Ask youth workers what their freshest dreams are, and you’ll hear about youth rooms with all the latest technology to help middle schoolers prepare for college, or they might draw you design of neighborhood drop-in centers that provide safe places to hang out after school. Perhaps they’ll describe thriving support groups for single parents, or they’ll explain the dynamics of a church gym that’s packed with high schoolers for an outreach event. As youth workers, we’re great at dreaming. We dream big dreams that stir our passion: visions of transformed lives and images of changed communities.
Dreams need plans and structure to become reality; otherwise they are merely vapor and dissipate after the Mountain Dew wears off. Administration is the master plan that provides the infrastructure of ministry dreams. It’s the blueprint that helps you build a basement without cracks and install the solid studs to stabilize the walls and support the roof. It may not be the most alluring aspect of youth ministry, but good administration makes sure your dream has the endurance to survive the storms.
For youth pastors to have strong ministry frameworks, they need to focus on the following four areas:
Area 1: Planning and Productivity
Moving from the dreaming phase to the doing and done phases involves planning and productivity. In the words of Amit Chowdhry, “Productivity is the combination of intelligent planning and focused efforts.” Here are some ideas that have worked for me and for other youth workers:
“Never check email in the morning,” Julie Morgenstern wrote a book of the same title, and it’s great advice. When we open our email, we move into response mode, not productivity mode. Rather, plunge into a challenging project for the first hour. It gets your creativity and energy rolling, and you’re actually producing something.
“There’s an app for that.” There are all sorts of apps to make your life in ministry easier and more productive. Some youth ministry favorites:
• Evernote allows you to collect and search for your notes easily.
• Wunderlist is a to-do list that you can share with other members of your team.
• Basecamp or Trello are project management sites that are great for events, as well as projects involving multiple participants.
• Scanbot is one way to scan your receipts and other documents.
• MinHubYouth is a database solution designed by people who know youth ministry.
“Develop a planning grid.” We all have our favorite ministry areas; and if we’re not deliberate, the calendar can become packed with the things we like to do. By having a planning grid, we can check ourselves to make sure we’re addressing the needs in our context. Check to see if the ministry calendar is addressing areas such as spiritual formation, outreach, leadership development, and the physical, mental and emotional needs of students. Do you have a variety of low-cost events, as well as the more costly ones such as camp and mission trips? Do you have Bible studies, as well as service projects? Make sure that what you have on your calendar fits your context. In the same way that you wouldn’t build a grass hut in the Arctic, you have to know what to build in your ministry setting.
Area 2: Risk Management
Every youth pastor who’s been around for more than two years has a horror story of how he or she should’ve been fired. Whether it’s piling six extra kids into the back of a U-Haul trailer (and the State Highway Patrol pulling you over), or hearing that there’s going to be a youth ministry baby nine months after the lock-in in the church gym, there comes that moment when you realize you easily could lose your job because of your lack of understanding of the risky nature of youth ministry.
When it comes to risk management, here are a couple of pointers to help you create a safe place for students:
• Think like a parent—a good parent. There are some risks you might take with your college buddies. Those are not the risks you take with someone else’s child. These parents and grandparents trust the loves of their lives to you. This means you sometimes have to say no to a great idea, such as running around the church van nine times at the stoplight.
• Take an insurance agent on a date. Schedule a meeting with your church’s insurance agent to discuss what kind of insurance your church has in place. Describe the different types of events the youth ministry does to make sure the insurance coverage is adequate. Run scenarios by him or her and get feedback. For example, are you covered if you drive students to an event in a church vehicle? What about if you use your car? Are volunteers covered if they are injured at a church basketball tournament? What guidance can your agent provide regarding students and their medications when you’re on a retreat: Do you collect them, or trust the students to take care of their own medicine? What advice do they have about having a medical person at an event?
• Focus on the forms. There are a lot of forms in youth ministry. Make sure you have some type of activity participation agreement form and a special medical needs agreement for every event where a student could be harmed. These forms need to be stored until the student reaches adulthood and then for however long the statute of limitations is for your state. Consider having a social media disclaimer form and a parent or guardian communication consent form (which allows you to share the student’s contact info with others in the ministry, as well as their photos on the ministry’s website or social media channels). Again, this is where your church’s insurance agent can give you some help in knowing what forms to have on hand.
• Develop an emergency action plan. Once you do, make sure that every adult leader is informed about it. If a student needs to go to the ER, who calls 911? Who goes with the student, and who takes care of the others? Who calls the parent, and who calls the senior pastor? One youth pastor plays the “What If?” game with his leadership team before every major event. They spend 15 minutes running through every possible scenario that could go wrong and figuring out how they would handle each situation. That way, when something does go wrong, they’re prepared and know how to work as a team to execute the plan.
Area 3: Communication
We were commiserating about how challenging it is to communicate with our people when a youth pastor shared this story: He was new to youth ministry, coming from an industry where he was not just a boss but the boss. He made decisions, and his employees carried them out without question. One of the first things he did in this brand new role was to organize a mission trip. It was planned down to the last detail. Almost…A few days before the trip, he called the students to make sure they were ready to leave that weekend. Student after student told him they had other plans. Only one student he called was “maybe” planning on going. As we listened to him with sympathetic shock, he paused then sighed, “I’m here to learn about communication.”
One basic rule of communication is that the responsibility of communication rests with the communicator. You have an important message to get out (actually many messages), so keep these three “Ts” in mind:
• Tools: If you’re trying to reach parents, utilize websites, emails and Facebook. If you’re trying to reach students, ask them what they’re using. Some prefer texts, others Instagram, SnapChat or Vine. Don’t discount an old-fashioned phone call. It’s a bit of a novelty to receive one, and voice-to-voice can be the most effective way to communicate as a pastor.
• Timing: In some communities, families plan a year in advance while others plan on the fly. Give people plenty of time to get major events on their calendars. You always can add the details as the event draws closer. A year ahead, post “Save the Date” on the ministry website. A month ahead, post on Facebook, Instagram and in the church bulletin. A week ahead, send reminder texts.
• Tone: When communicating, call people to action. Use phrases such as, “Sign up by Sunday,” “Pray now,” or “Call before 8 p.m. today.”
Area 4: Finances
As youth workers, we deal with a lot of cash. A lot. Whether it’s collecting money for a fund-raising event, an offering or a lock-in, we constantly are handling money. When you barely are making your student loan payments, it can be tempting to mishandle it. To keep you and the ministry above reproach, put these practices in place:
• Don’t be the one who collects the cash. Have someone else be responsible for collecting the money so you can focus on building relationships with students and their families.
• Set up a system of accountability. If at all possible, have at least two people who aren’t related to each other handle the cash. They should be rotating on and off the finance team constantly. Have them deposit the money in the bank immediately after the event (or on the way to the retreat). If the church has a drop-box safe, that’s a great alternative.
• Read the budget reports. If you are held responsible for the youth ministry budget, then you need to get the budget reports and review them every month to make sure the ministry is on track. If you don’t understand them, have the church treasurer explain them to you.
• Have a ministry credit card that’s only used for ministry expenses. This way, you can turn in the bill every month with the receipts and be reimbursed in a timely manner.
These four areas don’t prevent you from having a frustrated parent or a student in crisis; but by paying attention to them, your ministry dream has a better chance of succeeding. Also, they will help you make sure that what you’re building is something that can last.
