A basic glossary of ‘integrated worship’ terms.

In the last few years, ‘mixed’ or ‘integrated’ worship has become more of a priority topic across the church. There is, however, a general lack of clarity around the key terms.

To some degree that’s okay! It is an emerging dialogue after all, and that needs some fluidity. At another level, however, using the same terms to mean different things can stop conversations at the gate.

To that end, here is a basic glossary of some key terms we use around the topic of integrated worship.

I imagine there will be some disagreement on whether I’ve attached exactly the right meaning to each right term. They are evolving, however, and some have taken on additional meanings over time. Hopefully this will still be broadly helpful.

Multigenerational

Gathering people from multiple age categories in the same space at the same time. Emphasis is on proximity, but without a need for direct interaction between ages. Each age group is discipled primarily by their own leaders/pastors.

Intergenerational

Proactively mixing various ages within the same worship activities. Emphasis on mutually shared experiences, cross-age worship interaction, and muti-directional teaching. The ‘church’ is seen as primary discipling agent. Often emphasizes social sciences in learning theory.

Family Focus

Connecting church around family units, primarily supporting family experiences and worship. Single directional teaching and focus on family as the primary discipling agent. Often emphasizes biblical president in learning theory.

Programatic

Homogenous groups and streams emphasised over integration. Distinct programs made for each age-category. Follows a more secular model for education by specializing according to needs. Responsibilities for teaching/worship/discipleship abdicated to ‘professionals.’

Inclusive

Probably most open to interpretation. Usually in worship, a church calling itself ‘inclusive’ will possibly mean 1) actively trying to facilitate worship for people with additional needs and disabilities; 2) affirming of the LGBTQI+ community; or 3) lead by people from different cultural/social/gender backgrounds.

Polar-generational

I’m adding this to describe the reality of how many modern churches attempts at ‘intergen’ or ‘mutigen’ work out in reality. Polargen is when a church primarily reaches two polar-extreme generations (third-age and children), and miss a fabric of work with age-categories between them.

 

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash.

Six observations about ‘professional’ youth ministry

1. Professional doesn’t necessarily mean professional

Professional usually means a trained and experienced person who operates in an employed, full-time position, in order to pursue and develop a set standards and values. It usually comes with expectations, goals, resources, and an accountability structure.

There are very few, broadly agreed upon, standards and values for Christian youth work other than: ‘the youth worker needs to do something with the young people.’ Expectations are usually low, goals poorly or abstractly defined, very little resourcing, and a complete lack of consistent or objective accountability.

2. There aren’t actually that many professional youth workers

Most youth ministry in the UK is delivered by volunteers. In fact, I’d estimate that 70% of all Christian youth work in the UK exclusively depends on volunteers to run. By ‘exclusively’ I mean that this huge proportion of Christian youth ministry is also overseen by volunteers.

I’d then estimate that about 20% of Christian youth ministry in the UK is overseen by half-time, part-time, or job-share youth workers. I’m including curates, associate pastors, assistant ministers, and other staff members to whom youth ministry is not their first calling.

For the last 10%, from available research I’d estimate that there are less than a thousand full time Christian youth workers in the UK, and probably just under one-hundred in credited training centres at this moment in time.

3. There is very little career development for professional youth work

We have all heard the famous statistic that the average youth worker spends only 18-months as a youth worker before moving on to other employment. However, in years of looking, I’ve not been able to track down exactly where that statistic comes from. I’d guess it’s a little better than this and, on the whole, youth workers last one contract, which is usually two to three years.

From talking to ex-Christian youth workers, one of the common reasons I hear for quitting is there was no plan for their development. Now, that might sound materialistic or overly ambitious, but there are clear growth pathways in other areas of full-time ministry that don’t exist in youth work. This leaves the youth worker wondering, cycle after cycle, where everything is heading. Not just with them personally, but with their young people.

Connected with this, I meet very few full-time employed youth workers who have training budgets, reading lists, mentors, personal targets, or even structured line management. If it doesn’t look like anyone in the church takes it seriously, why should the youth worker?

4. Professional youth workers take over

Youth workers always struggle with recruitment; we always need just a few more volunteers. And something I’ve seen time and time again when churches hire a youth worker is all their regular volunteers (who were running the youth work) quit, or step back.

This is a double-barrelled expectation problem: On one side, the church suddenly expects the youth worker to do all the youth work, so they’re not needed anymore; and on the other side, the youth worker believes it’s their job to do all the youth work, and that no one else could do it as well as them. Burnout, or worse, quickly follows.

Sometimes what comes with this is baggage-approches from the youth worker where the professional youth worker drags-and-drops project styles they’ve seen work elsewhere, rather than developing something specific to the needs of their new local area… steamrolling over all the people who have known the needs of that area for years!

5. Professional is a dirty, dirty word in youth ministry

There’s always a little gut-twisting feeling when someone talks about “professionalism in ministry.” And I get it! We don’t want to pretend that we’re a business offering a product or producing a consumerist brand for people to buy into. We’re not professionals, we’re family! I get all of that, however, this attitude has also led to a huge abuse of employed church workers.

Professionalism doesn’t need to mean secularism, consumerism, or materialism. But it should mean objectively high standards for duty of care and the delivery of ministry. It should mean helpful layers of accountability, structured line-management, and resources to grow as a person.

6. None of this is new information, so why can’t we fix it?

I’m probably preaching to the choir, and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of this before at conferences, in books, or from the many stories of youth workers who have been through it have told.

