Youth Ministry Committee? What is that? Recently, I’ve discovered that not every denomination uses the word “committee” in their vocabulary. In fact they don’t even use anything that resembles a committees period!
If you do not have a Youth Ministry Committee working by your side you need to form one – NOW! The Youth Ministry Committee is an important spoke in your wheel of Youth Ministry. They are a group of adults who work as a team alongside the Youth Minister. Together they plan and minister to kids through a variety of events and activities. It is by working together they can combine their strengths and make the greatest impact in kids lives! These adults need to be people who love God and love kids!!
The 3 Essential P’s needed for a strong Youth Ministry Committee:
The Youth Ministry Committee must do three things in order for everyone to thrive: pray, plan, and play. As the leader of the team you need to help the group to understand that ultimately their goal is to minister to kids, their friends, and new visiting kids by building relationships with them. With these three things in the forefront of their mind, the Youth Ministry Committee will maximize their influence in the kids lives.
Prayer – Prayer needs to be number one focus for the Youth Ministry Committee! Praying for the kids daily lives and spiritual growth, for opportunities for them to connect with individuals, patience when required, and for direction as we interact with the youth.
Planning – Planning out events together gives the team a chance to take ownership. Having said that, it is important to remember that they are still looking to you to lead them. For example, a meeting is most efficient and effective if you have already done some preliminary brainstorming, investigating and laying out some rough drafts of plans to present to the committee. Starting from scratch with the committee would overwhelm them and really bog down the process. Present your ideas with an open mind set. This allows room for input and different twists on the same event. Also, planning out a year in advance is important. This allows you a chance to reserve camp sites, or fundraise for a big summer trip. It also gives you and your team the time needed to be creative and add their own fun twists to an event. (Give brand new ideas extra time to catch fire and inspire your team. Allow the group time to mull on the new idea so they can wrap their heads around it. Sometimes, you need to put it on a shelf and present it again later. It’s possible it will be accepted in the future when they are more equipped for the experience.)
Playing – Playing together helps the team get to know each other and bring joy to the play they will experience with kids. Play is the key to getting inside the boundaries kids have built up around themselves to stay “safe”. If they see you are willing to care about them, in spite of their walls, you may be able to play your way into their trust. If so, then introducing them to personal relationship with Jesus becomes a real possibility!
What are some tips you might add to having a strong Youth Ministry committee (team)?
Please add to the conversation. We’ll be glad you did. Be kind and share this with someone who could use these tools.
During the first few years of my 7 year career in Youth Ministry my husband worked part-time at a bicycle shop nearby. This gave him the freedom to help me out with overnight youth events and such. The shop experience gave us a chance to minister to some teens outside of our youth group which was pretty neat. It was also a fun topic for Joel to “bond” with the guys in the youth group. The highlight for me was having Joel and I ride our tandem bicycle down the center aisle to the front of the church during worship so I could do a special youth sermon. It was a hoot!
I still find it amazing how 2 skinny bicycle tires can hold up to a few hundred pounds and transport all that weight from A to B! However, there are times when even the tires can’t help but become shaped like a taco! Back in those days Joel saw many a sad squished bike wheel in the shop. One major part of a bike wheels strength is the multiple thin spokes crisscrossing from one side to the other. If it weren’t for those spokes the circle would squish! But working together those skinny little pieces of metal can hold a whole lot of weight.
And The Point Is?
We are each a lot like that bike tire. We need structure and support to keep us strong or else we can get taco-d too, by angry parents, grumpy teens, unsupportive congregational members, uninvolved pastors, etc. When doing youth ministry we need the support of others who understand what we do, how hard we work, a listening ear, words of advice, and a whole lot of prayer!
4 Tools 4 Youth Ministry
Our company, Prepare For Rain, is all about being supportive spokes to hard working folks! We want to help you chase your passions and impact this world in a holy way. We hope our words of support will help you:
Set healthy boundaries for yourself both at church and home
Encouragement for the tough days
Experience an at-a-girl or at-a-boy for those good days!
