“Don’t fight the problem, decide it.”
–George C. Marshall

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
–Theodore Roosevelt

Making decisions is a very vital part of being a effective youth pastor.  I think the biggest thing that hinders people from making decisions is fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of rejection.

If youth pastors make the wrong decision we have parents, senior leadership, students, and other congregational members down our throats.  In the youth ministry context, what are the dimensions of decision making?

Every day, week, month, quarter, and year youth pastors are having to make many-many mini and big decisions.

I argue there are two levels–spiritual and practical, that help guide youth pastors to make the best  decision possible.

Spiritual

Obviously youth pastors are in the spiritual/church business, so we need to consult God about our current decision.

In decision making, youth pastors can seek God by:

- Praying asking for God’s will and to remove our agenda and intentions.

- Read, mediate, study and pray through Scripture.  Look for characters in the Bible who are going through the same problems you are going through.

-  Seek wise counsel and senior leadership that you trust and respect.  More importantly they should have a strong tract record in dealing with making difficult decisions.

- Enter solitude.  Get away from the busyness.  Leave the church office, turn off the cell phone, disable email, and shut down your social media sites and just listen…..

Employing and discerning the spiritual side of decision making acts as the behind the scenes portion of “deciding”.  Inviting God into your decision is huge because He can do anything and everything, it is just a question of when.

Practical

After  inviting God into your decision mess, action needs to happen.

6 steps in decision making in the youth ministry context

1.   Seek God – Repeat this step as many times as necessary. (For more info see above)

2. Define problem – It is imperative you know what you are trying to solve or figure out.  Clearly defining the problem will give you a clear target. 

3.  Know what you want and your outcome – Clarify what you want and need and keep fixated on your target.  Then, try to predict how your decision will play out.  Worst case scenario, you make another parent mad at you.

4.  Just do it – just make a decision and move on.  Don’t get stuck in the past.  I call this paralysis by analysis.  There is NEVER a perfect decision.  If God hasn’t spoken to you, go with your gut.  Researchers have concluded that your instinct is your best decision compass.

5.  If what you are deciding is not working, change your approach – check your pride/ego and try another strategy that might work better.  The best outcomes come from multiple failures.  There is nothing more painful to watch than a ministry leader who keeps making the same mistake over and over again because it was “great” idea on paper.  The only great ideas in youth ministry are ideas that work.

6.  Follow through – Finishing the decision to the end is key.  Finish well.  Often, we don’t follow through because we don’t know what we want, and when we do know, we’re afraid to take action.

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

It has been 3 and half months since I returned from Haiti.

I still have three realities that I have been sitting with since I returned from Port-au-Prince.

1.  The re-entry has still been very difficult.

2.  I was haunted by the question of:  When I am going back? I was somewhat anxious because some of the other YMATH members were able to go back to Haiti.  I really tried to convince myself I needed to go back, but I sensed I would be rushing it.

3.  How was I going to share my Haiti experience with my youth ministry? For two months I tried my best not to really talk about Haiti because I still had re-entry vertigo and I didn’t want to project on my students.  I was diligently praying asking God:  How can I effectively share my Haiti encounter in a healthy and productive way with my students?

Then… I had this idea pop in my head…..

Why don’t you simulate a 30 hour event that mirrors the Tent City– Marassa?

So I did it.  On Friday, April 30th and Saturday, May 1st our jr high and high school students pretended to be the Haitian people living in a tent city aka “cardboard box” for 30 hours while worshiping and praying. I stressed to my students when you become uncomfortable, God has your attention so you can become dependent on Him.  During the 30 hours I was able to talk about my Haiti experience through stories, videos, pictures, and simulation.

I made students not eat anything, wear the same clothes, not take a shower, and not use electricity.  They also were highly encouraged to sleep in a card board box and  participate in 4 worship and prayer services, all while staying in the same place for 30 hours.  I warned my students that this Haiti weekend would be tough–physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Our mock trial Haiti weekend was a hit!!!  To be honest, I was really worried that it would be to hard for the students and they wouldn’t get it!!  Needless to say, they kind of got it.  At 1:34am I had a dedicated group of student praying and worshiping Jesus together.

