‘What Soul Survivor Got Wrong’… a missed opportunity

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(First written in 2012, edited 2014

(more recent post: ‘The Christology of Soul Survivor)

Last year at Soul Survivor a very young (like 15 yo) member of the prayer or ‘enabling’ team kept showing up whenever anyone in my group was being prayed for and he had a couple of bad habits. First, he pushed! He would stand in front of the person he was praying for and give them a little nudge in the chest or just apply continuous pressure until they went down. As soon as they hit the deck he moved on to ‘get’ somebody else.

The other thing he did – which I found even more annoying – is he’d tell you that you were praying wrong. So he would physically move your hand to ‘more powerful praying positions.’ I was praying for one of my young people one evening and he came, moved my hand from the young person’s shoulder to their chest, but assured me that ‘everything else you’re doing is great!’ I wanted to ask whether or not the Holy Spirit has a better line of fire now my hand was out of the way?

I thought the enabling team was there to make sure groups we’re looking after each other and blessing what God was doing – not interrupting experienced group leaders to choreograph hand positions and push people over who looked a wee bit wobbly?

Why The Crit?… Hater!

I don’t want to come off as overly critical (too late right?). Soul Survivor is great! It has an amazing legacy and done some incredible ministry. I’ve been taking youth groups for years and we always get a lot out of it. We meet God there and are blessed by powerful, Spirit-led ministry. I respect the people running it and it forms an effective part of my annual youth work discipleship and mission strategy. But there is stuff that Soul Survivor has done (and does do) that has caused issues for young people that I’ve worked with over the years.

Soul Survivor wields an enormous amount of influence in the youth work world and has developed a large proportion of youth leaders in my generation. Big influence means big responsibility, and even though I know they get lots of unhelpful criticism – they need to set the example for how to properly evaluate themselves in humility and be clear about their mistakes, as well as their many successes.

The Opportunity Andy Was Given

I was thrilled therefore when in 2011, Andy Croft was given a huge opportunity to talk at the Youth Work Summit on ‘What Soul Survivor got Wrong.’ This was an opportunity to cut through all the crazy criticism they get and say, ‘here’s how we see it and how we’re trying to grow as a movement and serve your youth groups better – we know we haven’t always gotten it right and we’re aware of specific areas to develop and here’s how we’ve been doing it.’

Unfortunately, this is not the talk Andy gave. The ten minute message took on a tone that straddled the lines between subversively defensive and so broad that you couldn’t really blame them for anything. I’ve got mounds of respect for Crofty, but this really was a missed opportunity to set an example of how to engage critique well. The only real conclusion I was able to draw was that Soul Survivor does not effectively evaluate its ministry, doesn’t have a language developed to talk about its issues in public, and is not aware of specific areas that they need to grow in.

What Andy said

Andy talked about the initial phone call where he was given this opportunity, which he seemed a bit upset by. He moved on to say he realized the importance of evaluating ministry and so would give it a shot.

1. Evaluate ministries against their aims

He explained that ministries should be evaluated against what they are trying to achieve – which is right as long as that the aims are specific enough to be valuable. The aim Andy gave for Soul Survivor was “to reach young people and to equip them to live the whole of their lives for Jesus.”

This is a good aim – but is practically the same broad aim of every other youth ministry in the Christian world. How can we effectively evaluate against that? I guess we can in a very broad way, but such as a single aim, it’s very difficult to come up with specifics.

A better way of saying it might be “to reach young people and to equip them to live the whole of their lives for Jesus – by developing an event that works alongside churches to provide a worship and teaching experience that motivates, inspires, encourages direction change and sets trends for Christian youth culture.” That would have been more of a  benchmark to measure.

As it is, using such a broad aim means we have no effective tool to measure Soul Survivor’s success, or of course its issues.

2. What we can’t do

Andy continued by saying there are lots of things that Soul Survivor cannot do and shouldn’t be held responsible for. Again he’s right! Understanding the resource scope of what you’re doing is simply a smart thing to do!

He said that ‘As an event, we cannot do discipleship or effective followup.’ And fair enough – that’s true too. But if a key, pivotal part of Soul Survivor’s aim is to ‘equip young people to live their whole lives for Jesus’, isn’t that the heartbeat of discipleship? If we measure Soul Survivor against it’s given aim, then is it perhaps missing out something significant here?

More importantly though, Andy just took Soul Survivor off the hook. With a hugely broad aim, a tip of the hat to ‘well we can’t do everything’ and no specifics of what they can and should do we’re left with nothing but straw men and meanies like me saying ‘hang on a minute?!?’

3. No history to measure by

Andy said that as Soul Survivor is only ’19 years young’ it’s harder to evaluate how successful it’s been. Under that logic though the vast majority of the UK’s youth ministry to can’t be clearly evaluated or held to account either. Nor can – as my wife pointed out – most of our marriages.