Discover tools for your Youth Ministry Tool Kit!
We hope to be one of your “holy spokes” of support!! If you have a topic you’d like us to address send me an a message at the bottom of this page. We will do our best to answer your questions or find someone else who can!
Learn more about an amazing power tool made just for YMs like you (by clicking here)!!
Here is a bonus website with inspiring quotes and pics.
Safe Travel and remember to Share The Road! 🙂
Please add to the conversation. We’ll be glad you did. Be kind and share this with someone who needs these tools.
It’s a well-known truism that if something isn’t “broke”–like a car or something you depend on–you don’t mess with it. “Mess with it” meaning attempting to fix it. Which really means “making it better.” Because what’s the point? The argument is that if something is working properly, even if it’s not especially cool or “new,” it still works…so monkeying around with it could go badly.
It’s not a bad principle. Until it breaks.
In our society, even post- “Great Recession” (assuming you believe the premise that we are, in fact, “post”), we’ve become accustomed to just throwing things away when they are broken. Which is odd, since people post-Depression rarely threw anything away, even when it was broken. They’d fix it.
The Banker’s Light Fiasco
Many years ago I worked in a small, 3rd generation office supply store. The prices were a bit higher than the big box stores we’re used to now, but they had great service and many products you simply couldn’t get elsewhere. Like the banker’s light you see above. It’s mine. I’ve owned it almost 20 years. So, when the irresistible force of something that had been hanging in my office decided to let go, the lamp became the immovable object that stopped it. Until it couldn’t.
Looking at the collected remains, and tentatively putting a few together–like a nightmare jigsaw puzzle, I decided it was worth fixing. What you see is the result. Super-glue to the rescue! Where the bits of glass were too far gone to redeem, I filled in the void with clear caulking.
Viola! Good as new…and it looks cooler, too.
Come on! You know it looks gnarly and you want one now. Word of advice: make stuff “broke” carefully…
Go For “Broke”
OK, so I fixed a busted lamp. Is there a metaphor here? Indeed, there is.
When a relationship looks like the lamp, what does our culture advocate? Dump it. Dump the loser. It’s broke. Get a new one. Move on and let go. That viewpoint is everywhere in social media. This comes from a Facebook post of a friend:
Keep people in your life that truly love you, motivate you, encourage you, inspire you, enhance you and make you happy. If you have people who do none of the above, let them go.
Am I so naive as to think that all relationships must be continued, even when toxic? Of course not. But here’s the rub. Where do you see toxic in the maxim above? Doesn’t the manifesto strike you as, at least, a little too egocentric? More to the point, who really just discovers one day that they have relationships with people who aren’t like this? Wouldn’t that say more about their own motivations?
5 Steps to More Satisfaction in Life
Lose the sense of royal disdain. Just because someone in your life doesn’t fulfill Your Highness’s needs all the time, show some royal grace. You might be the grump someday. It could happen.
Get your vision checked. Rather than going through your day like Mr. Magoo, see whose life you can bring love, motivation, encouragement and inspiration to. Let them be in charge of their own happiness.
Own your own. Look after your own happiness. Really. We need others, yes. But not to the extent we dump them when they fail to meet our lengthy list of expectations.
Seek out discomfort. Have you ever learned something, been enhanced or motivated…by someone that just rubbed you wrong? Thought so.
Seize the day. When relationships are less than satisfying, try fixing them first. Work at it. Consume and discard people at your own risk. One day, you might be the one “let go.”
Engage here. What are your thoughts? Agree? Strongly disagree? For more steps to living a satisfied life, click here.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get downright discouraged about stuff. I work really hard and things just don’t always go the way I had hoped. There are times that I think for all the effort I have put in it should work but life doesn’t hand out A’s for effort. (Bummer huh?) Can you relate?
