This is a awesome blog post from my friend Phil Bell – I love the questions that he asks in this post and I love this thinking ….

Posted on February 8, 2011 by youthworktalk

A number of months ago one of our students was tragically killed in a car accident on his way to church with friends. This young man had a strong faith and had a passion for serving and missions trips. His funeral was obviously a very gut wrenching occasion, but in many ways a time to celebrate his faith, life, and his eternal destination. At the lunch after the funeral, a parent asked me this pertinent question:

When all is said and done, where do you hope to see students by the end of high school? What are your priorities for them?

It’s a question that I somewhat answered at the time, but is a question I have been working through ever since (and still am). The funeral of a sixteen year old student and this question from a parent gave me a new perspective on what I do. In some ways, it gave me a new lens to look through in what I do… It has caused me to struggle through the question:

What matters most in my ministry” What priorities are truly going to help students grow and “finish well”? Or, maybe, frame it this way:
What is most important today that will impact students in the long-term?

Before I jump into what my priorities are, I must remind myself that I am here to partner with parents, not replace them. They are with their kids much more than I. The more I can come alongside parents in their primary ministry, the greater the impact on their students. It’s easy to place all the burden and focus on our student ministries, when in fact God intends parents to be the primary disciples makers of their kids. However, as I partner with parents and provide the best environments for students to grow, he is my “work in progress” list of priorities I have for students:

1.    SELF FEEDERS: Students are equipped to “self-feed” their faith with personal Bible study, prayer, and accountability. I want them to own their faith and have a personal deep faith with their Savior.  It simply is not enough to spoon feed our kids and hope they will survive without owning their own faith through daily habits.

2.    COMMUNITY: Where students are connected and learn the importance of staying connected as they grow into adulthood. The more they learn and experience healthy community while at church, the more likely they will search and discover authentic community once they graduate.

3.    SERVING & OUTREACH: Students discover their gifts and the fulfillment of serving in church, their communities and on their campuses. If they serve in our ministries and church ministries they further more reason to stay connected to the body once they graduate high school.

4.    OWNERSHIP: Students feel they are integral to what is happening on a weekly basis. It’s not a finely oiled adult led student ministry, but an authentic student led ministry where students can be involved and lead what God is doing, (no matter how messy things might get).

5.    LEADERSHIP: A place where younger students are served and invested in by older ones. So often, I see older students acting with an “entitlement” mentality towards the younger ones. I firmly believe it’s imperative to create a culture of older students serving younger ones. It is my hope that these students will develop into adults who are hear to serve the others, not consume as we see so often in our churches.

6.    A DEEP FAITH THAT REACHES OUT: A ministry that is deep and wide where students have depth of love for their savior and the heart and the tools for reaching the lost.

7.    FAITH & REASON: Students are challenged to have a grounding in faith and reason for God’s existence. One day they will enter college campuses where they will be challenged with various arguments. It’s imperative that we help students understand science and fact that points towards our God.

8.    ME TO WE: Adult leaders (and students) need to know how to accomplish ministry goals even when I am not there.  My goal is to invest, equip, and empower leaders in such as way that they might be tempted to ask the question, “So, what does Phil actually do around here”. I firmly believe that my ministry is more effective and God honoring when it is not focused on me. Too many of us enjoy being the “rock stars” of ministry, but we can easily overshadow Jesus and stifle others ministry opportunities.

Well, there’s my “work in progress” list for now… I am adding and tweaking these ideas and goals as I go. I would love to get feedback from you too!

There is real power in being connected with other people. Especially with people we lead. By being connected I mean we understand each other and we have gotten to know someone for who they are and not for what they do. By being connected we are able to care for each other at new levels and we are able to forgive small mis-steps. When I think about the people I lead here at LeaderTreks, I treat the ones I am connected with differently then the others. So I have been asking myself why am I not connecting with more people if connection is so powerful? Pride, lack of maturity and stupidity come to mind. I need to change, by connecting on a human level I can influence more people and live at peace with more people. I got work to do….

As church leaders we love meetings. We like to have meetings, we like to get together with people, and we like to talk about stuff we are thinking about doing. However, most meetings don’t really produce anything. They don’t improve our ministries, they don’t bring new insight to problems, and they don’t provide real change. But we love our meetings. So how can we make meetings more productive, especially those of us in youth ministry where we only get a few minutes every month to meet with our adult leaders? I could tell you the basics of a good meeting: have an agenda, move through the points quickly, and leave time at the end for questions. But we all know that that doesn’t work either. I think the following make great meetings:

1. Focus on fun

Everyone who comes to a church meeting knows it’s going to be boring. This is an opportunity for us as leaders. The other day my church asked me if I would do a training event for nursery workers. I told him I know nothing about the nursery but I could sure make it fun. I took a bunch of pieces of Styrofoam and laid it all over the gym floor at the church. I spread gold coins that I got from foreign countries on the floor next to the foam pieces. I put everybody in pairs and blindfolded one team member in each pair. I told the person that could see to help the blindfolded partner move around the Styrofoam and find the gold coins. I told them they couldn’t touch the Styrofoam because they were land mines. The nursery workers had a great time trying to find the coins amongst the land mines. At the end I explained to the nursery workers that the gold coin were the children they worked with. The Styrofoam pieces were the obstacles that kept them from working with kids. I also explained that our children are precious like gold coins. We all had fun and learned a lot. Church meetings don’t have to be boring; make them interactive and fun and you’ll make the meetings worthwhile.

2. The calendar is death

Most church meetings are about reviewing the calendar of events that are coming up. We spend a lot of time on the calendar because we think it’s really important. The calendar is not important, and everybody can read one. So just pass it out and talk about the event. Spend time helping people understand how the event will be transformational. This sets the vision for the event and helps them understand what the focus of the event will be. Remember calendar is the death of the meeting… stay away from it.

3. Meetings are too long

Most church meetings try to cover 10 different points. No one can take in that much information. All you can really talk about at a church meeting is one or two critical points. If you keep your meeting to one or two critical conversations then your meeting will move quickly and people will have the energy to talk and interact. Remember, keep your meeting short, only talk about one or two things in the meeting and it will actually energize people.

I have a new book coming out soon dealing with the relationships between youth pastors and their senior pastors. It’s called The Disconnect. As I sat down to write this book, I’ll admit my time as a youth pastor steered much of my thinking about the subject matter. After all, it is my experiences, good and bad, which have shaped the way I’ve served other youth workers for many years. While my experiences have proved effective in the advice I gave to most youth workers, I realized it could not be the only source material I worked from to write this book. To that end, much of what you read throughout this book has come from not only my time as a youth worker, but also from others around me. Through interviews with youth pastors and senior pastors, and multiple surveys, I gathered the needed information to write this book. Many of their stories are retold in my own words throughout the pages of this book.

Check out The Disconnect when it becomes available the first week of March.