In a New Church (Month 4) – Planning a win
This is probably the last post in the “New Church” series, because once you are in the church for longer than 4 months its no longer new. The 4th month is an odd one – you’ve still got that “new youth minister” smell, but you are (mostly) fully acclimated to the church and they to you. You’ve met most everybody, you know students’ names, you’ve got a plan in place and have begun to implement it. They call this the “honeymoon” phase where you can do no wrong. Still, its probably the toughest for a youth minister because you’re doing all this great work and not seeing any fruit come to bear yet. Spiritual maturity and growth takes time (if done right), and in that in between time it can be rough on a youth minister.
Obviously, I could just say, “Be patient.” Which is totally true and something we all need to be in student ministry, but doesn’t help at 10:30 on a Wednesday night after giving an awesome lesson only to see your students respond by talking about the new Justin Beiber movie. You are discouraged, you don’t need some blogging jerk telling you to get over it. Also, it can be tough because you might start feeling some pressure from the church leadership. There is often this unspoken (but very real) belief that many in leadership have – if you hire him, they will come. They might never say it, but we’ve all likely felt the pressure at some point to make a splash to say, “This is why you hired me, because I am awesome!” I hope I don’t have to go into why we don’t want to do that, but the pressure is there. Also, your students might be starting to look around and say, “Hmmm, is this all there is?” So, you’re getting pressure internally and externally, so how do you respond?
My suggestion is to find ways in which you can program “Wins” into your ministry. As you are in your first few months, set up what you are doing so that you have milestones to celebrate. It is much easier for people to buy into what you are doing if they see small victories along the way, because small victories lead to bigger victories. What those wins look like will be different for each church. For my church, it was two things. One was a big New Years Eve lockin. It was big because we had nearly all of our students there, and many answered the call to invite friends. The other was this past weekend at CIY Believe, when several of our Junior High students started to get what this Christian stuff is all about.
These kinds of wins help us to stay on track and know that we’re doing the right thing, we just need to stay faithful. They let people in the church know that something good is going on in the student ministry. They get the teens excited about what is going on. They are necessary in the early going because “real wins”, lives changed, often takes longer than a few months.
Please understand, I am not talking about taking short cuts to ministry or setting up a “feel good” ministry where only crowds and show are whats important. I hope that you are building a ministry on the foundation of Jesus, and that your ultimate goal is to grow students into a relationship with him. I like to think of these wins as “previews” or “coming attractions” of whats going to happen later in the ministry, only on a grander scale. They help keep everyone focused and excited and on mission, knowing that its only going to get better.
What are some wins that you have programmed into your ministry?