Churches have suffered because the youth workers haven’t been up to task. Youth workers have suffered because churches haven’t known how to take care of them. Young people have suffered because both the church and the youth worker can’t figure all this out.

There needs to be more conversation, there needs to be better standards, and there needs to be more we can do.

So what?

Youth ministry is a dying profession. That’s a brutal thing to say, but it’s an honest look at the numbers. There are fewer youth workers employed now than at any other point since the 1990s. There are fewer people in youth ministry training, there’s fewer courses available, there’s fewer conferences, fewer books, and fewer resources. The average number of young people in a Christian youth group is 5-12, and they only exist in 25% of churches.

We will not fix the quantity of our youth ministers, or the quality of their training until we’re able to properly address the problems in both our attitudes and our approaches what youth ministry really is.

We need to do better.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be writing to a number of church leaders and those with network and denominational oversight to ask them for a conversation. I want to see what they are aware of, what could be done about it, and whether a joined-up conversation might be possible in the future. If you’re interested in hearing more about this, and would like to be involved, please let me know.

 

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Church planting vs. Church pruning

There are, I think, two fundamental ways to grow something larger; you plant, or you prune. You separate and divide, like cells; or you cut away pathways that are stopping fresh growth.

Basic nurturing ingredients towards growth (water, sunlight, nutrients) are not growth strategies. They’re essential care ingredients. Regardless of your desire for the size or yield of anything organic, basic care is essential, and lack of this care is negligent and abusive. This is worth another conversation at another time.

So, for new growth, it comes down to plant or prune.

If you’ve spent time with me on this topic, then you’ll know I’m not a huge fan of the word ‘planting’ for churches, because as you’ll know—if you’re a gardener—that to have a successful new plant, you will need to begin with lots of options knowing that many won’t make it and will die in the soil. We don’t do that with children. Each child is carefully nurtured as if its life and growth and health are utterly indispensable – which of course it is! I’d rather talk about birthing churches this way than planting them—but for the sake of the metaphor, here we are: plant or prune.

Planting

Planting is a known quantity, even if it’s very often done badly. I’ve written about poor approaches to church planting previously, which you can read here. Planting begins with pruning, because it takes a small, healthy piece away from a larger plant, then places it in a smaller, high-resourced, mostly protected space. There it can propagate into something sustainable. Usually this means taking a group of good people out from a church, moving them into a different area, handling a lot of the oversight and administration for them for a while, letting them establish themselves and begin a rapport in their new community, then backing off from them almost completely so that they can grow fresh on their own. After a while, that church grows similar to its ‘mother’ church, but because of the new context, is distinct in its own ways.

Two of the most common issues with church planting are 1) a lack of fresh growth—so not taking to new soil well—or 2) reconfiguring other churches around your new plant. In the former, the issue is usually because of poor research of the new area, and a lack of effort to truly understand the new culture that you are moving into. The issue with the latter is moving people from other churches into your plant, so fresh growth isn’t truly happening. Everyone has just moved a seat to the left. Usually, this comes down to having poor ecumenical relationships to begin with.

There is also another set of issues surrounding plants that come out from other churches, but not with those churches’ blessings, so are functionally rebellion or deconstructionist movements, rather than truly church plants. Usually, the problem with these types of plants is isolation, arrogance, and ongoing hurt.

All these issues show, briefly, why church plants are much more complicated than we sometimes think. It’s why I prefer the phrase ‘birthing’, as it demonstrates better the levels of commitment and care involved in creating a ‘new’ church.

So, what about pruning?

Pruning

Basically understood, you prune for three reasons: 1) There’s dead stuff that stunting pathways to new growth, 2) There’s too much badly weighted growth in one area that’s draining resources from being properly distributed from the whole, or 3) You have a particular shape in mind that you think the overall thing should take that needs moulding.

Applying these to church:

1) ‘Dead stuff’ is where you need to be very careful. This can’t just be ‘people that you don’t like.’ There are, however, people who are so toxic to community growth, who are also given far too much power and influence. These people need to be directly challenged and their roles limited. They might represent unrepentant and divisive behaviour, in which case needs to be placed under church discipline. They might need to be removed all together. It will be ugly, and it will be painful, but this kind of pruning is essential for a church to grow.

2) ‘Badly weighted’ is where a certain ministry area, value, or topic has become so much in focus that its success is effectively stealing from the health of the whole. This can create single-issue churches that eventually turn into cliques, or they can create huge stewardship problems where all a church’s resources are eaten up in one need, so the local mission pot is left empty… or you can’t afford to pay your staff a fair wage. Sometimes pruning in these areas means releasing this group from the church to start their own trust or charity. Sometimes you need to connect them to a parachurch group with a similar focus. Other times, you need to be more brutal and speak directly to the movers and shakers about redistributing their resources more intentionally. Again, this kind of pruning is needed for a growing church.

3) ‘A particular shape’ cannot be a vanity exercise. Wanting your church to embrace a certain style, or feel, or model that you’ve seen elsewhere is rarely a good idea if it doesn’t stem naturally from the community it’s in. However, God calls churches specifically to meet certain needs in certain areas with certain skills and resources. Maybe your church sits right in the middle of a busy high street—in which case embracing a high street missional model will be important. Perhaps you’re next to a local school and would like to steer your resources to developing a relationship with that school. These kinds of pruning need a great deal of intentionality, looking strategically at all your focuses and resources and directing them away from anything that doesn’t grow in the shape you feel called to.

Pruning, as opposed to planting, has its own issues. It will always invite direct confrontation, it will always fundamentally change something, it will always involve losing something. It takes a great deal of community care and spiritual wisdom to do it well.

