Month: December 2006

A statement of the obvious. We knew you were a bad boy… no here is proof. (It was all in the tie, the tie gave away your "badness")

This isn’t a complete thought, but it’s what I am thinking. In fact, this resembles more of a brainstorm than a complete thought.

The strength of our new model is that all the ministry staff share duties. The result is a feeling from congregants that all of ministry staff at the church are ministers to all of the church. (This is unlike most current "big church" models)

An interesting thing happens in today’s evangelical church. Most ministry’s "copy" more than they model the way they organize their ministry… and since the evangelical church practically believes that size=blessing+good management, most smaller churches copy larger churches. The results are always mixed.. and shade towards "bad." (This is particularly amplified in existing and even old congregations) Logically, this happens because the small church doesn’t take the time to research what parts of the model will work in their community and which ones should be left in the book. The assume that since something worked in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Atlanta, that the demographics are "close enough" to be transferable to where they live. (Sidenote: If that were true… wouldn’t all those megachurches that everyone copies be doing the same things? Um, they aren’t… because they take the time and energy to get to know their community very well and then build a model)

Moving along…

What does this have to do with youth ministry, general? I’ve noticed that in most cases, the church and the youth ministry aren’t on the same model. So… the youth group operates as an entirely different entity and as a result, this contributes to a loss as students can’t find a similar sense of community that they had in the youth group…. so they just leave. Just so everyone knows this… if your youth ministry is competing against the rest of the church… you are losing.

In most cases, the youth group/youth pastor needs to change to fit the students into the church model. (Translation: I think most youth pastors are terrible team players on their staffs!) This is what I’m trying to do in Romeo. This isn’t as cheesy as the Mark DeVries "Family-based youth ministry" but uses a couple of the same principles to truly integrate the youth ministry into the church and visa versa.

The thought looks like this… what if the church’s worship leader were the youth group’s worship leader? What would happen if the senior pastor became the pastor of students? What would happen if the youth pastor became the pastor to children? What would happen if the children’s director lead a small group for adults? In the business world we called this teamwork. The buzz word was "cross training" so that I could take the place of other people and visa versa in an emergency. It works and makes sense in business… but because this isn’t taught in Bible colleges and seminaries… it doesn’t happen in church world. Instead, everyone has their own little "programs" that they defend at all cost to the loss of the entire body.

This is what we are trying to fix in Romeo. We (the ministry staff) want the whole church to see me as their pastor. So I participate in Children’s ministry and adult ministry and other areas that play to my strengths. We want the senior pastor to be seen by children as their pastor. So he comes to the youth group intentionally, teaches children regularly, he plays to his strengths and makes the youth group better and KidsTown better. We want the worship leader to be accepted by adults, children, and students as their worship leader… so he leads worship at youth group and is a big part of our MainStreet kids night.  On and on and on.

Why won’t this work at most churches? Pride.

Does this take away from people’s skill sets? Um, not at all… instead it amplifies people’s skills across the small church. I will always be an expert in adolescence. The children’s director will always know more about children’s ministry than me. The worship leader… he’s still a worship leader. Obviously, the senior pastor is still the expert in preaching. On and on.

What’s the benefit? I think the people of our church are getting it. All-in-all, it is more healthy and more biblical than the typical programmatic model that is more about turf wars than redemptive life. I am doing more of what are my strengths even if I have given up some of my "youth ministry turf." On and on… we chose to sacrifice what we want (as individuals) for the good of the church, as a whole.

Sounds like a sports team, eh?