Because of Soul Survivor operating over the last two decades, Andy says that the group to look at are the 20s and 30s of today’s church and culture. Andy makes some insightful and important observations here: 20s and 30s are missing from our churches and sexual ethics in that age group is confused at best.

Because of these two points Andy says Soul Survivor could have done better; particularly showing more clearly the cost of following Jesus and teaching better about relationships. And good on him – yes Soul Survivor can take a measure of responsibility here and should work on those two areas. However, so can just about everything else in society – and again, are these not primarily discipleship areas?

These are not Soul Survivor specific points. All of us – education, church, politics, the leadership of previous generations – have had a hand to play in today’s 20s and 30s culture. Even though I share Andy’s passion to teach the cost of following Jesus and be clear on sexual ethics – if that’s the only thing Soul Survivor takes away from two decades of youth event ministry we’re going to be found seriously wanting.

So what did Soul Survivor get wrong?

This is harsh, but it’s hard to take away anything of significance, or at least specificity, from what Andy shared. Andy ended with a short ‘what we’ve got right’ section. If I’m honest, it sounded like practiced criticism-rebuffing rather than effective evaluation or humble honesty.

I’ve not yet read or heard anything from Soul Survivor that demonstrates a language for evaluation and improvement. It must be there because Soul Survivor has developed and has got better every year. From this message four years ago though, however, it looks like Soul Survivor still thinks of itself as the underdog trying to get a seat at the big boys table.

What we need from you Soul Survivor

Soul Survivor please, you need to set the example and lead the way. Help us on the ground know that even you get it wrong and show us how to effectively evaluate, own up to, and change our own shortcomings. We need you to set the example!

Where do I think Soul Survivor may have got it wrong

I think Soul Survivor has got some specifics to answer for. I’m sure they have answers to some of these, different opinions on others, and have better insight for some I’ve missed.

– It’s part in the increased commercialization of Christian media
– The consumerist approach to the events that only nominally (or awkwardly) create space for genuine community participation
– The events effectively replace many youth groups short term mission trips that always used to be the first weeks of summer
– Copycat events all over the UK trying to replicate the Soul Survivor feeling, splitting churches and keeping young people in youth groups rather than growing into full Church life – not to mention draining resources and people
– Assuming everyone wants to be the happy, sweaty extrovert for the week
– Not always explaining the Gospel before asking people to respond to it by becoming a Christian
– Creating a generation (my generation) of youth leaders who think the Soul Survivor formula is the way to run week-in-week-out youth work
– An odd approach to the distinct parts of lament and joy
– An energy sapping approach to spirituality that doesn’t take physical health seriously enough in emotional encounters
– Although getting better, a poor respect historically for Bible Teaching
– Inspiring people to be on stage rather than on the front lines (made better with Soul Action’s work)
– Perhaps not properly training or supervising their enabling team.

I want to end by saying I have masses of respect for Soul Survivor – but I want them to lead too. They are not a reactionary group any more – they are mainstream and need to be taking their place as servant-hearted, wise and humble leaders in the UK Youth Ministry scene.

 

Evaluating Your Youth Project 1: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

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One of the top reasons youth projects fizzle, fail and die is that they are not regularly checked against purpose and evaluated against resources.

We start things off guns blazing but have only packed enough ammo for the initial shock campaign – so we get stuck in youthwork no-mans land covered in sweat, blood and tears wondering what to do, how to control things and most importantly – which way is out?

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to outline three methods to evaluate a youth project:

  1. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (GBU)
  2. SWOT (or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)
  3. Purpose & Place

So kicking off today with…

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

I’m starting with this because it’s pig easy to remember and implement! You can do this for hours or you can do this for ten minutes; in fact GBU is used as a regular part of my weekly project debriefs.

Simply put it means:

– What was good?

– What wasn’t so good?

– What else is worth mentioning but we can’t decide whether it was good or not?

GBU is observational first and foremost: What did you see; objectively, what happened.

What Was Good?

The G. This – as with all stages of GBU – is deliberately a broad category. GBU is by nature an organic analytical tool that creates open conversation not closed categories. Good is – what struck you as being useful, helpful, fun, enjoyable, memorable, a right choice, a piece of divine providence or something that can be built on.

Not everyone is going to agree and some folk are going to argue that what felt good to one person was horrible for someone else. And that’s fine! This is there to be a basic conversation starter to keep things on the table.

What Was Bad?

The B. In all evaluation methods you need disclaimers – with the bad what we’re talking about is areas to improve and grow. We need to be careful not to be too judgmental or personal. Key words are ‘constructive’ and ‘objective.’

