Wow, something crazy is happening, 2 blog posts in ONE DAY. Anyway…

Lately I have been doing a lot of reading, planning, thinking and praying (in reverse order). My mind is wizzing with thoughts and idea’s and I am constantly having to remind myself of the well worn cliche ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. I am reading many, many books about youth ministry written by very successful leaders. However the key thing that is standing out to me is that they were successful OVER TIME. They didn’t get to where they are now overnight.

As I read I am filled with so many idea’s of what youth ministry ‘could be’ and then I am struck by the reality of what it currently is. This isn’t a problem, but it would become a problem if I thought I could breach the ‘divide’ overnight. I am not naive enough to think that, thankfully.

Right now I am working out in my mind what th3 2-3 focuses need to be for me this year. I have a planning and visioning document that I put together at the start of the year and I am really focusing on sticking within that plan for now.

What I am also reminded of as I go through this is how awesome God is. I am only where I am now because of him and the more I call on HIM to help me, the easily I feel things become…not because I am doing any more but because I can see how he is picking up the slack.

We truly serve an awesome God!

I’m currently reading through Tim Hawkins book ‘fruit that will last’ in preparation for a youth leader training/networking afternoon. Tim has some absolutely fantastic incites into ‘youth ministry’ form his 21 years experience and the book is challenging to say the least!

One of my major focus’ this year, in fact in my mind my number 1 focus, is to develop a strong leadership team as a foundation for the future of this ministry. My coach asked me last time we met ‘how would you leaders respond to the question ‘Why do we do youth ministry’. He also challenged me to think about what I’d like my leaders to be like, what character attributes, how they might think about and understand youth ministry. These are all area’s that Tim covers very well.

The key for me is looking at how to encourage my youth leaders to understand youth ministry as being all about one thing, bringing honour and Glory to God. One of the main ‘acts’ that leads to this is producing fruit that will last. Everything we do, in my opinion, should be about producing fruit that will last and therefore bring glory and honour to our God. This is, in a nutshell, the ‘why’ of youth ministry.

What about you, what do you think is the purpose and mission of youth ministry? Why do you think churches have youth ministries? Why are you IN youth ministry, if you are?