I had several people ask how we made this calendar. It was very simple to do but it was a bit time consuming for me. Here are the photoshop files for this interested, Feel free to download this and remake it for your ministry.

This post Originally appeared on Youthmin.org

This verse can sometimes serve as a direct punch to the gut.

The easy way to see this verse is that its talking to those who want to be Teachers but are not called. In Youth Ministry application, it could be seen as talking to people who want to be Youth Pastors yet are not called to be Youth Pastors. It’s sometimes tough to imagine that people would be crazy enough to want to be Youth Pastors without being called to be Youth Pastors by God, but their are people out there living this way.

But like I said, thats the easy way to view this verse.

What God has been laying on my heart as I reflect on this verse is the idea that as Youth Pastors, we are teachers, and we have HUGE expectations on us. Not just the expectations the Parents of the teens we minister to, not just the expectations of the teens we minister to. Greater than the expectations our Sr. Pastors and Elders and other church members have on us as the Pastor of the Youth.

God called you to where you are. I don’t know your current circumstances in ministry, but I look back at where I was a year ago, and even in that dark time, I understand that God called me to that church and that ministry. Just because I am no longer there, doesn’t mean I wasn’t supposed to go there for a season. And the same applies to you. Whether you are in a dark time in your Ministry or things have never been better, God has placed a Call on you, not just to Youth Ministry, but to the specific Ministry you are in right now.

This means that God has great expectations on you, on me, on every one of us who have accepted the call as Youth Pastors.

God has been laying on my heart the severity of this the last few months and weeks and really pushed me hard about something I have been struggling with the last year or so.

Im of the understanding that as Youth Pastors, one of our functions is to Teach the Bible to the students. Yet, in the past, I have taken something that God takes very seriously, and James tells us we will be held accountable for, and placed it in the hands of people I have never met.

There are great curriculums out there, there are great resources available to us as Youth Pastors to make our “jobs” easier. And in the past, I have been a huge fan of these things.

But I have to wonder, did God really call us to the Ministries he has called us to so that we could teach the students what some other Youth Pastor is teaching their students and repackaging for us to buy for $20?

I know I always appreciate trying to find other calendars from Youth Group’s as inspiration for design and possible future events, so I thought I’d share ours for this spring.

What this doesn’t show is the intentionality behind our Calendar. We really focused on our 5 purposes in our Youth Group and made sure we had events that specifically fulfilled each of these purposes, and tried to balance it so that each purpose had at least 3 events.

The Message

Weekend Teaching Series: The Heart of Worship week 2 of 3

This Post originally appeared on Youthmin.org

It may just be that I am a giant dork, but I love to play Risk on my iPhone and iPad. Whenever I have a few down moments in my day, I find myself in an intense battle for world domination on my phone, and I love the nights when students and leaders from our Youth Group get together and play the board game for real.

What I love about Risk is that there is strategy involved, and I’ve been thinking about how the strategic kind of correlate to Leadership strategies.

When you play Risk, the main two strategies people take are to go for land right away, or to stockpile troops off the bat (the number 1 strategy is to hold Australia, but there isn’t much application from that).

So inevitably, someone on the board will start out with their starting territories and spread their troops evenly throughout these territories, and then start attacking until they can’t attack anymore. You can look down at the board after their turn and it might look like they are winning, because momentarily they control the most territories, but I don’t think I have ever seen someone win a game who used this strategy.

At the same time, there will be someone on the board who gets their starting territories but puts all of their troops in just one country. From here, they will attack one territory per turn, just doing enough to get a RISK card and not over-extending themselves. They will sit back and wait for the perfect moment to attack, and usually, this person is able to wipe out everyone on the board in a matter of moves, but only if they wait.

As I thought about this the other day, a conversation I had led me to an even simpler version of this same sort of principle, and it too has to do with Board Games.

A friend of mine essentially said there are two types of people in the world, those who play Chess, and those who play checkers. Now Chess players can play checkers and vice versa, but at the end of the day, they are two different types of players.

In Checkers, there isn’t much strategy. When you make your moves in Checkers, there doesn’t need to be quite as much thought behind it, you are looking at this move in this moment and how it can benefit you at this point in time.

In Chess, every move you make needs to set you up for future moves. Even moving your first pawn can dictate what the outcome of the entire game will be depending on how much strategy you are moving it with. If you play Chess with a checkers mindset, you are going to be quite frustrated when you keep losing.

All of that to say, in Ministry, we need both. There needs to be someone who is a Chess player who is able to plan out the vision for the Ministry, lay out the direction it is headed in. Yet, a fault of Youth Pastors with this Big Picture mindset is that it can be very hard to come down from the 35,000 foot view of things to the 300 foot view and see all the details. There needs to be someone in your ministry who is more of a Checkers mindset, because the two really need to balance each other out.