What’s the right option for you?

Church growth is never a straightforward or comfortable topic, but it’s well worth some considered time in an eldership board. Perhaps the time is right to plant, and you’ll need to start a long journey of prayer, conversation, and resource reallocation. Perhaps, though, there’s some dead, or mis-weighted, or poorly stewarded parts to your church that need pruning. This is always hard and should be done with accountability, oversight, and bags of care. Pruning, in lots of ways, is the relationally harder option. The question that should be asked, though, is ‘what will this church be like in five, ten, or even fifty years without it?’ Will it even be?

Planting or pruning? What do you think? Remember, no option is easy, and in both you’ll either have dirty hands or be holding scissors – so make sure you’re pursuing God every step of the way.

 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Youth work skills competency check-up

As part of my coaching, I routinely (about twice a year) ask my coach-ees to fill in a ‘skills competency check-up form.’ This focuses on a wide range of skills in different youth work, leadership, and management areas. It’s not, by any means, an exhaustive list, and not all these skills would apply to all roles. It does, however, give a good base reading on where someone is at, and how they might like to grow.

So, here’s your chance to try it for yourself!

The instructions are simple: On a scale of 1 (very confident) to 5 (not confident at all), how do you rate your competency with the following youth ministry skills? Place a number next to each skill.

If you’d like, you can total the sections to find out your weakest and strongest areas, and – if you absolutely must – total the overall score. But take note that although a lower score is more desirable, its designed to give an idea of how confident you are in these skill areas, not necessarily how skilled you are objectively when compared to others or your job description. (Score ranges from 93 – 465).

It’s a long list. Don’t be daunted. If you’re unsure, simply move on to the next skill. This is designed to give some idea of a few areas to work on, and a way of measuring progress in specific skill areas.

These are not listed in order of importance but are grouped with other similar skill areas and headed as such.

Leading teams

  • Recruiting volunteers
  • Retaining volunteers
  • Inducting new volunteers
  • Recruiting and managing staff / interns
  • Handling disputes, conflict, and complaints
  • Discipline and grievance policies
  • Managing rotas
  • Delegating responsibility
  • Taking authority and making difficult decision
  • Training and supervising others
  • Pastoral care of team members
  • Working knowledge of personality types and learning styles in a team
  • Creating a healthy team culture
  • Developing inclusive environments

Personal management

  • General time management
  • Setting healthy priorities
  • Taking regular time off
  • Effectively using holiday time
  • Being a learner / attending training / reading books
  • Habitual (day-to-day) organisation of tasks

Relational work with young people

  • Developing new relationships
  • Maintaining relationships
  • Defining and maintaining healthy boundaries
  • Helping young people build relationships with others
  • Pastoral care of young people
  • Discipling young people through mentoring
  • Discipling young people through teaching
  • Developing young people as potential leaders
  • Developing young people as worshippers
  • Helping young people process difficulties / tragedy
  • Helping young people process change (schools, bereavement, exam results, future choices)
  • Helping young people process identity development
  • Managing difficult behaviour
  • Understanding of additional educational, social, mental health needs

Communication

  • Giving evangelistic messages
  • Giving discipleship messages
  • Public speaking generally
  • Speaking to a variety of ages
  • Speaking to a variety of academic abilities
  • Communicating with parents
  • Communicating with third parties (social services, schools, local gov., etc.)
  • Communicating with line manager(s)
  • Active listening
  • Different media (phone/post/speaking/email/social media platforms)
  • Design (flyers, logos, brand consistency – for different people groups)
  • Giving reports to various groups

Working with parents

  • Pastoral care of parents
  • Connecting with new parents
  • Handling disputes with parents
  • Providing training for parents
  • Managing parent’s expectations
  • Keeping healthy boundaries with parents regarding their children
  • Working with legal guardians such as child minders, foster parents, and adoptive parents

Third sector management

  • Working understanding charity law
  • Fundraising / income generation / grant management
  • Account and budget management
  • Networking / building partnerships
  • Current and working knowledge of safeguarding laws and policies
  • Current and working knowledge of health and safety laws and policies
  • Working knowledge of confidentiality, data protection and GDPR for info and images
  • Working knowledge of inclusively and equal opportunities
  • Writing and updating risk assessments
  • Developing healthy working relationships with senior staff / trustees / boards
  • Working with third parties such as the police and social services
  • Vision casting and strategy development
  • Setting realistic goals and expectations
  • Managing resources

Schools

  • Giving assemblies
  • Teaching lessons
  • Mentoring students
  • Responding to school-based tragedies and bereavement
  • Working with teachers
  • Working with the curriculum(s)
  • Working with school timetables and calendars
  • Working with enrichment and extra-curricular requirements
  • Running lunchtime clubs
  • Understanding of what is and isn’t allowed as a faith based organisation in school time and spaces

Event /project management

  • Event conception and planning
  • Working with venues
  • Working legal understanding of events (people ratios, fire limits, etc.)
  • Briefing and debriefing with teams
  • Leading fire drills
  • Working knowledge of insurance
  • Promotion, publicity, PR

Spirituality

  • Basic theological understanding across broad essentials (creation, Trinity, etc.)
  • Exegesis/Study & Interpretation of the Bible
  • Writing Bible studies
  • Leading Bible studies without notes or third party resources
  • Praying with young people
  • Praying with team
  • Teaching others to pray
  • Leading/facilitating gathered worship in various styles
  • Personal commitment to prayer, worship and Bible study

Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash

Mental health is about people, not just concepts.

