There has been a quiet, yet interesting discussion going on behind the scenes at YMX. It revolves around a very touchy issue for us: Are all people invited to join the site, or is it exclusive to a certain type of person?
Exclusivity in anything labeled "Christian" automatically makes people nervous. To one extreme some feel like since salvation is free and open to all, that most parts of Christianity and the church ought to be accessible to all as well. To the other extreme, some feel like there should be private areas of Christianity that allow for frank discussion away from the eyes and misunderstanding of those outside of Christianity, and in YMX’s case… outside of youth ministry altogether. (The reality is that the discussion is clearly in the middle of these extremes as no one is to one extreme or the other.
When we, collaboratively, created YMX a couple years back we agreed on a mission statement that is summarized with "we want to encourage, support, and serve those who reach out to today’s amazing adolescents."
Clearly, from the inception of the company we wanted a place where
people who cared about youth ministry could talk about youth ministry
for the betterment of youth ministry. This is also why we’ve never
allowed anyone under 18 to join the site. We wanted to help the youth
worker to the exclusion of helping the students. But we’ve never
intended that to mean that people who aren’t vocational youth workers
can’t be a part of our community… we only ask that you care about
reaching today’s amazing adolescents. (Who I believe will completely
rock the church with their deep questions and strong convictions.)
In the past few years I’ve read a lot of books on business and church leadership.
(Wonder why, eh?) All of them say the same thing… you need to focus
on what you are good at in order to be great. Saying "no" to some good
opportunities will lead to great opportunities. The more you focus on
what you’re good at, the better.
Ministries and companies who try to do it all end up doing it all mediocre.
One of the interesting things about leading a company that is based on a collaboration is that I often get outvoted.
This makes a lot of small business owners and even friends of mine
scratch their heads. Derek and I have always felt like this, even though we own the site… we don’t own the site. You can’t own a community.
Certainly, there are things we would never stand for. (Like heresy or a
desire to make a terrible business decision.) At the same time we’ve
surrounded ourselves with good people who wouldn’t ever want to do
something stupid with the company. I actually think these people care more about the integrity of the company than Derek or I combined! In the course of a "even though we own the site… we don’t own the site"
we have to acknowledge the next scary reality. The community can reform
our purpose. The community can go a direction we never foresaw. The
community can push us a place I am uncomfortable.
And that’s OK. It’s the nature of collaborative work.
One thing that I love about YMX, and probably the biggest reason I wanted to create the site this way is that YMX isn’t about Adam McLane and Derek Tang. It’s about youth workers leaning on one another. This is based on a weakness of most Christian businesses… and a reason I think that most of them will ultimately fail while YMX succeeds. Most Christian businesses are about the individual who runs things. While that is a powerful way to launch a business, it’s never the way to create an enduring one. We want Youth Ministry Exchange to endure beyond Derek and I.
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