In youth ministry, if you have a weekly meeting or event, people call it a program. Planning these meeting times – icebreakers, music, announcements, teaching/preaching – is called programming. Youth leaders all across America do this weekly, sometimes more than once a week.

Of course, pastors and worship leaders do the same thing. They just call it worship instead. So what’s the difference?

• Adult worship almost always has multiple full time staff where youth meetings often have only one and mostly volunteers.
• Adult worship gets it legitimacy from other adults while youth programs get their legitimacy from church leadership instead of teenagers.
• Adult worship follows the trends set by youth ministry on a ten year(ish) delay.

There are too many stereotypes about both youth ministry and church to capture them all, but I tried. I probably went too far or not far enough. My point? It’s time to change our language about programs.

All of us in youth ministry long for those special moments, those Aha moments where someone gets it. Maybe it’s when they first surrender to God or recommit to following him. Whole ministries and events use huge amounts of money and resources to get this one Aha moment.

That’s the opposite of discipleship. It chases the long tail. It might be shaping a spiritual truth in a new way or just a simple conversation that doesn’t seem to have any spiritual significance. Either way it pursues a ministry of nudges that result in longer lasting change.

In a perfect world, both of these happen. One big Aha moment should lead into a long life of faith. But that’s not often the case. You might even say it’s rarely the case. The changes that are happening in youth ministry acknowledge the long tail. It used to be the norm that most of the effort was spent in big events and vibrant meetings. Recession, budget cuts and an awakening to more depth have shifted or are shifting the practices of youth ministry. Instead the long tail is becoming more the norm.

Where are you?

A week or so ago, I got to spend time at The Youth Cartel‘s new experiment Open Seattle. Experimentation is the life blood of youth ministry, so when Adam started promoting this event, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. If for no other reason, this is why The Youth Cartel needs to exist. They embrace the ethos of youth ministry: the willingness to try new things solely for the purpose of ministering to others.

Open Seattle brought together 150 or so youth workers in the space of a day to encourage each other and share stories. It reminded me of the Cornerstone Music Festival. I always went to see a couple of favorite artists, but knew I was going to see several I’d never heard of that surprise me (Ahem… Morgan Schmidt and the Youth Collective).

If you were there, you know what I mean. There was a vibrancy that comes from the collective tribe. We know each other on sight. Community like this doesn’t just happen. It’s built through the struggle of youth ministry. Open Seattle provides an place for all of us to be known and appreciated. Open Seattle=the collective we.

I left feeling like I’d been to something more than a youth conference. The speakers were great, but it was more that they were actually sitting in other sessions rather than retreating into a green room. Maybe this is part of the new paradigm of youth ministry. It feels so much more collegial. If you missed it, try to get to Open Boston.

You want to make the big decisions, the day finally arrives, and then you worry over each of them. What gives?

According to the Heath brothers (and many others), decisions wear us out. They take a lot of energy and can fatigue us as much as heavy exercise. Supposedly two grandmasters of chess can burn 6000 calories in three hours making the decisions needed in a game.

You struggle with the decisions when:

1. There isn’t a clear “right” answer.
2. There are many possible right answers.
3. The outcomes of you decision make big differences.

The issue usually at stake is fear. Most of us are afraid to fail.

In youth ministry, this problem is compounded by the looming threat of approval. If a leader’s (Sr. Pastor) understanding and agreement is the measure of success for another leader (Youth Pastor), then huge pressure rests on each decision.

Acknowledging Freedom
So much of what you do working with students is beyond your control, though. Only God can draw people to himself, change hearts, bring salvation into the lives of teens. Of course, you can do things that look like that. You can build an attractional ministry using behavior modification, but the real outcomes are beyond you.

Decisions based on freedom benefits you. When you release yourself from measuring up to other’s expectations, the result is obvious. Suddenly you can change your focus from seeking approval to doing the right thing at the right time.

For example, you know what to do when a young adult needs advice, but that decision may be clouded when weighed against parents or a pastor’s expectations. Maybe the clear answer for a student is to stop worrying so much about their grades. Or maybe it’s to try doing something that’s not socially acceptable.

When you have to consider the many possible outcomes of that scenario, it’s paralyzing. But if God has the results covered, then all you have to do is follow through with that leading. God will insure the next steps.

One theme I heard a lot when at the NYWC was that of programs. Programming is the bread and butter of ministries across America and much of the world. Through programming, systematic events happen in a controlled way to assure the necessary procedures take place. Sounds a bit like a lab, right?

I was consulting with a youth pastor just before I left. He was asking about the amount of programming he does wondering if he should add more staff. The problem here lies in asking for funds to get more staff. If the level of expectation for programs is at a certain level, asking for more money for staff only increases the expectation. It’s a vicious cycle.

Instead of adding more staff or programming, I focused on ending the cycle. The only way I know to end the programming cycle is to develop a different goal for programs. When we program, usually there are outcomes we program for. The problem is, most outcomes are beyond our ability. Only God can draw people to himself, only the Spirit can change hearts and lives. Granted the Lord often uses people to do this work, but to plan for it is close to heresy.