**This post has been sat in my drafts for a while now. I’ve been back and forth on whether or not to post it. It was supposed to be published the day after World Mental Health Day back in early October. Now it’s Mental Health Month, so I’m revisiting it. It’s been written and rewritten quite a few times… and shortened quite a lot. I really hope it serves a good purpose!**

Trigger warning: Contains discussion about clinical Depression and Anxiety. Uses the word ‘clinical’ a lot.

Reader’s digest: Please care about mental health – It’s essential! But even more than that care for and about the people who struggle with poor mental health. We need to pick our battles well, our enemies carefully, and make our challenges within the scope of our often limited understanding.

*

About three years ago I received an email from somebody who was very upset that I used the word ‘depressing’ on a tweet. My tweet said:

“I wish auto-correct would stop changing the word ‘ministry’ to ‘misery’. It’s getting depressing.”

I was told that by using the word depressing in this context, it was ‘detrimental to those living with mental health illness’, and that this ‘feeds into the lack of seriousness people have about mental health.’ I was told the word was unhelpful and inappropriate and should have been replaced by something like ‘disheartening.’ I think they were trying to tell me that the word ‘depressing’ should be reserved exclusively for talking about clinical Depression.

I took the tweet down.

I was upset by the email but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. It’s a few years later now and I think I’m better able to articulate what is was that actually bothered me. A couple of things have changed for me. Firstly, I’ve taken some credited Mental Heath training, and secondly, I received my own clinical diagnosis.

So, auto-correct kept changing ‘ministry’ to ‘misery’. It’s darkly funny, but I really did find that depressing. I was using the word correctly to describe my experience. Little was the person who emailed me to know but I have my own poor mental health journey. I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder (or GAD) which does, fore me, present symptoms of depression. And as a minister, seeing auto-correct constantly changing my life calling to misery really was a problem. It really was depressing. That’s not that weird, right?

I feel like the possibility of something like this should have crossed the person’s mind, or they should have asked a question or two before tooling up for a fight.

Are “depressing” and “Depression” the same thing?

The suggestion in the original email I was sent was that you should only ever use the word ‘depressing’ to refer to those suffering from clinical Depression. This is just wrong.

Now, all of us are different, and I’m sure there are people with clinical Depression who are triggered by any version of that word. We should be sensitive to these people as we meet them! However, in my experience, it’s much more upsetting for people to have their conditions diluted by triviality or cast aside by false heroics.

‘Depressing’ is not a clinical word that we borrow from. It’s not like saying ‘I feel autistic’ or ‘I feel cancerous’. It’s reasonable to feel genuinely, even deeply, depressed by something, share that you’re feeling depressed (in fact you should), and still not have clinical Depression.

All of us can suffer depression at times for various reasons, and it’s important to be both able and allowed to articulate that experience. You can be depressed – even seriously – without having clinical Depression. One doesn’t equal the other all the time. But you still need help and support. It’s also reasonable to feel anxious, without having clinical Anxiety, or to be peopled-out, without being a clinical Sociopath.

Cutting down these distinctions between an adjective and a clinical noun can actually cause some real problems. Not allowing the adjective its own room to breath, for instance, can actually trivialise those with a clinical diagnosis. Sometimes I’m anxious, rationally and understandably, and other times I experience symptoms of my Anxiety. One might be part of the other, but they’re not the same.

Coming back to clinical Depression, it’s a genetic dysfunction in the brain’s mechanism to regulate its mood. Most people feel depressed at times, but Depression is clinical in very specific ways. The Mayo Clinic identifies the causes of Depression as ‘biological differences’, with ‘physical changes in [clinically Depressed people’s] brains’ as well as ‘changes in the function and effect of… neurotransmitters and how they interact with neurocircuits involved in maintaining mood stability.’ You can be neurotypical and still suffer deep feelings of anxiety and depression, but without being clinically Anxious or Depressed. (If these feelings persist or effect your day-to-day life, however, then it is important to see a doctor!)

But there’s more. Limiting any form of the word ‘depressing’ to talk about clinically diagnosed Depression actually disables it as diagnostic tool. A Depression diagnosis is put together by depression events and triggers. Doctors ask questions like ‘how often do you feel depressed?’ ‘How disabling do you find depressing feelings?’ ‘What brings on these depressing feelings?’ Doctors use questions like these, in part, to distinguish between types of depression, as well as deciding between clinical Depression or something that is not Depression – such as other stress or trauma related struggles. All of which require different help and treatment. On the flip side of that, making ‘depressing’ and ‘Depression’ the same thing, elevates natural (and rational) human emotions into a potential self-diagnosis free-for-all.

Where does this leave us?

The original email caused the very thing that they were concerned about. I was hurt, triggered, and I felt increasingly alone, isolated, misunderstood, and rejected as a result. They felt I was trivialising mental health. I think they were.

This, in part, set me up for a long term fail. I have hardly ever since then posted anything about mental health. It cheapened my experience and undermined my condition. It is part of the reason why I rarely talk to people about it now.

I feel that, if you’re not an expert, then you should be very cautious with exactly these kinds of pronouncements and challenges, however well-meaning they might be. Even experts hold back on that kind of chastisement until they properly understand the situation. I also feel like you should be incredibly careful when challenging something as vague as my tweet was without asking questions first.

So maybe this is a careful challenge of my own. Please pick your battles well, your enemies carefully, and make your challenges within the scope of your understanding. And if in doubt, lead with compassion.

Caring about mental health is not enough, we need to care for the people who suffer from poor mental health.

Phew. That’s it from me.

