people.

2. Notice the needs. We try our best to be in touch with our community and look for what needs really need to be met.

3. Is it being done already? That’s a question we often ask. Sometimes we’ll notice needs, but find out that something is already in place to try to meet those needs. If so, that’s awesome! We’ll often try to support the things already being done. If not, we move to the next step.

4. Be creative. If a need is not being met, we try to then think of creative ways to meet those needs as a church. We come up with a creative plan.

5. Get others on board. We cast vision. We let our people know about the positive effect this outreach will have on our community, and then we challenge them to get on board.
6. Help our people serve. One of the most fulfilling things for us is to see the Church be the Church. We love seeing our people step up and do the good works God has planned in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

7. Celebrate. After the outreach, we celebrate. We’ll celebrate with testimonies, pictures, worship. We come back “filled with joy” and we love to talk about it and hear others do the same.

8. Repeat. We repeat the process. Sometimes this means we’ll repeat our outreaches in following years if they are still being effective and other times it means we’ll scrap them all together because they’ve lost their effectiveness. We always want to be fresh and relevant and are constantly asking God to help us to be that.

Rich Yauger is the Youth Pastor at Grace Community Church in Indiana and blogs regularly at www.theyaugblog.blogspot.com.

7 Steps to Survive the Weekend Tornado

Josh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:34:55 +0000

Met this week with the weekend program team to talk through the process of creating a strong service. For us, our main visible program is on the weekend, so here is what we’re now calling The Weekend Tornado. Some weeks it is an F5, others not much more than some whipping wind, but never just a gentle breeze. Here’s how the process works each week:

Collect
This is the brainstorming stage, where ideas are thrown up on a whiteboard and randomly bantered and tossed around. There are no bad ideas. Some of the best ideas each week come from students, who gather every Tuesday in my office to do just this. Don’t worry if they are possible, and don’t worry about the size of the idea. Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed to soon. If we were really good, we could be doing this several weeks in advance, like the -2, 5, 12, 19 meetings.

Compile
This is where we turn the ideas into an order of service called a program sheet. The program sheet gives a framework from which to work for the week, and proposed idea of the emotional arc/tone of the service.

Assign
Using the program sheet as a guide, assign tasks and projects to various volunteers or students. Who is making the bumper video, creating announcement slides, etc. You can also begin asking people to help on stage as well, figuring out who is giving announcements or running the game, too.

Manage
If you’re going to survive the weekend tornado, you have to follow-up on the projects that have been assigned. Talk to the students or volunteers who are owning tasks, help them fight through roadblocks or adjust the idea so that it can be accomplished by the service time. You might have to cut bits at this stage, but it is better than being surprised/dissapointed a few hours before the service starts.

Execute
This is the step of actually holding services. We do 4 student services a weekend, so execute actually takes two days. Making sure each service improves and is as good or better than the last is always a challenge. Execute with excellence is tough, especially when you’ve seen/given the message, songs or game 3 times already.

Debrief
After the first service we gather the main players together and talk through what happened. We make tons of adjustments and tweaks to the next service. Sometimes it is small, sometimes we almost start over with the order (like last week). There is also a weekly debrief focusing on big picture thoughts, major changes, and adding to the list of things we’ll never do again.

Archive
At the end of a series, everything gets archived. MP3s of the talk, outlines, handouts, videos – everything ends up on the team network drive to be stored permanently. We post a ton of elements online as well.

When it’s all done – get ready for the next weekend tornado to hit – it’ll be here in days!

Matt Reynolds Story

Josh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:57:06 +0000

Matt’s amazing testimony from the series finale of the Happy weekend series. Matt is part of the security team on campus, but so much more than that. He’s a great pastor and small group leader, too.

Fix You

Josh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:54:12 +0000

Awesome performance of Coldplay’s Fix You at the end of our Happy series.

Early Bird Deadline for Simply Youth Ministry Conference 2010

Josh — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:18:39 +0000

I hope you’ll join us at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference this February in Chicago – it is going to be something else! Jake and I are just finishing up Round 1 of the programming ideas for the event, and here’s a copy of last year’s “I’ve Seen It All” music video we did. Don’t miss out – you can save $40 this week if you hit the early bird deadline. Do it! See you there … and use the promocode EATSTEAK to get a chance to win a steak dinner with the SYM Podcast crew, too!

7 Ways to Create a Great Small Group Environment

Josh — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:58:26 +0000

This week we make the big transition into homes from the first 5 weeks of the small group year in The Refinery. Here are a few ideas to help create a great small group environment and work with host homes:

1. Get the host home ground rules
Once you find the perfect host home, schedule a quick visit with the people who will be hosting the group. Many times they will be gone when you and your group are there, but it would be wise to find out their expectations first-hand. What in the house is off limits? Which bathrooms should we use? Where can/can’t they bring food? Ask about parking to make sure students are parking in the right place.