The bad is the bucket to put areas that didn’t go so well, or ‘it would have been nice if… but..’, also the areas that we’re not firing on all jets yet, or the needs we still have etc. It’s sometimes a good idea in this section to talk about what solutions might be necessary.

What Was Ugly?

The U. Nice and simple – this is a great way to break tension from the bad. It’s a convenient ‘agree to disagree’ category and an area to bring up potential ideas. U gives a bucket to put all the things we wanted to say but don’t really register as good or bad.

Oddly the Ugly category tends to be the one that generates most conversation and ideas.

So get on with it!

It takes us about ten minutes to do GBU after three of my weekly projects. We check up on each other, have good conversations and it fuels our prayer time. Well worth it! And – if someone takes notes you can get together each term and look for patterns and suggest changes.

Good fun, easy to do and could potentially save a youth project!

Next time: SWOT.

Stars and Stripes: 12 Ways USA and UK Youth Work Differ

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When I started as a full time youth worker I read every book and listened to every talk I could get my hands on! I found some powerful principles and timeless truths that have been priceless in my ministry with young people.

All the best, most current, official looking and practically driven books and talks that I found came from America. This caused some real problems and disruptions in my job.

Disclaimer… I love America!

Now I love America – so much so that I married an American! I’ve also spoken on an American Camp, helped in an American Church youth group, worked with an American schools-based evangelistic charity and nearly went to an American seminary… twice. I’ve been to a bunch of American churches and spent two years living with a whole bunch of American friends. Just to cross the line into the weird I also stayed up all night to watch the general election coverage after months routinely quizzing my American friends and family on their state polls.

However…

The UK is not America. As much as we love American television, drool over classic American muscle cars and lap up American fashion and food we are not America. We love ‘reality show exchanges’ too – we sent Gordon Ramsay to host Masterchef America and we gained David Hasselhoff for Britain’s Got Talent – although the jury is probably still out on who got the fuzzy end of that lollypop! The UK is simply not the same as America.

In Youthwork

This is really evident when we try to apply contextual American ministry models to UK based Churches. So when I picked up the ministry model in ‘Doug Field’s ‘Purpose Driven Youth Ministry’ and tried to slap it onto a South London Church youth club things fell apart.

First off, for each of the 5 areas of purpose he proposes you need a specific group or project to create the funnel effect he’s looking for. Then each of these require their own leadership, bureaucracy, accountability and resources. I ran a pretty big youth club for the UK, but suddenly shaking it up and segregating it this way meant 1. Christians rarely mixed with non-Christians in constructive ways, 2. the leadership group became stretched beyond their means, 3. we were more polarized from the Church itself, 4. the community fell apart, and 5. everything shrank and lost its depth. This took three years to rebuild!

Today I visit lots of youth clubs as part of my job, and you can tell pretty quickly which ones – just like I did – have been listening to too much advice from over the pond. It’s not that American youth ministry models don’t work – it’s that they don’t work prepackaged, flat-packed and superimposed over here uncritically.

The Cultural, Contextual and Church Differences between the UK and the USA that Impact Youthwork

Some of you might remember that Mark Driscoll, gave a controversial (go figure!) interview a couple of years back on the shape and direction of the British Church. Even though he made some fair points, he also demonstrated a real lack of understanding of the differences between American and British history and culture, and specifically the church culture.

I’m going to carefully and (hopefully) open-handedly suggest some differences between the established Youth Work of America and that of the UK.

These aren’t all true across the board, but these do tend to be true of the ministries that publish books and get to speak in the UK. I’m not therefore, saying all American Youth Work looks like this, I’m saying the one’s that most easily get to influence us often tend to.

I’m not going to spend time outlining every single way these differences affect what we do. Instead I hope just to encourage you to think contextually and culturally when you design youth work in the UK.

So – in no particular order:

America is still in ‘some form of’ Christendom whereas the UK is long past it

The UK’s Church driven state is at least 50 years gone now. We are 3 generations behind from when Church attendance was a cultural expectation. This, as a basic rule of thumb, makes our youth clubs and our interaction with family units much smaller. More on this here.

American Christian Media is a Much Larger Industry

There is an enormous market in the US for Christian books, films, television, music and magazines whereas in the UK it is virtually non-existent and shrinking. This sometimes contributes towards youth work projects that seek to compete with consumer culture rather than standing against it.

America Has a Much More Positive Leader-Worship Culture

This can make American youth ministry much more leader-centric and individual-driven than is necessarily helpful. In the UK we like to beat people down. In fact we really can’t help ourselves. We don’t romance about political leaders and we don’t esteem charismatic church leaders quite so high either. The US loves a hero, but in the UK we simply don’t allow people to become heroes.