A better goal in change is adapting practices. We can affect the means by which we engage people. So my advice when looking at change is wrapped around the idea of practices. What practices do you establish with your leadership that enhances and makes more effective the work that God has already begun. Here are five:

1. Listen more
2. Pray more
3. Relieve yourself of your own goals
4. Stop hiding behind books and be more real (vulnerable)
5. Whenever possible, allow space, silence, room for thinking and processing what God is doing

In all of these practices, I want more leaders to watch and wait for the God who cares infinitely more than us about the outcomes of any individual we meet with. Are their others?

When I was in school, I happened to work on the school paper. One of the things we constantly talked about was white space. White space is the part of the page that is left blank (on purpose). It’s also called negative space.

In ministry (and blogging) white space is essential. I have just enjoyed a bout of it. Here are some of the benefits of white space:

1. You find out what you are made of – So often, we busy ourselves to feel worth something. When you discipline yourself to take time, relying on busyness doesn’t cut it. In those times, you will find out more about who you are.

2. You get better at details – Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available to achieve it. When you have more time, you will usually do tasks better. What I do is delve deeper into my projects and come out with even better ideas.

3. You enjoy more – After the initial shock of having too much free time, you will actually enjoy more of the things you filled your life with. Eating, driving, writing take on new flavors and nuance. I actually started driving to work a different way everyday just so I could take my time to think.

Certainly there are more benefits than I mentioned, but I have other things to do. If you value yourself, your ministry and your relationships, create some white space.

Jesus tells us you can’t serve two masters. I was thinking about this from the viewpoint of American Idol. You can never make all three love you all the time. In youth ministry, we often try to serve at least three. There are the young adults that show up when we do ministry, there are the parents of the teens and then there’s the leadership of the church.

They all have different agendas and expectations. The youth want many different things, but they probably are actually there to figure out how to practice their faith (unless you use some attractional, bait and switch tactics, that it). The parents often want you to do what they feel helpless in – keeping their children moral and giving them a faith that makes them happy. The leadership of the church often wants as little complaint against you while producing the largest gains possible.

This sounds bleak and negative, but it has been proven so often it has become cliche. So what’s a youth worker to do?

1. Be clear – Know what it is that you’re doing. This is why it’s so important to have a philosophy of ministry and a strategy to accomplish it.

2. Communicate – If you have a philosophy and strategy, it behooves you to let as many people know what it is as possible. Your leaders should know it before you even accept a position with them. Parents should know it as soon as their children become involved. Adolescents should know it at least implicitly in the practices of your ministry.

3. Be bold – It’s hard sticking with a goal and the means to accomplish it. You will get push back and criticism. That’s really great because it gives an opportunity to further communicate and clarify your direction.

So don’t serve three masters. Have a plan. Refine it as much as possible. Repeat to yourself at critical times, “I am not crazy for doing this.”

Links

• Infect Your Staff With Risk – from Mark via MaxiMeyer.

There is a unique connection between art and creation. The work of art amazes, but it also points to the artist more than the art. Look at Water Lilies and you see a work of art. Look deeper at each brush stroke and choice of color and you see the artist. Art highlights the artist more than the actual piece itself.

Discipleship mirrors art in the same way. When God the artist created us, he did so with a deliberate plan. He carefully thought through each detail that would become an essential part of us. Nothing went unnoticed in his eye. The job of discipleship isn’t for a leader to leave his mark on a disciple. Instead, the work of discipleship reveals God’s work in creating that person.

In this way, spiritual formation gets it wrong. Our created identity is more revealed than it is formed.

Much like a sculptor, a person discipling another knocks away all of the pieces that obscure the work of art underneath. It might be insecurity, shame or self-condemnation that obscures someone from seeing the work of art that they are. Maybe it’s arrogance or avoidance that keeps a person from living as God’s glory. What ever the case, the leader sets his goal in discipleship to reveal the truth underneath all of that.

Then discipleship becomes art.

I once served in a church that had a strong business model. All of the staff were encouraged to read books like Good to Great or Unleashing the Ideavirus. In that church, we talked a LOT about outcomes. It was a church model based on productivity. Most of the focus was on programs and how they produced the outcomes we were looking for.

Something happened to me while thinking through these ideas.

I don’t believe in outcomes based ministry.

That might be a little strong to some. I realized it in a conversation I had recently when someone was reading some of my thoughts. The asked me what was the purpose of what I was doing. Why do things differently? What were my outcomes?

I just blinked… several times… There it was staring me in the face. I don’t believe in outcomes.

To clarify, let me say that I don’t think you can measure a ministry or the efforts of any minister by numbers, conversions, Bible verses memorized, attendance, percentages, fiery hoops jumped through, prayers prayed, or anything other silly measurable that I can think of.

It hit me somewhere in my past. All of the measurable outcomes I could think of were either not good measures of spiritual growth or out of my hands. If I could turn someone’s heart, make them aware of the Spirit’s prompting, even call the Lord to their attention apart from God, that would be amazing. But I can’t do those things on my own. In fact, those are things only God can do.

So I’m left with two choices. Either I measure things that I can do, but don’t really matter, or I try to recognize what God does and try to participate in it.