 

Photo by whoislimos on Unsplash

 

 

 

Which Bible should I buy for teenagers? …Another approach.

People are often asking for recommendations for what kind of Bible they should get for their teenagers. Should they go for the NIV knowing it’s probably the one they’ll likely hear in evangelical churches? Should you try something a bit more word-based like the NRSV or the ESV? Maybe they should go for readability, and so pick the NLT, GNB, or NCV. Perhaps they throw caution to the wind and get a Street Bible, Cockney Bible, or something else on the extreme edges of the paraphrase world.

It’s hard right! So, what do you do?

Well, maybe don’t. Or at least don’t just.

It’s probably weird for us to get our heads around this, but throughout most cultures in most of history, most ‘reading’ was done out loud with others, not alone in our heads. The Bible is a such communal book.

The Bible, contrary to our individual-driven, ‘in our own heads’ approach today, was never actually designed to be read alone – at least not mainly read alone. It’s a conversation-driving, worship-building, community-forging, book that’s meant to to be read with others. Yes, we can read it alone and we should, but oddly that wasn’t supposed to be the main way that we do it.

So, rather than fixating on ‘which’ Bible, we should focus on the how. How do we want them to read it, and how are we going to help them develop a relationship with it? So, whatever Bible we decide to buy for a young person, it should come with an invitation.

A Bible gift should always come with an offer to read it with them.

So, when handing a young person a Bible, you should also make sure it comes with a date, a time, and a place where you will read it with them. This could be a regular Bible study in a group, or a personal one-to-one. In this way, whatever the translation they have, you can help them understand what’s going on. You’ll also be in a position to answer immediate questions, direct their reading to helpful sections, and you’ll be instilling the value that Christians need each other to grow.

You should always give a Bible plus time. A Bible should come with the assumption of sharing it with them.

So, don’t just Bible dump. Give them a Bible with an invitation. Make time to read it with them. Do it yourself, get your team on it, or – even better – train people in your church how to read with young people, and do some matchmaking. Encourage young people to also read it with their friends, and steer your small group times to do more led reading, rather than just pre-packaged Bible studies.

These times of Bible reading should mostly be just that. Read a bit, talk about it a bit. Read a bit more, talk about it a bit more. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it shouldn’t be overly prescriptive. Doing it this way gives the Bible more room to speak, but it is also much more applicable, because the young person is driving the reading time with their own questions, thoughts, and ideas. You can vary the speed as you go, and focus in on specific things they’re interested in or struggle with. It’s a much more personal – and I believe more helpful – model of discipleship than just handing them a Bible and giving them a few tips.

My belief is that every young person in a Christian youth group should have someone they can read the Bible with, and every gift of a Bible is also the offer of an invitation.

You should always give a Bible plus time.

Bibles are great! Give them out like sweets. But, just like sweets, offer to share.

 

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

 

7 ways to develop a healthy team culture

[First published on the IVP blog, 2019].

One of the most memorable fairy tales from my childhood was ‘the princess and the pea’. The way I remember the story, an overly-entitled bratty millennial princess couldn’t get comfy enough to fall asleep, and so her wealthy, avocado-farming parents called upon every dashing bloke in her kingdom to fix it.

They tried specialised ear-plugs, whale song, white noise machines, hypnosis, and even narcotic massages. Eventually, however, they resorted to dumping her on a huge pile of old mattresses. The problem came to light when they discovered a tiny pea under her sheets. #middleclassproblems

An unhealthy team culture is very much like that pea. In the vastly rich landscape of leadership dynamics, the culture (that’s the tone or the mood) of a team may seem tiny and insignificant, and yet – left unaddressed – it will leave you awkward and unsettled. When projects aren’t working, you can almost always trace source of the problem back to an unhealthy team culture. Whatever else you try to fix in your leadership style or projects, the pea will remain an issue until you tackle it directly.

What is team culture?

Team culture is basically how the team ‘feels’ to be part of. What does it mean to belong to that team? What are the banter levels, how included do you feel, how easy is it to raise objections or provide ideas? All of this is subversively managed by the team culture. Some kind of culture will always develop in a team, the question is whether that culture will be healthy, and if it will genuinely serve the people involved.

Some team cultures are highly collaborative, with lots of opportunities given to develop ideas together. Others are more authoritarian, with a superhero leader driving the motivation. Some team cultures place a high value on initiative, giving each person a spot in the driving seat, whereas others place a high value on compliance, making sure everyone is pulling in the same direction without mismanaging resources. There is no ‘globally ideal’ culture, only the best fitting culture for the needs of a given context.

When a team culture works, you find much greater synergy between members, conflict resolution will be more natural, recruitment will be easier, and – for want of a better way of putting it – it will just ‘feel’ better. People need to belong in order to commit, and it’s much easier to belong in a healthy team than an unhealthy one.

When a team culture doesn’t work, the resulting traits include lethargy, apathy, a revolving door or short-term volunteers, an undercurrent of gossip, and possibly even safeguarding risks.

Starting to steer the health of culture

Team culture is organic rather than mechanical, which means it needs growing rather than building. Thus, intentionally cultivating a healthy and functional team culture should take real time and genuine patience. However, here are a few ideas to begin to steer the ship into the wind, and get your team culture going in a healthy, direction:

1. Communicate better

Volunteers need information in four main areas: what’s happening when and where; what’s expected of me; what’s the overarching purpose; and what’s the plan for my development? It’s your job to provide answers to these in a flow of communication that is clear without being bombarding. Consider the frequency of communication carefully, and gear the methods towards the people involved, not just your favourite app!

