Over the past several days I’ve started to put words to what I’ve been observing: The tribe of youth ministry is anxious.
2009 has been a ridiculously hard year. Last October when Tony Campolo spoke in Sacramento he said something like… “Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will shake ourselves off and ask, ‘what do we do now?”
Prophetic words.
A year later we have to step back and acknowledge that in many ways Tony was right.
- A down economy has forced tens of thousands of churches to re-evaluate how they spend money. Not a bad thing, but has caused stress at all levels of church staffing.
- A shifting culture, and the owning of the reality that traditional youth ministry programs are fading in their effectiveness… more stress for youth workers.
- Time to think, causes that stress to bubble to the surface.
- The length of time things have been stressful (for some, 2-3 years now) causes this stress to manifest itself.
And the manifestation of what we are all feeling is this anxious elephant in the room at the National Youth Workers Convention. It’s the tears shed as we go to worship. It’s the hunger in conversation. It’s the sleep in the hallways. It’s the lack of eye contact. It’s the nervous laughter.
We are an anxious tribe. We fidget. We wring our hands. We bang our heads against the wall. We wonder what to do with ourselves. We wonder what the future of youth ministry is. We hypothesize. We position ourselves. We take our stress out on others. We blame ourselves. We blame our leaders. We blame our calling. We blame God.
For me… recognizing this tribal anxiety and the disorder that goes with it is 90% of the battle. All of those symptoms in our tribe, I don’t know what to do with them. But anxiety, I know what to do with that.
At work today Mandy handed me an envelope from Zondervan. Holding it, I could feel a lump in it. As I opened it I joked to myself, “Geez, are they paying me in cash these days?” To my delight it was not a bundle of cash, it was my copy of The Youth Worker Book of Hope.
Out of pure selfishness, I flipped to the table of contents and scanned for my chapter. Sure enough, on page 99 my name is in black and white. For a blogger that is a funny thing to see. I’m used to seeing my name on a computer screen… but printed in a book was a tactile experience I wasn’t quite prepared for. It was emotional and fun. I then dutifully read my chapter as if I hadn’t read it like 20 times before.
When this project was originally pitched to me I was literally and figuratively thousands of miles from working at YS. As I’ve blogged about before I didn’t have a strong desire to be a part of a book project. When I walk into a bookstore I love seeing books written by people I know, but for whatever reason I’ve never had a strong desire to walk into a bookstore and find a title with my name on it. While my default answer about any book is always “no,” this project was on a topic near and dear to me– encouraging youth workers faced with crisis. That’s what my chapter is about… how do you handle a crisis in leadership in youth ministry. My working title was “what do you do when the crap hits the fan?” How do you deal with being dealt a bad deck of cards as a leader? I’ve been dealt some fun cards… and I jumped on board with this project because I felt like I had a thing or two to help others.
Of course, the book isn’t about me. It’s about hope. There are lots of chapters and lots of authors sharing stories of how they found hope in hopeless situations. In that regard I think the book appeals to everyone, even people who don’t work at churches. That’s why I want to encourage you to buy the book. (Like right now! It’s only $11.04, you can do it.) It’s the type of book you want to have on your bookshelf for when hard times hit. It’s the type of book you’ll want to hand to a discouraged friend. It’s the type of book you may even want to come back to. Or even reach out and connect with an author.
The first time I talked about this topic, the assumption in comments was that the reason the medium-sized church is struggling is because of money. In my last post on the topic I explored the core problem… that there are no “medium-sized church people” in America. There are big church people and small church people. So… here were: Money problems are the effect and culture is the cause.
3 Financial Reasons the Medium-sized Church Struggles
1. People give to vision, not to guilt. What this means for medium-sized churches is that people simply aren’t going to give to a vision they don’t believe in. So if you talk about growth, the small church folk won’t give and visa versa. See number 3 for what I think the solution is.
2. Video killed the adequate preacher. A former student of mine summed this up well in describing the church she currently attends. “What I like about the worship leader is that he’s not trying to be Crowder or Tomlin.” In a society where everything seems fake, authenticity goes miles.
3. Big buildings are a waste of money. If you’re a megachurch you can spread that cost of a big building around. And massive buildings and huge programs are affordable for megachurches. Otherwise, I think most churches would be wise to shed their buildings and complext programs. This really squeeezes medium-sized churches. That’s why I think most medium-sized churches will go multi-site, video-site, house church, etc. See, I’m not predicting the death of a medium-sized church. I’m predicting that this size church will get creative in order to sharpen their mission.
Again, I’m not claiming to be an expert here. I’m just kind of putting into words a bunch of conversations I’ve had over the past few months. Share your thoughts!