America Has a Recent Mega-Church History

Whatever your view on the ‘mega-church’ we didn’t see a whole lot of it in the UK. In the US however, the emergence of the mega-church completely changed church and mission culture. The mega-churches dried smaller community churches up, stole all the most talented leaders and put them in a melting pot, and they started a trend towards the business model, becoming more professional looking and culture competing entities.

America Has More Clearly Defined Expectations For Youth Work

In the UK, employing a full time youth worker is a relatively new thing and – once we’ve done it – we don’t know what to do with them. We don’t know how to manage them, how to nurture them, or how to fit them into the life of the church. In the US, youth work is well established and has a much more understood bureaucracy – for better or for worse.

American Youth Projects Are Simply Bigger

This is largely because of the Christendom thing – but its true, the average youth club in the UK is about 5 people and its more like 25 in the US. A reasonably large youth group in the UK would be 50+ but gets to several hundred in the US.

American Teams Look More Like Teams

With formal interview processes, application forms, regular reviews, project areas, dedicated secretaries and line management strings – American youth ministries have a much more formal team structure than the UK’s general ‘lets see who shows up’ approach. Something that we really could learn from, but in our own culturally specific way.

The American Church Doesn’t Have The Same Monarchical History

The UK Church has hundreds of years of political and foreign war-time history saturating it. For examples look at the French Revolution, the emergence of Catholicism, the Reformation, the Crusades and the heavily state-agenda controlled nonsense of Henry VIII, the dynamics betwwen Edward and Victoria. The American church got to observe and learn from this after-the-fact; we’re lumbered with it and all of its decaying baggage.

The American Church is Much More Polarized

American mainstream-media presented views (recently more-so after the Bush Jr era) are incredibly polarized with extreme flanks; even if most of the country are actually centrists. With things like politics, morality, ethics, and theology much more clearly presented in preaching, American churches can be more competitive and polarized than in the UK. This becomes more true when you factor in huge sub-culture driven churches, ethnicity-driven churches, and cult-driven churches.

American Youth Work is Better Funded And Resourced

Some of the youth work budgets for American churches would simply blow your mind. In the UK simply having a clearly outlined budget is a miracle. Not to mention that each US State has a bunch of well operated perennial Christian camps and retreats that would make even our best look like a second-hand tent sale.

American Youth Work is More System Driven Than Community Driven

To their credit, some AMAZING youth leaders in the States have been saying this for a while (DeVries, Cosby etc.). It’s an issue they push against but we don’t necessarily need to as hard.

American Separation of Church and State Dictates Schools Work

Unless you work with a private school, talking about Jesus in any context just isn’t going to cut it. In the UK we have far more openness and opportunity to bring Jesus, God and Acts Of Worship into the Schools. The constitution of America simply will not allow the level of overt honesty and openness that we have available here.

So what?

Lets learn from and stand with our American brothers and sisters, but please please please, lets also think how to build a UK expression of Church in our UK Youthwork! 🙂

 

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Style vs Substance: a youthwork showdown

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“Don’t bother with the style – just get on with the substance.”

“Stop trying to make it relevant, and just preach the Bible.”

“If you’re teaching the Gospel, the ascetics won’t matter.”

“If you’re showing authentic love, then style won’t be a factor.”

Heard phrases like this before? Me too! In fact I’ve been slammed in meetings before now for trying to make my youth groups fun and relevant to the detriment of (at least in the meeting’s view) depth and authenticity.

Since posting “youth work is 10 years out of date” I’ve had several comments that effectively said the things above. I could reduce these down to folk only reading the first half or even just the title of a post, however there still is a genuine concern behind them.

It sounds right too doesn’t it? ‘Just be authentic and Gospel-centered and you won’t need to worry about style.’ It sounds right, and wise, and Godly. It sounds like a driven passion for young people and truth. It’s a shame through, that it’s load of crap.

You see when it comes to relevancy and style you’ve only got two options: 1. Think about it and 2. Don’t think about it.

  1. Think about it
    Think about it properly, lay it before God and make ‘take-it-captive-for-Christ’ decisions. Talk to Godly people and decide how to carefully implement a style and how to enforce the right boundaries within it.
  2. Don’t think about it
    Neglect the discussion. Neglect to respect the world that young people live in. Don’t talk to God or Godly people. Crack on with content and simply see what style develops on its own – because it will!

Active vs Passive Style Development
There is no ‘style-free’ option. You always, always make style decisions, either actively with God and Godly people, or passively through negligence.

Think about it. How you present any content in your youth group is a style decision. Do you give talks, have small group studies? Who leads and how? Where do you meet and when? How do you advertise? How do you make first contact with young people? What books do you buy them? How do you choose themes and teaching material? Do you have music, food, games? What kind of chairs do they sit on? What rules do you have? What do you let them wear? What do you wear?