Videos:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some stuff our students learned:

1.  When you have no electricity you have to be creative

2.  When you are starving and tired the best thing to do is pray and worship

3.  Praying out loud and together is not so awkward and the Haitian Christians make it look easy

4.  God shows up if you are paying attention and give Him attention

5.  Sleeping on the ground sucks

6.  Jr high boys really start to stink after 10 hours

7.  Drinking water is a big deal and essential for the human body

8.  When your comfort has been stripped, it is easier to experience God

9.  The flesh is not that powerful, when you rely on God

10.  The Haitian people are actually willing to walk out in faith

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Getting the right volunteers in your youth ministry is key to your success.  I am learning that your ability to recruit makes or breaks the longevity of a youth ministry.

If all buildings and equipment were totally destroyed, but we still had our people, within ten years we would have rebuilt everything, and be more successful than we ever were before.  -Howard J. Morgens, Former CEO of Procter & Gamble, 1957-1974

I would like to share my youth ministry recruiting process:

1. Pray – Pray…and do some more prayer.  Your pray is simple:  God please bring adults who care for kids and care for you—NOW!  Some seasons God will bring your youth ministry a lot of leaders and some times He give you none.  Don’t get discouraged if you have no adults who are interested.  The number of adult leaders does not indicate the health of the youth ministry.  Although if you are not getting a break, you may need to answer the question to why there is no interest.  Pray like crazy until something happens.

2.  Relational Connections – Tap into your network of friends.  Hopefully you have friends or people you know outside of youth ministry.  Recruiting people you already know is huge because you already know what they are about.  Cold call recruiting is when you advertise your leader need publicly.  Some times this is really effective and other times you will attract the wrong people with the wrong intentions.  Be care of the adults who want to use youth ministry as a platform to communicate their passions.  Adults need to first start with a caring attitude towards kids before they have the right to give them a lecture about their theological interest.  Also volunteer at other local ministries, colleges, non-profits, schools, and athletics.  In order to get volunteers you need to volunteer.

3.  Ask Early, Ask Often – Earlier you ask a potential adult volunteer the better.  Put the idea of helping out in youth ministry in their ear, so they can wrestle with it.  Youth pastors never want to go on a recruiting campaign asking everyone because you are desperate for help.  Coming across as desperate is not the best way to go.  Plus getting the right volunteers on the bus means the process needs to move slow.  Worst case scenario, the potential volunteer says no.  ** I stole this idea from my interview with Sustainable Youth Ministry Interview with Mark DeVries

4.  Invite – It never hurts to ask…. hey would you be interested in working with students?  I think you would do really well with students.  What do you think? Tell ya what come check it out for a few weeks and if you don’t like it no worries and if you like it we can talk.  Some times a simple invitation is all you need to get the ball rolling.  In my experience people are flattered you asked them.  Always make sure the people you invite have thoroughly prayed about it and have consulted their family about their future involvement in youth ministry.

5.  Evaluate - After the potential leader has been exposed to the youth ministry, set up a meeting time to discuss what he/she thinks.  At this point give them the adult volunteer application and ask for references.  After they have completed the application give them a spiritual gift and personality test and discern the leaders passions and gift set.  Two free personality tests here and here

6.  Empower – Take your new leaders’ passions and gift set and intentionally create environments for your leaders to thrive in. Start small.  Give your new leader a little authority and leadership responsibility and see how they do.  Give them opportunities that are designed for them to unleash their passions and gifts to the students.  Always publicly praise leaders when they do a great job!

7.  Train – Meet and talk weekly, train monthly, and debrief quarterly. It is the youth pastors job to equip and train this new adult leader to be current on youth culture and how to be the best youth leader possible.  Make sure to give each leader specific performance standards or expectations and give them training and feedback. 

8.  Re-assess – It is imperative to re-assess your leaders involvement, successes, and failures.  Most likely your new leader now sees their involvement as work and not fun anymore.  Inspire, motivate, and challenge them to move past their difficulties. Also affirm that working in youth ministry is tough work and will not always be “fun”. Brainstorm together how they can turn their problems into solutions.  Your new leader will need you as the youth pastor to come alongside them and help them navigate their frustrations.  They need to know you are fighting for them.  Too many times youth pastors are so excited to train that we forget to check back in to see how their new “trained” leader is feeling and doing.  Design communication channels between you and your leaders so they can always feel free to vocalize their frustrations and failures and even success with you.  Youth pastor need to know that the first place a volunteer works may not be the best for him or her.  So do the hard work of reassessing with volunteers to fit them with their gifts and passions.     

