I'm Sorry I'm Just TOO BUSY To Minister To You.

Making yourself available is extremely important to ministry especially in youth ministry. Think about all the students that you may come in to contact with and how many of them actually have someone who is willing to take the time to listen to what they have to say. No matter how ridiculous something a student shares with you may seem it shows that you really care about them because you are willing to listen to their ridiculousness. Honestly think about how many ridiculous things you said to adults when you were a kid thinking that everything you said was of the utmost importance (maybe you still do this). 

Here is the problem. There are so many things that need to be done all the time, or at least it seems so, that we can forget the most impacting thing about working with others, spending time with them. We get caught up in organizing programs or putting together something for following day that we are to meet and we lose sight of the importance of each individual. And, I think that something that has crept into the role of a minister is the idea that in order to be a good minister you have to be busy all the time. I don't see how being busy all the time has anything to do with what the bible calls us to do in terms of ministering to others. I mean if Christ's greatest ministry happened in the time he spent with the disciples he was closest with than what are we doing making ourselves so busy that we don't even have time enough to spend discipling others. One of the greatest tools that we have as ministers, and probably also the greatest trap, is how well social networking works in making us available for students to get into contact with. The greatest trap with all these social networks is that we can wind up spending less face to face personal interaction with students and everything winds up being a bit fake, or at least has the possibility of being that. 

It is absolutely important for youth ministers to not just say that they are available to students when they need to talk or whatever but to actually be available. Too many of us pretend that we are available when in actuality were are only available when it fits into our schedule. If we ever get to the point in the ministry God has called us to that we have become too busy to spend the time and minister to those who He has lead us to minister to than I believe it will be time to reevaluate our lifestyle and the ministry we have believed we have been called to. 

B.

What if I don't want to write up a vision or mission statement?

It seems like one of the most important things when putting together a youth ministry is taking the time to write up a vision statement and a mission statement. I can honestly say that after being a Youth Director for 6 months I just now finally wrote down the vision and mission of the youth ministry and I probably will spend the next 6 months evaluating and possibly revising the wording of different things within. But, even if it is more time consuming than putting together a sermon or worship set for a youth service, or maybe even longer than designing an entire month's worth of lessons for your Youth Min 1 class with Phil Vaughn at Simpson University, it is absolutely vital to take the time to do it. The reason being that no matter if you just starting up a ministry from scratch or if you are taking over a ministry that is already in place people will constantly be telling you things that you need to get involved in or how you should run things. In 6 months I have felt this constant tug of war going on around me about how things should be done or what I needed to be doing. None of these "suggestions," as people would call them, are really that bad but the problem would be that if I just did what others suggested I would get burnt out and the ministry would become something that God didn't intend for it to become. The mission and vision statement for the ministry help set up boundaries. They tell us and others that this is the direction that we are going in and these are the things that we will be doing, so if something doesn't fall within these lines then we will not be doing it. I'm sad that it took me this long to finally spend time listening to the Holy Spirit about the actual direction and boundaries of the ministry but I'm excited because I have so much more freedom to be able to say yes or no depending on how things fall into place within the vision. As a sidenote it is so important that we do take that time to listen to the Spirit and that we aren't just writing up something that sounds good because each ministry and community is different and has its own identity which means that each ministry should have its own vision/mission statements. Don't ever just latch on to something someone else is doing or has written down for their own ministry because it sounds good. Take the time to find out what it is that God has put on your heart for the specific ministry you are involved with. It is ok to have others give you advice or input about what they think about the statments, especially if they are also going to be involved in the ministry, but ultimately make sure that you are listening to the Holy Spirit and how He is leading you.

Seriously I am so excited that I finally have this thing written down.

B.

Coming to God as a Child!