Everything you do in your youth group creates some kind of style rightly or wrongly. You simply cannot have a ‘don’t bother with style’ approach – that will always end up with negligence and a style developing passively.

This means either the young people themselves will dictate the style, or you will unknowingly dictate it for them. The former usually results in polarised spirituality; a group that’s Christian in situ but with no clue how to act it out in real life. The later often creates a group that you fight with and that only takes in a minuscule amount of substance and content anyway.

This high-minded approach is one of the reasons youth groups either die out or get overrun. Enforcing our style over theirs is irrelevant and letting theirs overtake the group is anarchy.

Why Is This Neglect?
You have a responsibility to give these young people the best respect, care, love, teaching and mentoring possible. This often means meeting them where they are at, rather than waiting for them to catch up.

If you don’t approach style like this actively you will:

– Neglect the young people’s world that they have to deal with and live in – so your content will prove irrelevant.
– Neglect the places and times un-churched young people connect – so you will be missionally ineffective.
– Neglect the real differences between you and them – so you will be leader-centric.
– Neglect the desperate needs they have that are missing in their world – so will program driven rather than community driven.
– Neglect Godly decisions needed to keep them feeling safe and secure – so will be just another stress in their lives.

Style Is Important!
Style Is Important. Find me one place in the Bible where teaching happened out of context of people? We are called to create a space where young people have the absolute best chance of hearing the Gospel, experiencing God’s love, and learning how to take those things applicably into real life! We also have a responsibility to lead them in 1 Cor. 12 Body-Of-Christ style community. Creating these spaces require intentional style conversations and discussions!

Some Rules Of Thumb
When you start asking what style you should create to make your teaching and community welcoming and relevant there are a few rules of thumb to consider:

  1. Gospel Should Drive Style
    Rather than Gospel instead of style – Gospel should dictate style. You should not create a space that contradicts the Gospel or limits its reach. Allowing a relevant style doesn’t mean you can let just anything from the world infiltrate your group.
  2. Authenticity Should Drive Style
    Too much style in youth work is copied from / or set to compete with secular consumer culture. Your style should be driven by a sense of reality, human depth, community substance, participation and timeless reality.
  3. Personality Should Drive Style
    Many youth groups cater to one personality type or people group. Often small group driven projects cater to the introvert and middle class – often concert driven projects cater to the extrovert and working class. Who are the young people you know and does your space allow for varied personality types and backgrounds?
  4. Purpose Should Drive Style
    What and who is your group or project for? If you’re aiming at first contact then you simply cannot impose a totally full-on Christian-driven morality on their space. Style should create a context where your aims and content are going to be most effective.
  5. Context Should Drive Style
    You could meet in an Inner-City School, or a rural chapel. The young people could be primarily churched, un-churched, working or middle class. Think hard about where you are and who you pool from and bring that into the conversation.
  6. Relevancy Should Drive Style
    This was the heart behind my ‘youthwork is 10 years out of date’ post. We should seek to create a style which is relevant and applicable to them today so that our teaching can be more clearly received.
  7. Resources Should Drive Style
    If you don’t have lighting rigs, rock bands, a massive hall and dozens of able leaders then the modern music concert approach probably isn’t for you! Try to match what you want to create realistically with what God has given you to work with as good stewards.
  8. Young People Should Drive Style
    Have young people themselves give ideas on, feed into and participate in the creation and implementation of your style. They frankly get it better than we do anyway.
  9. Applicable Content Should Drive Style
    When you have thought carefully about style you are able to craft the delivery method for your content that will be most heard, understood and applied for your group. ‘We have a two hour Bible Study’ is not impressive if the young people switch off after the first five minutes. I’d rather have a five minute talk where the group took in every word and tried to apply it to their lives than a one hour completely ignored Bible study any day!

Summary
Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater by poo pooing style! It’s Godly, respectful and loving to consider the best ways to interact with and present truth to young people. Style will always be there, the big question is are you with God’s help going to be in control of it – or will it be in control of you.

Frankly sometimes a bit of style is just what’s needed to make the content go in!

55 Ways To Show Young People That You Love Them

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A random collection – many from ‘Your first two years in Youth Ministry’ by Doug Fields. Have fun with them!

