Rome wasn’t built in a day

Written by discipleoftheway on March 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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!

Categories: WHY, Youth

Fruit that lasts

Written by discipleoftheway on March 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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?

Categories: WHY, Youth

The challenge to ‘be’ as opposed to always ‘do’.

Written by discipleoftheway on February 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I will be the first to admit that I am a task oriented person. I like lists and I like task lists. I like to sit down, start a task, complete a task and then move on down the list. One of the first ‘tasks’ I do each week is to write a to-do list for the week. Now, I do not think that any of this is wrong at all but this week I have been strongly reminded, by many different circumstances, that I need to be better at ‘being’ and to possibly ‘do’ less.

What does this mean? It basically means that I find it very easy to be seen as busy ‘doing’ lots of stuff, but I perhaps forget to just ‘be’. To sit at the feet of God in prayer, to be present in the lives of my leaders and youth. To not see these things as something to be ticked off my list but as ways of ‘being’ the person God is calling me to be.

One change I have made recently is how I spend my Tuesdays. My Tuesday start with a Inglewood Church pastors meeting and breaky where we talk about church issue and spend time in prayer. Then we have breakfast together. These times are really good and I have found them to be very beneficial. The change I have made is what I do after this. Without trying to make it a ‘task’ with a set time or anything, I have decided to start the rest of my Tuesday in the youth room praying, singing, reading the bible etc. I have no set ‘time’ for this, it might be 20 minutes, it might be an hour, but I am finding it helpful to ground me, help me ‘be’ and not just try and ‘do do do’ all day. THEN I go to my desk and work out my ‘to do list’.

This is one small part of what it means to ‘be’ as opposed to just ‘do’. I am still putting flesh on this skeleton as to how it looks across my week and across the youth ministry I am involved in, but I have definitely sensed God reminding me about this throughout this week. We’ll see how it goes!

Categories: Youth

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The Sunday Briefing – Feb 20th

Written by discipleoftheway on February 20, 2011

Another Sunday, another briefing. This one will be short as I am both busy and don’t particularly have a lot to share. I will likely have more to share in a week or two, as I reflect on this period of time, but for the moment much of what I am [...] Read more »

$25,000 Worship Resource Give Away from Proclaim

Written by discipleoftheway on February 19, 2011

A new Church Presentation software is coming out soon from the makers of Logos bible software. The name of the presentation software is Proclaim and it sounds really interesting. Basically it will operate from the cloud, allowing multiple people to w[...] Read more »

Does Youth Ministry just train a new group of consumers?

Written by discipleoftheway on February 18, 2011

One of the claims that is often thrown at modern youth ministry is that it just trains a new generation of consumerist Christians, and there is some merit to this claim. Cliff Olsen says, in an article at Youth Specialties.com, During the cleanup, I [...] Read more »