As a youth minister I have to be able to come to God like a little child in order to speak to other children what it looks like to come to Him. Tonight I even taught a little bit on the difference between when we first come to Christ as children and then when we try to come to Him as adults. As children we have very few filters that seeing and understanding God gets caught up in but as we get older we gain more and more filters that we sifen our own ideas or beliefs or perspectives on who, or maybe even what, God is. For a child if Jesus says "nothing is impossible with God" than well nothing must be impossible with God. But, as adults we tend to add our own definition to what Jesus says by maybe bringing up context or grammar or personal experiences so that "nothing is impossible with God" becomes "nothing is impossible with God [except... or unless...]."
Being a youthful adult it is very difficult at times the promises that God makes in the Word and actually living like they are true. No matter what I have gone through in my life or experienced God's Word is everlasting and remains the same: it never changes. Jesus wasn't kidding when He said this and He definitely didn't add any condition to it and yet I often find myself living as if He had. I can't do ministry with that kind of mindset. I actually have to believe that God is who He says He is and that Jesus really meant what He said or else what do I have to offer a student when they come up to me and tell me someone they know might have cancer, which 3 students have told me this so far. Without the truth, without God, without the reality that anything is possible with God, what hope can we possibly have?
The truth about the Creator of Heaven and Earth and His Spirit living inside us is that He is not only the God who brings healing to our physical bodies but He also transforms lives from the inside out. So, in this world filled with crazy confusing, painful, circumstances we have hope in Christ who said that all things are possible. God help me to be that little child who just believes.

B.

Administration is always part of the package

I don't know about you but I honestly would be perfectly happy if I never had to do anything administrative ever in my life. The problem is, no matter how big or small a youth ministry is you can never delegate everything to someone else and so you wind up doing something administrative. Maybe it is just me but I hate doing even the simplest things like making phone calls or putting together camps or making sure that everything is in order for the after school program. Probably the most difficult thing for me is making phone calls, which probably comes from being a part of the impersonal generation where social networking has become way more popular. Seriously, I am way less terrified of someone rejecting me or getting angry at me if it is done over facebook than if I am talking on the phone with them or talking with them in person. Over e-mails or facebook or text I have plenty of time to think up a logical gentle response that keeps me from sounding like a complete jerk. Over the phone or in person I have no time, I must respond right away and it better be a good response too.

Now, I have learned that not all administrative things are connected with some sort of possible conflict or possible rejection. But, just because something administrative isn't going to create a conflict doesn't make it any more exciting. I don't jump out of my seats when I have to make flyers or create lists or handle money. I would much rather play a game of Egyptian War with my students who are pretending to be working on their homework in the other room, which is probably the only game I have a 99% chance at winning. I win so much at the game because I am so fast at slapping the deck every time there is a double of a card and then I win the whole pile. However, just today I realized now matter how boring or repetitive or annoying doing administrative "type" things are the more you do them the easier it gets. Honestly, what started out as something that felt like teethe pulling I realized isn't as terrible as I thought and I am getting better at it as well. I am still terrified of taking care of things that might cause some sort of conflict but I have come to a point where I am more adept at dealing with whatever conflict that may show itself.

So, in a sense, practice makes perfect, or rather practice makes something terrible a whole lot more bearable.
Seriously, I am really good at Egyptian War.

B.

What in the world am I doing?

I seriously ask myself this same question all the time. I look at my personality and my appearances and it honestly doesn't make any sense to me why I would be placed in the role that I am in to do what it is that I have been called to do.
I have come to the realization that I am probably the youngest looking, and quite possibly the craziest youth minister in all of northern California. I am 25 and still look like I'm 16. Don't believe me? Well then I'll have to show you some videos of when I was around that age and believe me the only thing that is different now is that I am not in as good shape as I was and I don't have chronic acne. I have short attention span and sometimes I struggle remaining on the same topics at times because I get so easily distracted but all sorts of shiny things or ridiculous statements that some of my students come up with.
    Whenever new students show up to a service I make it a point to let them know these things about me so they aren't surprised and frightened away by how crazy I really am. Sometimes they come back and sometimes they run away. Okay, they don't really ever run away. I just picture that in my head sometimes when I get a look from a student that says something like, "Where the hell did this freak come from."

Well no matter how short, crazy, weird, young, energetic, or boring I am this is where I am and this is what God has called me to do. So, here I go!

B.