  1. Notice them
  2. Smile a lot
  3. Learn their names
  4. Seek them out
  5. Remember their birthdays
  6. Ask them about themselves
  7. Look in their eyes when you talk to them
  8. Listen to them
  9. Play games with them
  10. Laugh with them
  11. Be nice
  12. Reassure them that their feelings are okay
  13. Set boundaries to keep them safe
  14. Be honest
  15. Be yourself
  16. Listen to their stories
  17. Notice when they are acting differently
  18. Present options when they seek your advice
  19. Suggest better options when they act up
  20. Share their excitement
  21. Notice them when they’re absent
  22. Give them space when they need it
  23. Contribute to their collections
  24. Laugh at their (appropriate) jokes
  25. Be relaxed
  26. Kneel, squat, or sit so you are at their eye-level
  27. Answer their questions
  28. Tell them how fab they are
  29. Learn what they have to teach
  30. Make yourself available
  31. Find a common interest
  32. Apologise when you’ve done something wrong
  33. Listen to their fav music with them
  34. Thank them
  35. Give them compliments
  36. Acknowledge their efforts
  37. Meet their parents
  38. Be excited when you see them
  39. Let them act their age
  40. Be consistent
  41. Marvel at what they can do
  42. Ask them to help you
  43. Applaud their successes
  44. Pray with them
  45. Be flexible
  46. Delight in their uniqueness
  47. Let them make mistakes
  48. Give them immediate feedback
  49. Include them in conversations
  50. Respect them
  51. Be silly together
  52. Trust them
  53. Encourage them to help others
  54. Believe what they say
  55. Involve them in decisions

The 7 Cs of Effective Godly Discipline

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So a few months back I was involved with a training night looking at both the theory and theology behind effective discipline in youth groups. I will be slowly bobbing my notes up here, starting today with the easiest bit to copy and paste: the 7 Cs of Effective Godly Disciple.

This is from the ‘discipline basics’ section and it gives us seven things effective discipline should always be. So, without further ado:

Cultural
There is no universal language of discipline; it’s always dependent on the place and time we’re in. Discipline needs to work within the specific cultural setting in order to be correctly understood and applied. How I disciplined in certain areas of London is very different to areas of North Wales.

Contextual
Different groups place different expectations on behavior. How one might expect young people to behave at a gig is different to a small group Bible study; as discipline must fit the relevant culture, it must also fit the relevant context.

Community Driven
Discipline in a community should always benefit the community. The community as a whole should feature in the hows, whys, and whens of disciplining individuals. As in the body of Christ, when one part suffers so does the whole. Equally, the community to some degree should be involved in the disciple process.

Corrective
Effective discipline influences change in behavior – it doesn’t stop behavior dead. In the same way repentance doesn’t stop sinful behavior, it corrects behavior in order to not be sinful.

Caring
Discipline should be motivated by and done with a heart that cares for the individual and community in question. It should be driven by love as is the Father’s discipline of us.

Consistent
Discipline needs to be consistent throughout the team and as time develops. There should be a set of standards and expectations that don’t change based on mood or what people you’re dealing with. The Father is same yesterday, today, and forever – we know where we stand with him; young people should always know where they stand in order to feel safe and respected.

Considered
Discipline needs to be talked about with other team members and with young people. There needs to be broad expectations before discipline has to be used. Deciding together during a team meeting some principles of discipline is a must.

3 Things Better Than A Youth Worker

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So you’re Eldership board have finally let you spend some money on a youth worker – fab! Great news. I’m full on behind you. But let’s take a lean back for a second and look up at the giant 22nd Century looming before us… is a youth leader really what you need?

I’ve got to be careful here or I’ll render myself unemployable, but I’d like to argue that there are three roles other than a youth leader a Church could spend some money on and might even be more effective long term.

So first off, why not a youth leader. Well we’re flaky, generally restless, and don’t stick around all that long. Sometimes we add young people to the church, but usually in a polarizing way. We’re also a little naive and grumpy, and we’ll probably break a lot of windows and leave a mess in the office. There’s also great Charities that employ area youth workers and interns that you could plug in to (YFC, Urban Saints, SU, YWAM, YoungLife, TFG, Oasis etc).

So where else could you put your money? Well here’s three options. If you can – get all three; they’ll make a great team!

  1. A School’s Worker

This could be part-time and even better, could be shared among several churches – ‘winner!’ says the treasurer.

Any church based youth ministry that isn’t fed from schools work in 10 years time will simply not exist. School is where the action is and more importantly it’s where the young people are! All after-school clubs (church youth groups definitely included) are falling in popularity, and when they’re not they tend to be inward focused rather than feeder groups.

An effective school’s worker will be able to connect with young people, parents, teachers, and the community in one swoop. A school’s worker needs to add quality content to the life and curriculum of the school and creatively engage with any opportunity they afford.

There’s nothing stopping a school’s worker running an after school club too y’know!

  1. A Family’s Worker

This role takes seriously integration, mentoring, all-age worship, and community. All Churches need to thrive off these things!

An effective family’s worker will simply help community happen. They will oversee Children’s and youth activities, engage with parents, coordinate all-age services, and have the umph and perspective to grow these things together. They will help with parenting courses, church socials, trips away, and regular visiting. They are also the ideal people to set up peer-mentoring programs.

