I am doing an interim again, this time at
Westport Road Baptist Church here in Louisville. It is always a humbling experience to be trusted with a group of students, if even for a short period of time. As interims go this one has gone really smooth, and has been a blessing to do. The staff, volunteers and students are fantastic. But it also got me thinking about steps churches can take to have a good interim period.
Have realistic time expectations-As the interim minister I am not at the church 40-50 hours a week like the minister I replaced. At Westport and at Cedar Creek, my agreement is/was be here Sunday’s and Wednesday’s and make staff meeting as much as you can. I can do that. But I probably won’t have time to attend ballgames, dance recitals or make hospital visits. It’s not that I don’t want to do these, they are part of the ministry that I really enjoy, I honestly just don’t have the time.
Event planning-I love events, in youth ministry you learn to plan events or you’re not in ministry for long. But know that I am not going to do things just like the last minister did, nor do I need to. Part of my job as the interim is to prepare you for who is coming next. And I can almost guarantee you that they are not going to do things the way the last minister did. So part of my job is to keep things similar enough to be familiar, but different enough to make the next step an okay one. But, I may not have the time to make the event as big or as fancy as the last minister, (see step one).
Use volunteers as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there is a time and place to hire and interim, but I not sure that every vacancy needs to hire someone from outside. The ideal would be to put together lead teams made up of volunteers, parents and students that can see to the ministry during the transition period. You may also need to appoint someone to speak for the ministry at staff, committee and business meetings; and you probably also need someone to serve as interim leader, but that could be a volunteer as well. Volunteers are the key to successful youth ministry.
Don’t settle for holding things together-To many times I think this is the attitude we take during the interim times. I have had this conversation with churches whose mindset is “we just want to be able to hold things together until the new youth minister gets here”. Why? There is no reason to think the ministry will have to suffer. Sure there isn’t just one person giving attention to the ministry, but there also isn’t just one person giving attention to the ministry. Dividing responsibilities can allow each person to take a small piece of the ministry and make it the best it can be and that can lead to growth in the ministry during the interim period.
Process-as much as possible keep the workers and the students “in the know” as to how the process for a replacement is going. There isn’t a need for names and current ministry placements of the ministers you are looking at. But just a general sense of where you are: receiving resumes, narrowing the search, asking for more information, talking to a couple of people, etc. It just lets those involved in leadership and the students in the ministry know that you are being diligent in your duties and will help to calm the uneasiness the students may be feeling.
Pray. Involve the students and the leaders in praying for the search committee and for the next minister. As they pray and ask for God’s guidance the Spirit will begin to turn their hearts towards who is next. I’m not sure there has ever been a time when someone has said, “I wish I hadn’t prayed so much” over that decision. &nb sp;
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posted by: Joe Ball on February 2nd, 2010
A recent blog post from Connect with Kids, talks about how students are dropping out of organized sports at age 13.
A few highlighgts from the post:
According to the National Alliance for Youth Sports, 73 percent of kids drop organized sports by age 13.
They practiced every day and had games every weekend. In the end they had little time for anything else. Dr. Richard Winer, a psychiatrist in metro-Atlanta says, "The pressure really becomes too much, and after a while they really become disillusioned with the entire sports scene, and get tired of it and finally say, 'That's it for me.'"
So what should you do if your child wants to quit the team? Dr. Winer says, "One of the things that you might want to look at is a different sport. Sometimes kids just get burned out on one sport."
Laura says, "If it wasn't as much of a time commitment it would still be really awesome if you could do some sort of recreational league, if it was an hour a week, or one game per week or something."
I wonder if there are some things we can learn about why teens are dropping out of church as well?
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posted by: Joe Ball on January 19th, 2010
So it is 2010. And for me the transition from one year to the next always provides opportunity for reflection. Maybe part of that is because my birthday falls between Christmas and New Years, but not all of it can be attributed to that. This year it has been interesting to listen to people debate as to whether or not this is the last year of the decade or the beginning of a new one. News and sports programs have been running highlights of the past decade; while others are saying you’re too early the decade has another year in it. While all of this has been fun for me to listen to, it really doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
So in the time of reflection this year several things keep coming into my mind and I want to share them as we begin 2010.
Family Time is non-negotiable. Maybe it is the stage of life that I am in, the oldest child graduating college and the youngest beginning, but time with your family can not be overlooked or made up for later. I am blessed by the younger youth ministers that I know that “have gotten” this concept. It is refreshing to see pictures on facebook of family vacations, school functions and sporting events. Youth Ministers that are intentionally carving out family time in their schedules are refreshing and are also modeling for their students how families should be a priority in life. May their tribe increase.
In the words of
Dave Ramsey, “
Debt is dumb”. I wish I had realized that sooner, maybe I still wouldn’t be paying for the microwave we bought 24 years ago. And while I know that youth ministers tend to be the least paid member of the church staff that is no excuse for us not to be good stewards of the money we have been entrusted with. And while we all like to have the latest tech gadgets and such we must figure out how to live within our means. Not only that we must teach it to our students.
My personal relationship with God must be priority one. We spend our lives telling this to students, but I fear that in the living of life this gets lost in the shuffle. Time preparing for teaching and preaching is not a substitute for personal time with God. When our well is dry it is hard to teach from the overflow of what God is doing in our lives.