2. Clearly communicate expectations to your students.
What you discover in your meeting with the host home, be sure to share clearly with students. The better you are at setting expectations and honoring the host home ground rules, the stronger your relationship with the host home will become. It will also give you something to hold your students to when the cross the line.

3. Look for potential distractions.
Your first night in the host home, take a good look around. You’ve settled on the perfect place, now make sure your group will be free of distractions. Eliminate what you can – if the house has pets make sure they’re out of the area, unplug any house phones in the area, quarantine random siblings and make sure any fancy “adult” art is off the walls. Trust us, that’s happened before.

4. Clean up your students’ mess.
You had a great night, and left a little too much evidence behind. While we want you to have a great time at small group, make sure you reset the room and clean up whatever mess you’ve created.

5. If anything goes wrong or gets broken, let us know.
HSM is absolutely responsible for what happens in your host home environment during small group time. If you knock over a vase or two students wrestling destroys the coffee table, please let us know so we can swing into action. You may want to have the small group guys pay it back in some way, but either way keep us in the loop. Especially if a student carves their name in the furniture during prayer. Yes, that has happened, too.

6. Continue communicating with the host home.
Get the small group calender for the year and give a copy to the hosts so they know when they have a week off. The more communication and less surprises between you and the hosts, the better.

7. Encourage “thank-yous” and simple gifts.
Encourage your students to thank the host home mom every night, maybe even consider leaving a little card for them. If possible, a small amount gift card might be super meaningful, or even a nice candle to help rid the family room of the “teenage boy” smell would be a super gesture.

Cleaning Up an Event As You Go

Josh — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:29:39 +0000

Heard something cool in our team meeting this week – Phil, our intern who has become an event specialist – has this weekend’s PumpkinFest planned out in such a way that over the course of the 3-hour event, parts of the event close down.

During that time, you clean up and lock up that part of the building. Another section finishes an hour later, so that gets cleaned up and locked down. Then when the event ends at midnight, instead of a couple hours of cleaning, you just have a little left to go and you and the volunteers get to bed an hour early … or go out to celebrate for that hour at Dennys with some boneless buffalo wings.

Love the idea … clean up and shut down the event as you go!

Only 50 More Spooky Bundles Left!

Josh — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:01:14 +0000

Fun little video of Simply Youth Ministry’s Spooky Bundle sale. $280 worth of stuff for $69 – including 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers. There are still 50 bundles left in the big sale, it all ends Saturday.

4 Ways to Pick the Perfect Small Group Host Home

Josh — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:56:04 +0000

We’re just about to move from The Refinery into homes – tonight and tomorrow night are the last nights we’re meeting at church and heading back into the preferred homes. Here’s what I’m sharing with our leaders this week about finding the right host home to meet your needs:

The perfect host home has great meeting space to gather
Space is a critical concern of small groups – you want enough space for your style. For some, a kitchen table is the perfect place for a small group to meet. For others, you’ll want a casual living room style and comfort. In some cases, which are less than ideal, you might just have to make due. Know that God will work in your group this year, if you’re in a mansion or a shack, a garage or a family room. If you don’t know “your style” yet, ask people around your table and see what they prefer.

The perfect host home is free of distractions
This is the most important aspect of a small groups meeting place. If you’re meeting in a busy house with kids running around, phones ringing, the game going on the TV and internet just a step away … small groups can tend to be just a little bit distracted. When you’re looking for the perfect small group space, make sure there’s not just enough space, but minimize distractions, too.

The perfect host home isn’t too far away from where the group lives
Proximity is a big deal – if what is inconvenient for you is best for the group, sacrifice your gas tank and take the group to them. We definitely try to put groups together by schools so geography plays to our advantage, but some groups will have a straggler that has to drive or the straggler might be the leader. Either way, choose the perfect host home that is perfect for most, if it can’t be all.

The perfect host home always has amazing snacks
Yup, amazing snacks should factor in which host home you choose. Can Billy’s mom cook? Do they have ample ice to keep the beverages cold?

If we get 2 out of 3 of these (snacks are non-negotiable – ha!), we’re thrilled because that’s a GREAT host home for your small group.

HSM Message Hook Promo Video #2

Josh — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:07:47 +0000

Another (here’s the first if you missed it) quick little promo video for our new HSM message hooks.

HAPPY Backgrounds for Phone or Computer

Josh — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:01:40 +0000

For the finale of the Happy series, we gave students a simple button of a smiley face to remind them of the 6-week series on the Beatitudes. Our goal is to provide a trigger to help them think about the choices they are making and to remember God’s path to finding lasting happiness. We also sent them a link to download some HAPPY graphics for their phone or computer and hoped they would put them there as another reminder of the series’ teaching.