However, I have observed in myself and others that our attitude towards everything we put effort into does matter! I love watching the Olympics and seeing people giving everything they’ve got. But what I really love are the stories behind the athlete. It’s not the winners that grab my attention. My heartstrings are tugged when I know the challenges a person overcame just to get to participate in the Olympics. It’s their attitude that ultimately got them to where they are. A person can be awesome at something but when things don’t go just their way, take on a sour attitude, and actually sabotage their own dreams.
Is Everything
Now I don’t know about you but I can get pretty stuck sometimes emotionally. I get a picture in my head and that is what I want to accomplish, period! When things don’t go as I plan, like anyone, I have a choice to make, either get ticked or step back and get creative. This, of course, is easier said than done. Sometimes I get really passionate about stuff. But being a donkey’s behind doesn’t get me anywhere! I have to talk myself out of feeling like I have every right to have a big old pitty party highlighted with lovely outbursts of frustration and a few colorful words.
Being a songwriter I have found that writing a song about life’s speed bumps is a great way to go! A few years ago I wrote a song called, The Construction Man Blues, because there was so much construction going on that I couldn’t start recording my third CD. It’s one of my favorites!
A few months later I was on my way to a gig, when my iPhone map-app sent me to a construction site instead of the Coffee Studio. I was honked off at first and figured it wouldn’t be worth writing because it would be a bit too colorful to share (ahem, unhelpful attitude). But then I figured out it could be a fun topic and I got creative (better attitude).
Ironically, the delay of recording my 3rd CD has allowed me the time and the life experiences I needed to be able to write several new songs. These news songs I think are some of my best material yet! The CD is going to have a nice mix of folk and blues when it is done. These are my two favorite styles.
Remember, attitude is everything. It can move you forward or drag you down. It’s solely up to you!
What moments in your life have required you to shift your attitude?
Add to the conversation (below)! We’ll be glad you did.
As stated in my first blog, completing a task or “closing a loop” can be a huge challenge for me. Especially if I am thinking of other things while doing them. Some tasks are extra difficult due to the fact that there is time sensitivity involved. I shared in part one that opening and closing windows to help keep the house cool during the summer has two parts to it. The second part (*closing*) is normally the tricky part.
Another task I briefly mentioned in blog #1 involves doing more than one thing at a time. Example: feeding the cats. This may not seem like a multi-tasking sort of task but when you have three cats that don’t eat the same food or eat in the same location then you have got yourself a job!
For me something this “simple” will sometimes result in me leaving a can of food out by accident. It’s often the middle cat whose can I leave out for anyone to snack on. I get the first cat all set up downstairs but feeding two boys upstairs in separate rooms with separate foods is often when things go awry. I forget to loop back around to pick up the can of food for cat #2 because I am now focused on cat #3. Plus, since cat #3 is located in the laundry room, I immediately start thinking about the laundry situation and getting a load going. Once I do that, there is no memory of the can of food left out for #2 until it’s lunch time or my hubby finds it.
Persistent About Allowing Growth
Overall, multi-tasking is just not something that works for me. And, even though I have been through this struggle a million times it doesn’t improve the situation. It doesn’t matter if “on pain of death it must be done” because I can’t keep all those thoughts and feelings in some organized order in my head all at once.
I have to break this task down to feeding each animal individually. I also need to ask myself, “Have you finished the task at hand?” “Do you have any loops you need to close before moving on to the next task?”
This, of course, is easier said than done. So, I often put sticky notes up to remind me of daily open loops like washing clothes so we don’t run out! (More on that topic next time.)
Another helpful trick I have learned is pairing up a task you often forget to do with something you always remember to do. That way it will become a new habit much faster than usual.
It takes (persistent) work and a positive attitude (positivity!). If you get down on yourself, you just give yourself another thing to distract yourself with. Experiment! Try different tactics and see what works for you.
Keep on keepin’ on!
Add to the conversation! We’ll be glad you did. Is there an area in your life you’re persistent at improving? Are you striving to bring positivity along for the ride? Invite someone you know into this conversation. Everyone is welcome.