It is OK to say NO. Probably the hardest lesson for me to learn has been this, and I am still learning it. No is OK. It allows me to stay focused on the task at hand, stay true to the vision God has given me, and to make sure that those things that I say I value get the attention they deserve.
Evaluate your ministry. It gets easier to do youth ministry the longer you are in a place. Having served 12+ years at Edgewood, I understand some of the nuisances of longevity. The students, adult leaders and parents know what to expect. Disciple Now weekend is done this way, every New Years Eve brings a lock-in, camp is always the third week of June, every February is our True Love Waits emphasis. It almost gets to a point where we can do this in our sleep, and my fear is often times we do. Making the determination between has my ministry gotten stale and needs to be refreshed and have I done all I can do here and it is time to move on may just be one of the hardest things to do. Find some people you trust to help with the evaluation process.
As we begin this new decade (or is it the last year of the old decade?), let us take time to reflect on what it is God has called us to do, and then get about doing it.
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posted by: Joe Ball on January 12th, 2010
Traveling around the state as I do, I have had plenty of opportunities to see churches youth spaces. Most everybody like to show theirs off, and I enjoy seeing them. There are certain things that seem to be standard in a lot of them: posters, loud colors, projectors or BIG tv's, an eating area and pictures of youth group trips. Some have lights and a sound system and couches, others are simple and more reflective. The beauty is even in their sameness each is unique. Tailored to the group that is present, to the "type" of students that are attending or that they are trying to attract.
As I was preparing to teach the other night at Westport Road I watched the students scurry for the seats next to the outlets so they could plug their phones into recharge. (And now that I have an iphone I understand why). And in that process of watching students I had this thought about youth space in the future. Just as today's youth space is filled with Big screens and sound the next will have banks of outlets to recharge laptops and phones and wireless internet service will be a must as well.
And just as I was about to say, put your phones away, or at least turn the ringer off, I had another thought. This one hit a little closer to home. I ask myself, would you go into a foriegn country and ask them to not speak their language, or to a deaf congregation and ask them not to sign? If the perfered communication method of today's students is technolgy related then what am I doing to reach them through their perferred style of communications? Like I said, this hit closer to home. It is easy to ask students to put their phones away and pay attention when I speak. But do they really hear me? I tell churches all the time that this generation is charactized by the ability to multi-task. But am I willing to allow them to?
So I guess I am asking, are we embracing the culture of our students, or fighting it off?
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posted by: Joe Ball on January 8th, 2010
I am always amazed this time of year by the amount of energy we spend as churches on celebrating Christmas. We have pageants, musicals, special candlelight services and go to several class parties to celebrate. While thinking on this I began to wonder how much energy we give to teaching our students about the
Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and getting them involved in helping support our missionaries that are taking the message of Christmas all around the world. So I ask. I emailed several youth ministers from across Kentucky and ask them this question:
How are your students involved in giving to and promoting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering?
The responses were mixed. About half of those that responded (and probably most of those that didn’t) did not involve their students at all in giving or promoting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.One said “We don't really do anything”, another said, we “haven't done much with students regarding the Lottie Moon offering. We give towards it, but haven't connected students to it very well.”
Now, before we all get discouraged and going running to our youth ministers’ office with promotional materials for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering let’s note that all of those responded are in churches that give to and support Lottie. It is just that they didn’t do anything special with their students.
I was encouraged by what some of the youth minister were doing and want to share a few of them with you.
Rob Marquess, youth minister at Ashby Lane Baptist Church in Louisville said: “
Our ladies have a tea to raise money for the Lottie Moon offering and two of our youth girls are sponsoring a table at the tea.” He went on to say, “And most years several of our guys volunteer to serve at the tea. Yea and we're all real cute in our white shirts and red bow ties and aprons.”
Tree Akers, Minister to Students at Northside Baptist Church in Elizabethtown replied: “we have a few students that assist with physical illustrations and representations in the Sunday morning services for December.” Also, “one of our ladies comes up with the different things we can pray for, and frequently, she will have students assist” her in this. Also, “our church does a Lottie Moon Christmas post office. Cards that go to various church members, are placed in the "church post office" and are sorted and sometimes delivered by the youth.” To help raise money toward the churches goal “We do ask for a suggested donation per card”.
At
First Baptist Church in Richmond, were Steve Coleman is the minister to students they “are stressing Lottie Moon as a way to give a gift to Jesus for the Christmas season. Everyone else gets a present on Christmas so how can you give Jesus a gift?” they ask their students. The answer Steve tells them is, “give to Lottie Moon so that missions can be carried out all over the world. Cash works best; you can put it into a Christmas card and place it on the altar or the remembrance table the last Sunday before Christmas.”
“We talk about Lottie Moon with our students and encourage giving to the main offering that our church takes up”, said John Beach, Minister of Students at Bowling Green First Baptist Church, “and recently we were at SBTS and took a little time to show them the desk display they have in the Honeycutt Center and talk about her life and ministry a little while we had the opportunity.” While I was at
Edgewood each year we would, as a church do the
International Missions Study that was provided by our church’s WMU. We would teach the youth study and use that as on opportunity to teach how the monies from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering were spent.
Let us all do our part to find ways to involve our students in giving to and promoting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
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posted by: Joe Ball on December 8th, 2009