A Family’s worker could also have a youth cell group! Why not, eh?

  1. A Social Worker

A church based social worker will help families and individuals engage properly and healthily with their circumstances. This can also be part-time.

Trained social workers are just what the church need today; they are people-centered, wise, discerning, personally motivated, and well educated in how the world works. They can offer family mediation, grief counseling, debt advice, benefits consultation, homework help, careers direction, home-bound visits and all sorts of other real-human-life-type help.

A great social worker can also train and release people to work more like the Body of Christ by helping people love and serve each other more effectively.

Hey, they could even do some one-to-ones with teenagers!

Youth Ministry MOT

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Every car I’ve ever owned bar one has failed its MOT every time. Sometimes they failed on stupid things like ‘there’s residue on the windscreen below the mirror where a GPS was once suckered on.’ Once or twice however, they have failed on cataclysmic problems. I once owned a Peugeot 406 which needed the entire exhaust system replacing at roughly the same price I’d bought the car for 8 months earlier. MOTs can kill you!

The truth is though, a lack of MOT is much more likely to kill you than the MOT itself. Whether with the authorities for driving illegally, or worse – driving unaware of a disastrous mechanical problem waiting to pounce like a coiled snake on the road. What if you’re breaks are about to fail or your airbags are jammed? Without an MOT you just don’t know what dangers are lurking under the surface waiting to cause disaster.

The same thing is true for people and churches isn’t it? Without a decent spiritual inventory and checkup every once in a while you could be heading unknown towards burnout and disaster. You could be suffocating under the fog of temptation, struggling against the yoke of celebrity worship, or – more simply – teaching continued crap to young people!

In a previous youth ministry job a new Associate Pastor arrived who offered spiritual MOTs to congregation members. For many this was a massive refreshment, encouragement and wake up call! So how about youth workers?

I offer here some MOT questions for a Youth Leader to check up on both your spirituality and your ministry. These questions are aimed at checking your teachability, discipleship journey, celebrity status/pride,

These are all based on the last six months.
– What training in youth work have you attended?
– What book(s) on youth work have you read?
– What book(s) on spirituality or Christian life have you read?
– Who have you talked consistently to about the depths of your relationship with Jesus?
– Who have you confessed your sin too / who has challenged you on your sin? How have you responded?
– What would happen to your ministry if you we’re injured and had to take six months off work starting today?
– What ministry area(s) have you trained/released/seen potential in a volunteer to take a lead in?
– What things have you said ‘no’ to and why?
– How many full days off have you taken?
– How many extra days out have you taken to just be with God?
– How many date nights / play-dates / visits with friends have you canceled & why?
– What key personal issue / conflict / struggle / shortcoming have you identified and have been working on? Have you seen growth?
– What consuming life event(s) has been going on and how has that influenced your ministry?
– Who have you invested personal discipleship time into consistently?
– Have you called your mum?
– What non-Christians have you connected with?
– How regularly have you started / ended your day with Jesus?
– How would you rate your gratitude level?
– Are you generally enjoying worshiping God with others?
– Are you regularly enjoying worshiping God alone?
– Do you get irrationally angry with road users?
– Do you speak with God about both trivial and deep things?
– Does God get regular opportunities to speak to you?
– If you made a list of you top ten passions and your top ten gifts (with probable overlap), how many are you getting to use regularly?
– Have you made opportunities to discretely serve others without recognition?

I’m sure there’s plenty of other good questions – these all came of the cuff. I’ll probably add / change them as time goes on. If you have others you’d like to add comment or message me and I’ll put them up.

When Job shows up at your youth group – on Premier Youth and Children’s Magazine

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Great to have a post on Premier Youthwork Blog this week. This time on working with tragedy in our youth groups – when ‘Job’ appears.

Check it out here: http://www.premieryouthwork.com/Read/The-Youthwork-Blog/Young-people-as-Bible-characters-Job?l

For other posts I’ve written for Premier Youthwork Blog, have a look here.

How to Create your own Digital Personal Assistant

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There seems to be an irrefutable law of physics in the youth work world that the better you are with young people the worse you are with admin.

Admin tends to fall into two categories – the blitz and the habitual. The former is what youth workers can do; the creative once in a while overhaul and setup. The latter is the every day throwing off the monkeys so you can shoot the elephants.

As with most youth leaders I too have sat in the fetal position, sucking my thumb muttering “too many monkeys, too many monkeys!”

I’ve been a youth worker in one form or another for about ten years or so, but it’s only in the past couple years that I’ve started to get my admin, PR and communication world on track. I’ve always been able to do the blitz, but I’ve only just started to get down the habitual… nearly. Sort of.

