Tag: crisis

  • Anxiety in Youth Ministry

    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.

  • Youth Worker Book of Hope ON SALE NOW!

    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.

    Youth Worker Book of Hope

  • Medium-sized Church Crisis… Let’s Talk Money

    medium-sized-church-crisis

    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!

  • And you thought our housing market fell?

    Check out this story too… 3000 abandoned cars at the Dubai airport with the keys in the ignition!

  • Two Kinds of Medium Sized Church People

    Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money.

    I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At the end of the day I’m meeting two types of churchoers. Once you cut past the nice fluff they say about their churches and preacher they are really either small church people or megachurch people.

    What does this mean for medium-sized church? My experience in medium-sized churches is that there is a tension between these two types of people. One is resistant of anything “small church” so stuff that is appealing to the small church is annoying to them and visa versa. Eventually, misguided and unaccepted tension results in hurt feelings, bitterness, disappointment, and a range of other typical medium-church angst.

    And that angst is why I’m saying the medium church is in crisis… Eventually, church leaders must chose to lead their church one direction or the other: Lead towards smaller environments or toward becoming a megachurch. The cultural division is causing this squeeze. The financial crisis merely accelerates the trend.

    A Personal Example

    In Romeo, we mislabeled these cultural issues as a “personal preference issue” instead of a cultural issue. Big mistake! Our small church folks didn’t mind if the worship team wasn’t professional sounding or if the church basement was a bit too homey for potlucks. Small church people find those things endearing… maybe even spiritual.

    Meanwhile, the megachurch people wanted everything to be like the megachurch they used to go to and they wanted the church to become. Everything was compared to the megachurch down the road or the stuff they saw on TV or enjoyed at a conference or read about online. To the megachurch people, the failure of the small church people to realize all that Romeo could become was an abomination… a spiritual failure at worse and a lack of vision at best.

    See… this isn’t about money at all. Maybe I’ll be called a heretic for this? But, I will tell you what 10 years of church ministry has taught me about giving. Giving has 0% to do with what people are taught from the Bible and 100% to do with whether or not they feel that their money will further a cause they believe in. People are just sophisticated like that. They see right through the pleas for cash to your motivation. When motivations converge they give. When they disagree they give somewhere else. Christians are extremely generous… but they won’t give to a church simply because they go there.

    Next, let’s talk about money. I’ve only hinted at it, lets hit it straight away next time.

    Then, I want to talk about the superiority of small church and megachurch missions in our culture. This is the core reason for the crisis.

  • Medium-sized church crisis


    I guess this diagram is rather self-explanatory, eh? Over the last 4-5 months I’ve had several conversations in which the discussion centered on this diagram. So I submit it to you to chew on.

    Thoughts?

    If you are seeing the same thing, what are the plusses and minuses of this trend?

    If you think I’m nuts, let me know!

  • The McLane Bailout Plan

    I’ve listened to all of the ideas. The $700 billion bailout is just over the top stupid. While the housing market is screwed up, bailing out bad businesses isn’t the right way to do it.

    Why not just let all of those people in crappy deals refinance in FHA fixed rate mortgages? Seems like offering folks an easy way to refinance to a bond-backed fixed mortgage would be a lot less expensive and pour trillions of US bases dollars into the economy.

    My other idea is to split the $700 billion equally among my friends. So, if you want a cut of the $700 billion just leave a comment declaring me your friend and I’ll let George know, ok?