YFC Impact May Be Helpful To You

Our 12 YFC Impact questions first were designed for an Excel spreadsheet and still can be implemented through that application. Any reader who would like the template for these foundational ministry assessment questions can download it for free from the Youth for Christ Web site. Some might feel enough kinship with the biblical values undergirding our 5 Essentials to adopt the tool for your own use. I have come to understand these 5 Essentials are really just YFC customizations of universal biblical principles, writing about their wider appeal in two recently published books: Evangelism Remixed: Empowering Students for Courageous and Contagious Faith (Zondervan/ Youth Specialties, 2009 summer release) and (especially chapter 12) "Restoring Adolescents: Essentials of Worldwide Ministry" in Ronald Habermas’ (ed.) Introduction to Christian Education and Formation, Zondervan, 2008.

Not everyone has the same mission focus as we do at Youth for Christ, so there may be interest in using this model to custom design your own assessment indicators. Feel free to, as a friend of mine likes to say, “Take it, tweak it, make it your own.” Clarifying your own “essentials” is a critical starting point.

This is the first year we’ve provided our YFC Impact reports online, adding features that allow for even more customization by users and generating virtually instant graphs, charts and reports to help our ministry staff use this assessment data in their planning with volunteers. We hope to have the technological capacity in the near future to invite others who want to use our system to do so. Our assumption is that those who have this kind of interest are those who find their ministries aligned with YFC’s mission and the 5 Essentials.

It’s clear to me that a kingdom mission can be advanced by using—and even making available—a ministry assessment tool such as YFC Impact. Very cool.

The YFC Mission: YFC reaches young people everywhere, working together with the local church and other like-minded partners to raise up lifelong followers of Jesus who lead by godly example, devotion to the Word of God and prayer, passion for sharing the love of Christ and commitment to social involvement.