2. Resolve conflicts

Ignored conflicts don’t go away and dominating in conflicts creates stalemates. Learn healthy methods of conflict resolution and deal with problems appropriately, amicably and quickly.

3. Supervise

Find time to meet individually with each team member a few times a year over coffee. Ask direct questions about their struggles and fears, show specifically where they add value, and make a plan for their growth.

4. Train

A regular expectation for training helps team members stay teachable, while giving you a platform to directly address weaknesses in the projects.

5. Let socials be socials

It’s great to get together as team socially, but these pizza nights and bowling tournaments should be free from business. Don’t mix them with strategy meetings and use the time to informally propagate healthy relationships. When socials remain social, you should be able to more clearly define the purpose of your other meetings and stick to your agendas with greater focus.

6. Run briefings

Briefing for fifteen minutes before a project and debriefing afterwards can provide a weekly project with twenty-five hours of carefully facilitated team training and conversation a year. A quick check on who is doing what, how things went, and whether there any things that need to be watched out for provides both security for the team and objectivity for the projects.

7. Say thank you

Small cards, gifts, and quiet affirming conversations go a long way, as do annual public acknowledgments and prizes. Your team are valuable – make sure they know it!

Setting the tone for a healthy culture

All of these tips rely on you approaching your leadership position with your game face on. If you come to projects and meetings with a bad attitude, poor preparation, or a wildly different set of expectations for your team than they have, then it will bleed through like chocolate ice-cream in a sock. If your attitude stinks, so will your team culture.

It’s important to be authentic and genuine, but equally important to take your role as leader seriously. Be a servant, learn active listening, stay teachable, work hard, and trust Jesus. The rest will follow, and your team culture will thrive.

Photo by Pascal Swier on Unsplash

Jesus isn’t the problem – you are!

Ouch, right? I felt it too. But I’m supposed to, because I’m also the problem.

I’ve been a youth worker for over fifteen years, and for more than a decade of that I’ve been a full-time youth evangelist working with unchurched young people. In all my time I’ve never – not once – met a young person who didn’t respond well to Jesus. They think He’s epic, interesting, radical, rebellious, kind-hearted, solid, and trustworthy. They might only think He’s a story character, but that doesn’t make them any less interested in finding out about Him. That is until they get passed the Jesus bit to the ‘us’ bit.

And it’s not just ‘us’ as youth pastors, right? It’s churches in the town, vicars in the news, and preachers on the streets. It’s when weird Christians do weird Christian things that weird Christians often do that cause the biggest ongoing roadblocks to faith.

One of the hardest things I struggle with, as a youth evangelist, is having to introduce young people to Christians after I introduce them to Jesus, and then try to explain away the disconnect between the two of them.

Get out of the way

‘Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”’ [Matthew 19:14]

In my first full-time ministry position, there was a stained-glass window based around that verse. In the central pane was Jesus, looking very white and middle-class, complete with perfectly straightened brown hair, a cool soul-patch, and blue birds twittering around his head. Pudgy blonde children and respectful looking teenagers surrounded him, running around his legs, and clutching onto his fingers.

In the left pane were the children’s parents happily looking on as this strange single man played with their kids. The right pane depicted the disciples, watching pleasantly like they were learning an important lesson.

Are you kidding?

If you are a parent or have done any children’s work, you might imagine a more accurate version of this scene: bedlam. Screaming, freaked out children with goo dripping from their faces being manhandled by their parents away from the strange man, while other ‘helicopter’ parents soared in to get a magic blessing from the miracle worker for their little Beatrice. All the while the disciples – in black bow ties and florescent vests – took on the role of bouncers, forming a cordon to keep them away.

In the middle of this chaos, Jesus effectively yells “Shut up! Get out of the way and let them come!”

There are two important challenges to pick up form this verse. First, Jesus says “let them come.” He doesn’t say make, bribe, force, trick, coerce, pay, or dope up on sugar. They don’t need ‘attracting’, they just needed to be allowed to come. I’ve never met a young person who didn’t express interest when told about Jesus. They might turn off at the first mention of religion, church, or the idea of being a Christian – but Jesus fascinates them.

There is something naturally attractive to a young person about Jesus. My belief is that if Jesus was walking the streets today, young people would follow Him. They might not fully embrace, or totally give their lives over to Him – but they would totally check Him out.

The problem, of course, is that Jesus is walking the streets today – at least technically speaking. The physical embodiment of Jesus today is His church! 1 Corinthians 12 calls the church the body of Christ. We are His witnesses, called to display His character and goodness to the world. If we truly are supposed to look like Jesus, then where are the young people? Why are they not breaking down our doors to figure Him out? Of course, one answer to that is our doors are often locked. Even aside from that though, if the church today truly looks like Jesus in the 1 Corinthians 12 sense, then why are young people not flocking in to find out more?

The second challenge from this verse is contained in Jesus’ second clause, “do not hinder them.” Another way of translating this might be Get out of the way!

The idea that we could get in-between young people and the Author of Life is terrifying! That our practices, attitudes, traditions and sometimes our plain rudeness to young people could actually stop them meeting Jesus is terrifying. Hungry, needy, desperate young people are looking for a direct way to Jesus – but if we are standing in the middle of that road, as bouncers or security guards, then those young people remain hungry, needy, and desperate.

If the disciples, who knew Jesus best, could get this so horribly wrong, then I know that I certainly could too, and I think we as Christians, either passively or actively, often do.