I have effectively created my own digital personal assistant, who I call Margaret after the West Wing’s Chief of Staff PA. Margaret is a collection of apps and software accessible from all my devices that makes all my habitual admin work.

Or you could raid your youth work budget and hire an actual PA. *lol*

Creating A Digital PA

1. What do we need?

For habitual youth work admin we need:

To be mobile – and have easy access to calenders, notes, to-do lists and contacts wherever we are.
To have easy access – to both read and edit all of the above very quickly.
To have instantaneous access – that will update on every device immediately and not rely on us getting to it later.
To be reminded – of what we’ve got to do and be without having to rely on our own memory.
To communicate – easily, clearly and professionally with all the people we have to work with.
To be available – reachable wherever we are… and not when we shouldn’t be.

2. What do we have?

I have three devices; an iPad (which I only use for note taking and talk notes), a laptop (which I use as my powerhouse hub for creating presentations and doing blitz admin sessions) and a mobile phone with unlimited data (which I use for most of my habitual stuff). The latter two I think are essential.

3. How do we make it work?

The following apps are what I use to make this process work:

Google Calender
By far the best online calender. Available on the cloud and syncable with all major calender apps and devices. I share some calenders with team members, some with my line manager and some with my wife helping me see my whole world in context and communicate to those I need to.

I spend one hour a week updating this on Monday morning, and then lots of 30-second chunks in the week updating it when I have conversations or emails.

Every morning Goggle Calender emails me my daily schedule. I also set up notifications on events to let me know 15 or 30 minutes before I’m supposed to be there. This also gives you an excuse to leave if you’re tied up in a meeting (it beeps).

Finally I use ‘tasks’ on Google Calender to give me to do lists and send me notifications.

Using a calender widget on my phone it takes up to 30 seconds to create or edit a date or task. This means I can do it within a conversation or meeting and not have to remember it again. Well worth it!

Google Contacts
Again syncable with all other major apps like Apple Address Book and your phones contact list. It takes a while to set up but once you’ve blitzed this it takes about 10 seconds to edit.

This is linked to my email, my phone, my calender, notes and tasks so I always have access to every person and group that I need.

It’s worth the extra effort to set up groups.

Dropbox
Dropbox (or google drive for a good alternative) is online flash storage. I keep all my documents on this. Not only can I get to anything I need anywhere but it means I have last minute sessions and talks available if something goes wrong.

The other great Dropbox feature is sharing. I have several folders that I share with other users so we can edit documents together in our own time without making crazy duplicates. I can also share files by creating dropbox download links and emailing them to people – no messing about with attachments.

Dropbox comes with 2gb but you can expand this quite a long way for free (I have 25gb free). It’s worth paying the £60 a year for a 100gb though.

Evernote
Evernote is a simple online note creation and organisation tool that I use for just about everything. I can type, photograph, video or record anything and save the note. Often in talks I will photograph the slides and make notes under it.

It’s searchable and easy to maneuver files into categories. You can access it online, sync it with other note software and has very usable apps. You can also download word processing and pdf attachments to it for easy access in meetings.

Evernote also comes with a dedicated email address so you can email notes directly into your Evernote notebook.

My Evernote phone widget is synced with Google Calender so when I take a new note (often using the very useful ‘speech-to-text’ feature) I can have it opened, labeled, titled, tagged, organized and saved within 5 seconds of picking up my phone.

Evernote allows me to work on talks and presentations wherever I am. I then use the Evernote app on my iPad as my talk notes.

Twuffer
For social media I probably don’t have to mention Facebook apps etc. However if you are a Twitter user and need to get info / prayer requests out regularly I recommend linking your Twitter feed to your Facebook timeline and using a free online app called ‘Twuffer.’

Twuffer allows you to schedule all your tweets in advance – something I do once a month with the help of my calender. This reminds my team and prayer warriors whats happening without me having to remember. Twuffer – unlike other tweet schedulers – does not add or change anything in your tweet.

PaperRater
A really simple online-based grammar, spelling and plagiarism checker – basically an online proofreader. It’s great for a quick scan through before sending long or important emails and is very detailed if you’re writing something more substantial.

The only draw back is you can’t copy and paste your proof-read articles so you have to edit your original – still great for the saved embarrassment though!

So…

Those are all the main things that I use to make up my own PA, Margaret. After the initial setup the upkeep of this is one hour a week Monday morning and an extra hour a month catchup. Beyond that these apps just work wherever I am often carrying no more than a phone in my pocket.

Margaret happily just gets on with her job and all the info I need and need to communicate is as easy as saving a document, sending a text or replying to an email.

Not that I’ve got this nailed yet, but the time and stress this has saved me has been fantastic!

I’d love to hear about any other apps or approaches that you have to habitual admin in the youth work world. Please comment below.