Seminary trains you to exegete Scripture but doesn’t train you to manage people.

This is a big problem.

Bible college and seminary graduates have mad Bible skills but don’t have mad business skills.

It took me a long time to realize that my business administration in youth ministry was horrible.  Thankfully, I had a lot friends who succeeded in entrepreneurship that helped me educate myself in business.

I wish I went to business school before I went to seminary.

I feel like mastering excel spreadsheets and learning how business, people and systems work are more applicable than my Hebrew exegesis classes.    Seminary is important, however it is up to the youth pastor to learn real life business skills that will greatly make his/her youth ministry position at the church way easier.  I am finding that youth pastors don’t have clue about business.

For example, youth pastors dont have a clue about how to:

-  have a productive and purposeful meeting

-  develop, manage and raise money

-  lead people through change  (navigating organizational behavior)

-  get stuff done fast and efficient (aka productivity)

-  adminstrate databases (by the way the best youth ministry database that will help youth ministry administration is ministrytracker.com)

-  write a 1,2,3 and 5 year ministry plans

-  market and message youth ministry events

-  set up and maintain sustainable systems

-  give an engaging presentation

-  recruit, manage and maintain leaders

-  negotiate

-  hire, train and fire staff

Here are ways  seminary trained youth pastors can become very business savvy:

Organize a business counsel for your youth ministry–  Find successful business people in your church and ask them to be apart of your business counsel.  This can be a really informal thing.  Basically if you need help with any business thing you can pick up the phone and give them a call to seek their wisdom.  Churches are organizations that deal with money and people so it is wise for you to surround yourself with smart business men and women who deal with money and people in the real world.  In my previous context, I hung out with really successful and smart entrepreneurs and picked their brains about how to start businesses from the ground up.  I formed a business counsel for my youth ministry which helped me navigate fundraising, budgeting and how go about making key decisions.  I always loved learning from business leaders in my community because they were realist, knew how to get things done and were very direct.

Read business books–  I have gleaned soooo much from reading business books.  The best business resource I have found is The Personal MBA book and program. Essentially Josh Kaufman designed a reading list of 99 books that is equivalent to getting a MBA education.  These 99 featured books are amazing business books which are based on thousands of hours of research.  Check out the reading list here and get reading!!!!!!

Buy the books The Minister’s MBA:  Essential Business Tools for Maximum Ministry Success and Youth Ministry Management Tools-  These are the best books out there that intersect ministry and business administration.

Listen to business school lectures via itunes-  Go to the Itunes U (in the itunes store) and listen to top professors at top business schools around the country.  I learned so much from listening to these lectures and the best part— it is free!!!

What is the best word that describes the vocation as youth pastor?

BUSY.

I learned a lot about managing my time and juggling the multiple ministry tasks when working in a small church youth ministry.  Pastor Tim Keller highly recommends young pastors to work in a small church before moving to a bigger church.  Pastor Keller believes a young and solo pastor can learn all about the the roles and functions that are required in the pastorate.

Think about it…in smaller churches the youth pastor is available at all times, for most all occasions and needs, to any member or unchurched family or student.  The average  youth pastor has to become a generalist in ministry. Essentially you have to become a jack of all trades and cannot spend your weekly 40 hours mastering  a specific ministry task. If you want to specialize in a youth ministry task, it may be wise for you to pursue a job at a mega church youth ministry.

How do youth pastors figure out how to maximize their time while still doing all the tasks youth ministry requires in 40 hours?

It is difficult dodging the time consuming demons in youth ministry. Every thing seems so important in the moment.   I am really excited to share with you how I was able to engineer a youth ministry that runs on all cylinders.

Here are 11 ways I saved a lot of time in youth ministry:

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(1)  Use teaching curriculum - the biggest reason why youth pastors should use youth ministry curriculum is time.  Personally, I think there are more fruitful ministry tasks a youth pastor should be focusing on, rather than writing a creative sermon from scratch.  It is way more time consuming creating something from nothing than taking something already developed.

(2)  Recruit adult leaders and interns- Get more adults involved.  Ask early and ask often.  Youth pastors need a tribe of adults to pour into.  Your ability to recruit adult volunteers makes or breaks the longevity of a youth ministry.  Get adults that have the capacity and ability to lead small groups.  Get more adults to relationally connect with students because youth pastors can only really connect with 5-8 students.  Make sure adult leaders have a good handle on the basic tenets of the Christian faith.

(3)  Invest in a youth ministry student management system – I would highly recommend investing in a software that can manage the students’ info in your youth ministry.  It is so helpful when you are able to instantly pull up your students’ address, parent names, birthdays, grade level, and school name.  I highly relied on Youth Assistant. I never forgot a student’s birthday pre-facebook.

(4)  Delegate ministry tasks to students – students can handle ministry responsibility if it is in their gift set.  Try to appoint as many ministry tasks as possible to students.  Possible tasks:  lead or participate in worship, data entry, youth room design, set design, audio/visual, hospitality team, preach/teach, program leaders for junior high ministry, serve in and out of the church, graphic and video development and production.

(5)  Set up meetings that require action points –   Say no to people who want commitments that don’t contribute enough value to the youth ministry mission.  There is no need to waste your time meeting with adults that just want to talk or discuss.  Make sure to really probe why people want to meet with you before entering it in your calendar.  If people want to talk, you can talk over the phone, email, or on Sundays before of after church services.  Every meeting you are involved in needs to have action points.  I found myself having multiple pointless and actionless meetings with a of variety people for the sake to “call a meeting”.  Reducing meetings during your week will provide a lot more free time.