I think every youth pastor needs to get that recruiting, motivating, and retaining great adult volunteers will not only deepen our youth ministry relationships, but it will strengthen and sustain our youth ministry to finish well.

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

THEOCONMICS-  Make your counting count (managerial, measurements, youth ministry)

by Zac Workun (Zac is our 1st guest youth pastor blogger)

Theology in a simple description is the manner is which we speak about God, and as we have learned or are beginning to learn (thank you Buber and so many others) “how we talk is also most likely how we live…”  So if theology as a lived thing comes from how we talk about God, then what would be a fitting quantitative counterpart to the qualitative.

a few jutting and conflicting clichés…

The Numerical-

“We just doubled the size of our leadership team and we are seeing an increase of 30% in our student ministry”

The Anti-numerical-

“We aren’t about numbers, we are about relationships”

The “Godly”-

“We are just seeing the Spirit do big things”

Most of us read these and scoff at the first and rationalize or pontificate about the 2nd and 3rd, but in reality all comments stem from a strong theological basis (some conscious or meticulous or inherited or articulate others by happenstance).  The real question for you is… are you aware? Yes you may claim to never take attendance or do a head count because you are about relationships but how well does that position you to connect those that are “in” or “not in” relationships.  Maybe you think it is poor taste to post the “brag board” numbers on your wall or in your newsletter/email and perhaps you are right…

… but I it is unfair to vilify those that do quantitative measurement in their ministry.  In fact, I would like to go on record by stating that, “if you don’t measure something in your ministry you are probably doing a poor job.” I think we have to measure; it is too much a gut reaction not to assign numbers to an organization.  The essence of our struggle is trying to make a big problem understandable and approachable and how we segment our understanding of that problem will give us a better shot at creating a new reality.

THEO-ECONOMICS

Our fashioned, burgeoning, developing theoconomies are the measurements that inform and move us towards our ends (Values, Vision, Abstracted Realities).  We make decisions and petition prayerful based on the needs we observe and foresee.  Perhaps the reason you moved from a large gathering format to cell groups for your mid-week prayer time was because it was either poorly attended or spiritually stagnant either way your deeply rooted conviction about prayer was guided by a measurement you either had in your head (line of sight/observation) or recorded numbers in a notebook. No matter how you slice it you are keeping track of how thing are going somewhere; either in your head (a comparison between what you think things should be and the way things are), in a ledger (or excel spreadsheet or some other fancy database), or stacked against a list a values or a vision/mission statement that guides your decisions.  A keen insight for all of us is to just stop and take a look, consider the present, measure the past, and make preparations for the future.

A proposed opening conversation for you to consider with your leaders, staff, and volunteers (and maybe a few comments for below)-

-What if anything are we consistently measuring, tabulating, collecting?

- How has that consciously shaped our ministry?

-Has it subconsciously shaped our ministry?

-Do  the things we measure currently best reflect our values, vision, and ultimate mission?

-What do the things we measure say about the God we serve?

“12 named disciples and the multitudes that sought him”

Pre-emptive Rebuttal-

I am fully conscious and sensitive to the reality that we can not and should not always measure what God is doing in lives.  There are things of a significant nature that are occurring in lives that are not always calculable.  However, sometimes we can get so burdened by the weight of one life that we can lose sight of the good God is doing and forget to approximate.

Come back for more as we discuss in further installments what this might mean for us as we begin to measure diligently…

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

I think every youth pastor needs an Iphone.  The iphone increase productivity, communication, and spirituality.

The youth ministry geek agrees with me.

Top Apps Every Youth Pastor Needs For Their Youth Ministry:

Tasks, Lists, and Notes [Free]

Jott

Remember the Milk

EasyTask Manager

YouNote

Tasks, Lists, and Notes [Paid]

OmniFocus

Informant

Things

Checklist

Account and Password Management

A Personal Assistant

eWallet

Tap Forms

File & Computer Resources

FileMagnet

Dropbox

MobileFiles

ACTPrinter

MINT

Documents

Spirituality

Logos

Holy Bible

Touch Bible Loaded

Matthew Henry Concise Commentary

TED

Youth Ministry Needs

Bible Trivia Test

Tough Topics presented by Youth Specialties

Would You Rather

Facebook

Echofon

FriendSync

USA Today

Amazon

Nooma

What apps work for you in your youth ministry?  What apps am I missing?

Also make sure to check out Shoreline Youth Ministry Suggested Iphone App List

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.