So what game do you play as a leader?

photo via mrjoro

This post Originally appeared on Youthmin.org.

One of the hardest things to do as a Youth Pastor is to leave a Youth Ministry. I don’t think I have ever met a Youth Pastor who left a church because of the students he/she pastored, its always for another reason, and after spending a significant time pastoring students, leaving is extremely tough to do.

We like to think we made a significant impact in their lives, and we know that many times they are just as sad that we are leaving as we are to leave them.

But a dangerous thought can often lurk in the back of our heads that hardly any of us would admit, but many struggle with. The reality is this: Our ministry to them should not be the best ministry they ever get. A tip for those entering into a new ministry is to start from the beginning to create an atmosphere that prepares them for other voices to speak into their lives, because the inverse of this can be detrimental to the health of that group if and when you leave.

When I left my last ministry, we cried with our students on the ramp of the truck as we loaded boxes, but we also challenged and encouraged them that ultimately God knows what he is doing, and it was necessary for us to leave, not only for ourselves, but so that someone else could speak into their lives and take them to the next place God had for them. I’d like to think I did everything I could to set them up for future success and make it as easy of a transition as possible for whoever would soon replace me.

If you are leaving a ministry soon, whether its confirmed or still just something you are praying about, I pray that you consider these three steps to set the ministry up for future success and health:

1| Encourage them to see change as positive. No one likes change, but quite honestly, we are in the business of change. We want to see lives changed in our ministries, and an honest truth is that its not us as pastors that lead any of this change, it is purely the spirit. We may be the person God uses for a season, but no Pastor is bigger than God. As much as we like to feel needed, ultimately, we are not.

2| Do everything (Say everything) you can to set the Youth Ministry as well as the church up for success. Youth Pastors often have crummy job situations. Unfortunately, many Youth Pastors leave a ministry because of a lack of chemistry with the Sr. Pastor or church, and these are often very messy situations. It can be very personal, and you may feel extremely wronged by many situations that have led up to you leaving. Whether resigning on your own will or being fired, that church is going to continue on where you left it. Keep in mind that although YOU may be leaving the church and the area, your students aren’t. As vindicating as it may feel for you to get to say your piece to the students, you are not doing them any favors, and your words can easily destroy any chance of future ministry for these students, or undermine anything good you did in their lives in the past. If for nothing else, remember that the church is the bride of Christ, and it ma have screwed you over, but it is not our place to talk trash about the bride of Christ.

3| After you leave and have been replaced, let it go. It seems like a very rare situation where the Youth Pastor leaves a church but doesn’t leave the area. If you do leave the area, obviously don’t completely cut off relationships, but keep them healthy. Don’t undermine the new Youth Pastor by still trying to pastor your old students. Give them space and time to make a new relationship to the new Youth Pastor. You left them, move on. If you are staying in the area, your students won’t feel like you have left, because you haven’t. But do everything you can to encourage them to take a break from you, for two reasons. The first is because again, they need space and time to be able to form a relationship with the new Youth Pastor and their family, but secondly, spending more time with them after the fact will just increase your opportunities to talk about the situation, and most likely, they won’t have had the time to establish the new relationship, and your words could prevent them from even trying.

If you’ve moved to a new Church and you have replaced someone, you probably were able to tell within days how well the last guy set you up for success. Consider that before leaving, set up your replacement as well as you hope to be set up for success.

The Message

Weekend Teaching Series: The Heart of Worship week 1 of 3

This post was actually the most viewed post from the last year, but it was due to a circumstance I won’t go into much detail about publicly, so I kept it out of the top post spot. I will just say that I still stand completely by this post and Praise God I found a church and Sr. Pastor who are exactly what I need. A year ago, I was close to quitting. If your out there and reading this and are close to quitting and/or you don’t have whats described below, please contact me, because I’d love to pray with you. It will get better. There are still healthy churches out there.

I have been blessed by a life that prepared me for ministry since day 1. Growing up the son of a Pastor, I saw a lot of behind the scenes of how a church ran, and primarily, for the sake of this post, how a Sr. Pastor and Youth Pastor interacted. I saw a lot of the Sr. Pastor’s point of view and , for instance, learned to understand why a Sr. Pastor would be upset about certain things in a youth Ministry that the Youth Pastor thought were just fine. Now I am on the other side, the Youth Pastor, and really see the value in a Sr. Pastor – Youth Pastor relationship being one of mentorship. I wrote a post a few weeks back about the four keys to effective mentoring, and would say each one of these is especially true for Sr. Pastor’s and Youth pastors.