(6) Beat the alarm clock - Getting up at 6 am you can simply add 3 hours to your day.  I learned how to get up at the butt crack of dawn when I was in Air Force ROTC.  Cadet Zach conditioned his body to wake up at 5am every morning.  Put your alarm clock far away from the bed, have a reason to get up early, and utilize the 3 additional hours for your needs (reading, studying, working out, relaxing, praying).  Meeting with parents in the morning is clutch!

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” –Ben Franklin

(7) Build youth ministry alliances – share resources and do events with other churches.  It helps tremendously when you can share tasks and costs with other local youth ministries.  Plus it is a blast to partner with other youth groups because 1) it allows your students to hang with other Christian students and 2) you can pull off bigger and cooler events.

(8) Outsource youth ministry administration and errand tasks to parents or to the “retired folks” in your church – Do you hate doing youth ministry administration or errand tasks?  Well others may not- namely a retired old lady who has nothing to do besides water her flowers and drink black coffee.  Yes, I have outsourced “older” people to do administration and errand tasks for the youth ministry department and they loved it.

(9)  Work remotely - I am a big advocate for working remotely. I have fully embrace the remote youth pastor lifestyle.  However I am aware many church traditions and cultures will not allow for their youth pastor to work outside of the church office unless he/she has a written note from Jesus.  Having the ability to work remotely requires trust from your boss and the responsibility to actually get work done. Some research suggests work productivity increases when having the freedom to work from anywhere. Nothing is wrong with working at a coffee shop on your laptop getting stuff done.  Also I have experimented with remote desktop mobile applications.  Basically you are able to access your computer files from your iphone or droid.  The great thing is you can be anywhere and log on to your computer.  Another great reason to embrace the remote and mobile youth pastor lifestyle.  To learn more about these Remote Desktop apps click here

(10) Outwork everyone in your church – In order to do great youth ministry work, you have to want it.  You have to have a drive and systems in place to get the job done.  Doing more youth ministry just doesn’t happen, you have to work hard to obtain it.  It is our tendency to drift toward laziness and not effectiveness. Nobody frowns upon a youth pastor who works hard.  Outworking everyone does not mean put in overtime, rather it means to really work when you are working.  Hard work gains trust and respect from older generations and dismisses the myth that youth pastors are lazy.

Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it

(11) Reduce email addiction - Stop checking church email 55 times a day.  Check email 4 times every 4 hours:  morning 6am, before lunch 10am, after lunch 2pm, and close of business 4pm.  Believe it or not people in your congregation can wait.  If you always respond quickly to email, people will take advantage of you by assuming you will respond to email in a timely fashion.  Responding to email 4 times a day allows you to answer multiple emails in one session rather than answering an email as it comes in your inbox.

Honestly, I have worked very hard to protect my hours which allowed me more freedom to get more things done.  It is very easy to get sucked into the youth ministry time consuming vortex and never get out.  I really enjoy talking with youth pastors about productivity because it is an ongoing process that requires intentionality and improved systems.  In fact I have a few other youth ministry productivity posts that correlate:

-  How To Get Things Done In Youth Ministry And Get A Day Off – I talked about to do lists, time tracking, and dealing with distractions.

- Youth Pastor Productivity – I talked about how to create a comfortable church office space that will increase productivity.

- The End of Youth Ministry Time Management: Busyness vs. Effectiveness – I talked about the philosophical idea of how NOT to be busy.  I argue that focus, being selective, and doing less is the ultimate principle for high productivity.

- Youth Pastor’s Office Hours – I talked about how I went through a typical one week youth ministry schedule hour by hour.

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

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Augustine argued that God works in and out of time.  Therefore, youth pastors should not view time as a barrier, but as working in our favor.  Time should NEVER be a problem when youth pastors are managing their youth ministries and personal schedules.  But why do we still say “only if I had enough time, I would do [fill in the blank]”?  The problem is we are not giving what is important enough time.  Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.  Youth pastors are responsible for their time, we always have a choice to say NO.  If our paycheck and people’s expectations are controlling our schedules this is merely adolescent behavior.

Youth Pastors need to understand that we can be more effective by doing less.

Youth pastors shouldn’t be trying to do more in each day, and trying to fill every second with a “ministry opportunity.”  Doesn’t it feel great jumping from meeting to meeting?  It is great knowing that people want to meet with us.  Unfortunately, being busy is an illusion for being productive.  Sometimes we do a lot of good youth ministry stuff to avoid what really needs to get done.  Think about it?

How many times have you avoided the tough phone call and checked your email instead?

Being busy is a form of sloppiness and laziness.

Every youth pastor needs to learn how to be most effective.

According to Timothy Ferriss in his book:  The 4-Hour Work Week, states that effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals.

Youth pastors need to know they need to work hard and keep their priorities and boundaries.   Youth pastors have to evaluate not how many hours they are working, but what is being accomplished in the allotted time.  I want to stress that working 8 hours doesn’t necessary mean high productivity.  Isn’t it funny that if we know we only have 3 hours to get something done, 9 out of 10 times we will get it done.  Why do we get it done?  Because we are focused and aware of our allotted time period to complete the task.

Focus, be selective, and do less is the ultimate principle for high productivity.

Action steps:

1.        Every single time you step into your office take a post-it note and write down the top 3 -4 tasks/goals that need to get done in that day.  Make sure to post this post-it note on your computer screen or keyboard so you are always reminded of the task at hand.

2.       Identify and clarify what things keep you busy.  Basically identify what are your go to “time wasters”.  My time wasters are:  facebook, twitter, email, and randomly checking my cell phone. Once you have compiled a list of your time wasters, eliminate them from your work day.

3.       Don’t multi-task.  Multi-tasking increases your chances of losing focus.

Now quit reading this post, and go get things done.