We could easily distil this down to one golden rule for church-based youth work: Point people to Jesus and get out of the way. It sounds good – and it’s a great start – but it’s not the whole story.

I’m writing a book right now as a response to the two challenges of this verse – to look closely at where we might be the problem, and suggest ways to change. If you’re interested to find out more, do comment, get in touch at timgoughuk@gmail.com, or sign up to follow the blog.

 

Photo by Jason Betz on Unsplash

We need to dial down our altar call language.

I’ve been to more Christian youth events and festivals than you could swing a weasel at, and invariably there is always some form of “altar call.”

Whatever you (or I for that matter) might think about an altar call-type response for decision moments, I’m always troubled (translation: ticked, irked, vexed, miffed) by the language we use for a very particular phrase. It sounds something like this:

“If you can’t [stand up, walk to the front, put up a hand, pray out loud, dance the funky chicken—delete as appropriate] then you won’t be able to face the real challenges of living as a Christian.”

What on earth?!? I mean, seriously, are you kidding me?

There is no connection, at all, whatsoever, in-our-wildest-dreams, between standing up in a freakishly scary way at a youth event, and daily walking with and worshipping Jesus. Unless, that is, you’re trying to draw an immediate straight line between their conversion and their potential impending persecution or martyrdom.

Becoming a Christian is starting a relationship with Jesus. It needs a light touch. It’s new, it’s vulnerable, it needs time, love, patience, nurture, mercy, and even more love. It’s immensely personal, and it’s the first step on a long journey. Why would we double-underline that step with a moment that’s going to guilt-trip a bunch of young people, terrify a bunch more, and unhealthily inflate the egos of a lot of the rest?

I think, however, that we tend to see these conversion moments, metaphorically speaking, as marriage ceremonies, rather than first dates. When we give young people the opportunity to follow Jesus, we are inviting them into the earliest stages of discipleship. There will come times for public declarations of commitment, but that’s not the first step. We’ve got to give new converts time to find their feet, and really establish their relationship in a healthy way. We’ve got to set them up for a win!

When a young person accepts Jesus for the first time, it should come with a sense of joy, peace, and excitement to begin a new chapter of their lives. It should come with reflection, openness, and consideration. It should be presented with gentleness and hope. They should never, ever, ever, ever feel bullied into it, or feel pressured into furnishing that moment with unnecessary stress.

Discipleship is the process of preparing them to live as worshippers in a hostile world. Let’s not make that a pre-condition of beginning their new relationship with Jesus.

Ranty-Tim-out.

Does youth ministry need a lighter touch?

As youth workers, we are people of action. We love big verbs, inspirational adjectives, and far-reaching slogans. We want young people who are on totally fire for God; we want to reach the ninety-nine, and we want to change the world more than we change our pants… and then we want to change it again.

None of this is necessarily bad—at all—but it comes down to how quickly do we want these things to happen, and what are the best ways of going about them.

The problem is a lot of youth ministry is a bit hit-and-run. We have a relatively short amount of time to spend with young people week-by-week, and youth workers don’t tend to last long in their jobs. Added to that, every conference we go to has an urgent, imperative tone — something that makes us feel we have to ‘fix’ every young person now before it’s too late! We are always one-generation away from losing young people entirely, right?

I wonder, however, if this youth worker diet of high anxious energy means that we sometimes inadvertently take a sledgehammer to young people when what we really need is a light touch over a longer period.

Sledgehammer youth work

When I talk about sledgehammer youth work, I’m not just talking about “hype”, although that’s certainly a symptom. I’m talking about the rough, often clumsy, and sometimes brutal ways that youth workers employ to convince young people to become Christians as soon as possible—and then live a narrowly framed Christian life. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Talks

Our message planning often comes with subconsciously searching for ‘the tearjerker’. A metaphor, video clip, story, or testimony that’s likely to raise heart rates and provide an experience of high empathy—a moment which will maneuverer young people to place themselves in a story so much that they feel obliged to respond.

Think about how emotionally exhausted young people are at the end of a festival when they’ve had at least ten long talks just like this.

Apologetics

Rather than learning conversational good habits that facilitate healthy exploration, we learn rigid and uncompromising arguments that club young people over the head.

Unwittingly, our apologist position as “fact-giver-in-chief” comes with a few nasty side-effects. For instance, we unsettle their faith in other people who care about them, such as parents or teachers. This then makes them approach lessons or family time with a lot more suspicion than is naturally helpful. It can also furnish them with an arrogant air of superiority… or on the flip side, it can scare them out of asking questions or challenging you if they disagree.

Altar calls

I’m a youth evangelist, so I believe in the importance of facilitating ‘decision moments’ for young people. But if at every occasion we give one of these quote-unquote “alter call’s”, we make it an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, yes-or-no, now-or-never, tomorrow-you-might-wake-up-and-be-dead, experience, then are we truly sure that they’re meeting with Jesus, or just trying to avoid the alternative?

Long-term relationship decisions are considered, not impulsively jumped upon. I didn’t shotgun marry my wife, so why would we expect young people to shotgun the most important long-term relationship they’re ever going to have?

Moral teaching

One thing that’s most expected of us as youth workers (especially by parents) is teaching young people moral, right and ‘Christian’ ways to live. I believe it’s likely that, on average, Christian youth workers spend more time talking about sexuality, drugs, drink, media consumption choices, gender, and [insert other moral lifestyle standard here], than they do directly explaining the gospel of Jesus. That might be a bold thing to say, but it’s reflected in the many youth work resources that have been published since the early 1990s.