But if I’m honest, I think one that is the cause of most frustration among youth pastors is the idea of “Believe in me.”

Though my experience goes through my college life, I also am still just recently out of college. I have a lot of friends who are just now getting experience, who have graduated in the last 3 years and just starting out with their legitimate first youth ministry jobs. And the bad part, is that this situation seem’s to play out far too often, church hire’s Youth Pastor fresh out of college because he is cheap, is sure to have some great new ideas, and is a young person who will spend time with the youth so the older one’s don’t have to. The young youth pastor starts doing some things differently, making some people feel uncomfortable, and the Sr. Pastor is suddenly at the office door critiquing.

Not to say they shouldn’t critique. One of the other points in the above post is that they need to be able to correct mistakes to produce growth.

But what I am getting at is that too often there is a messed up view of how the mentoring relationship works. Sr. Pastor’s need to believe in their youth Pastors. If you hire someone young, then accept the fact that you hired someone young. Most likely, if you had hired someone older, they would have their own problems. But believe in your youth pastor, regardless of their age or experience.

Too often, some Sr. Pastor’s take on this mindset of “I can’t trust you until you’ve shown me I can trust you.” But if you want to be a mentor, you need to view it differently.

My dad often tells a story at weddings of the 10 cow bride. The story goes that there was a very wealthy man who came into a town to find a wife, and every girl in the proper age was dolling themselves up and every father was doing whatever he could to get the very large expected dowry. One father had two daughters, a gorgeous one and a decent looking one. Well, when the rich young man came to visit this man’s house he announced he had found his wife, but not the gorgeous one, the decent looking one. He asked the father what her dowry was to be, and the father replied “for her, I could only hope for one cow, her sister, easily 5.” The rich young man gave the father 10 cows instead.

They were married and moved far away. But years later, the rich young man returned to the area with an unbelievably beautiful woman who no one recognized. The father who had given his daughter to this young man was outraged, what have you done with my daughter. The man replied that this was his daughter, and that if you treat someone like a one cow bride, a one cow bride is what she will be. Treat someone like a ten cow bride, and a ten cow bride is what she will become.

Now not all Sr. Pastor’s are terrible mentors. I have seen some great one’s out there. But an unfortunate trend I am seeing among my peers recently out of college is what is described above. Sr. Pastor’s hiring young youth pastor’s because they are cheap, and in return, getting a cheap youth pastor. What I need and what my peers need, is to be believed in, even if we haven’t shown anything to make you want to believe in us yet.

As Youth Pastor’s, We all have our own set of non-negotiables. Heres a list of some of mine -

Wow. Doug fields just gave my favorite message of Orange so far, I absolutely loved it, and hope and pray Orange will do what it takes to get him back in 2012 for a third year.

This morning he talked about the importance of being a spotlight leader, that really there are all kinds of leaders out there, you can be an Orange Leader, a Transformative leader, a Simple Leader, whatever. But however you choose to classify yourself, make the distinction of being a spotlight leader.

A spotlight leader, as Doug put it, is someone who is pushing others into the spotlight. All leaders deal with the spotlight, but some push others in while more push others out. Doug broke it down that a spotlight leader is 3 things |

1 | A spotlight Leader is Secure … Doug told of when he was first writing Purpose Driven Youth Ministry and gave a copy to Jim Burns to review and tell him he was done so he could stop with the inner turmoil of trying to write. But Jim told him he wasn’t done, and that if he stopped writing now without improving, Doug would be letting Jim down. In essence, Doug told us, Purpose Driven Youth Ministry is the success of a book that it is today because there was a leader behind it who didn’t worry about protecting his own kingdom, but made the conscious decision to put others in the spotlight, even at their own expense, for the greater good of Christ’s kingdom. A major problem today is in this crazy subculture of church leadership, we have bought into the myth that bigger is better, and insecure people want to be better, so they strive to be bigger, far too often at the expense of others.

2 | A spotlight Leader Searches… Doug told another story about his skin cancer, and how often he has to go to the dermatologist to have every square inch of his skin examined by this man , while close by a lady sits drawing every flaw the doctor finds on a rendering of Doug’s body, and really just how crazy awkward it is, but by doing that the dermatologist is saving Doug’s life. Similarly, a spotlight leader scopes out his sphere of interest looking for whats good, and then looks for how it can become better. The next little part of what he said is SO HUGE for all leaders, and for me, it totally resonated, and if you’re in ministry, you more than likely will find truth in this as well. But he talked about how a detailed scope by a spotlight leader may not Save lives like the dermatologist, but it will Make people come alive.