All these things are important to talk about, but the nature of youth ministry means that many, if not most, of the young people we work with haven’t yet established a lasting relationship with God yet, so why would we expect them to live like they’ve been full of the Holy Spirit for twenty years? Journeys towards holy living take time, grace, time, mercy, time, community, and time.

Is it as bad as all that?

For the last two years, I’ve been researching why young people leave Christian youth clubs. I’ve immersed myself in forums and groups of young people—and older people who were young people—that left Christian youth clubs and never came back.

There’s quite a large swath of ‘ex-Christian youth’ that have no voice in Christian youth work planning, because they are by nature outside of our spheres of influence. These are the young people who will never come to our events, because to do so would be coming back into a world they rejected.

There are many reasons these ex-Christian youth give for why they left youth clubs, but a few common themes emerge. (These will be the contents of an upcoming book for September 2022, so keep your eyes peeled!) In short, though, they say their youth workers were too dogmatic and sure of themselves, spent far too much time making them feel guilty for what they believed, and because they never felt truly safe to express themselves. They also said we were often too weird, creepy, and fascinated with sex—but that’s for another time… or for my book!

It’s not just ex-Christian youth that have a problem with sledgehammer youth ministry, though. This approach places the responsibility for young people’s faith squarely in the hands of the youth worker. The youth worker’s job becomes to conjure, create, and cultivate that faith, and then convince young people to accept it.

One of the very worst things we could do as youth workers is make our Christian youth so dependent on us to provide the fuel for their vulnerable and emerging faith that they never truly receive it for themselves.

It certainly feels to me like a lot of our youth work is geared towards short sharp calls to action and clumsily promoting a certain form of quick result moral living. Is this really the call of discipleship?

Light touch youth ministry

Light touch youth ministry buckles up for the long haul. And by the long haul, I don’t mean a year, I mean looking at growth pathways between the ages of zero and twenty-one. It requires us to be part of a much larger puzzle and to partner with parents, children’s workers, pastors, schools, councils, mental health groups, scout groups… whoever!… to be part of the tapestry of a growing young person’s life. We need to be better true networkers and team players.

Light touch youth ministry isn’t nervous when young people have bad theology either. Our job is not to fix young people’s thinking but to give them tools for their thinking to grow in a more mature way. For this to work, we need to become better at sharing our stories rather than force-feeding them, and then offering our suggestions rather than providing ultimatums.

Light touch youth ministry isn’t concerned with convincing young people of the truth but providing them with an alternative narrative to explore. In fact, I’d go as far to say that not once in the Bible are we told that it’s our job to convince anybody of anything! Our job is to tell the gospel, share our story, love young people, and always be prepared to give a reason for our hope.

Light touch youth ministry doesn’t need a young person to say “yes” right away. We must give young people permission to go away, reflect, and consider. A choice reflected on before it is acted on is more likely to last. This is about giving young people responsibility over their own faith right from the beginning and then getting out of the way once introductions are made. After some guidance, we need to let young people meet with Jesus on their terms, not ours.

Light touch youth ministry doesn’t demand immediate, physical action. There are people who say that if you can’t stand up and walk to the front to accept Jesus, then you’ll never be able to stand up for him in your Christian life. I am so offended by that idea. There is absolutely no link between being able to stand up and walk to the front of a room and being willing to serve and worship Jesus throughout your life. It’s a dumb suggestion, and all you’re doing by making it is providing a guilt-trip for certain personality types, and beginning a relationship with Jesus fuelled by adrenaline, or worse, fear, rather than love and joy.

Light touch youth ministry doesn’t ask for young people to be a completely different person overnight. The love of Jesus is transformational for sure, and some changes that come over young people are miraculous! But let’s not downplay the ultimate miraculous change being accepting him in the first place! Moral choices and lifestyle changes come from conviction, and that comes from the overflow of a loving and growing relationship with God. They don’t just happen immediately and legalistically because someone told you that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Light touch youth ministry isn’t afraid of open questions, long discussions, multiple opinions, changing ideas, genuine conversations, or vulnerable times of ‘I don’t know.’ A light touch youth minister doesn’t need all the answers to every question a young person has, they only need the answer for the reason for the hope that they themselves have.

Light touch youth ministry provides clear, consistently, gospel teaching. Not to convince a young person, but to offer them a clear alternative narrative to what they live with. Our job is to honestly and lovingly say what we believe and why.

Light touch youth ministry respects the journey, takes its time, truly empowers, gives responsibility, shares, offers, suggests, and walks with young people hoping if they accept Jesus, it will be real and lasting.

Light touch youth ministry isn’t afraid to take years to see fruit!

Caveat—don’t be shy!

A light touch is not a white flag of retreat. It’s not diluting, it’s not watering down, it’s not surrendering, and it’s not backing off on our passion. It’s simply being more respectful of the human beings that we’re sharing with.

A light touch approach shouldn’t make you shy about sharing all the specifics, the details, and the controversies of your faith. In fact, it should do exactly the opposite. You can be so much more of Christian if the young people you’re sharing with don’t feel like it threatens them every time you open your mouth.

So, youth workers, let’s put down the sledgehammer and take a lighter touch with our young people. Let’s take a lighter touch to our relationship building, our discussion habits, and our long-term investment in young people. My instinct is that we will be clearer about the gospel, more honest about what we’re inviting others into, and we will see a longer, deeper change in the young people we work with today.

Since I’ve embraced this, I’ve seen fewer large-scale dramatic moments, sure, but on the flip side I’ve seen far, far more growing, long-term, young disciples that I have confidence will continue to grow for years to come. I think this is worth it.