What to do When You’re New
Big Idea: the following are some best practices (well, at least really good practices)
when you are first starting in Student Ministry or starting with a new church.
LENGTH WARNING: this is practically an e-book. You’ve been warned!
I was 21 when my full-time ministry journey began. It almost seems wild to think about. I was so young, but I was about as prepared as I could have been at that age…
I was a pastor's kid who grew up in church
I went to college for Christian Ministries
I did a 2-year internship with an amazing leader (shoutout to Craigers!)
I was hired by a church that poured into me
Despite all of that, I often found myself in situations where I had no idea what I was doing. For my mental health, I’m going to assume that you’ve been there before, too.
Sixteen years & two youth ministries later, I’ve learned a lot about what to do & what not to do when getting started in ministry or at a new church. I sure don’t have all the answers & I still have a lot to learn, but I wanted to pass on what I’ve come to see as the most important things to keep in mind when you are starting ministry or just starting at a new church (pretty much all of which I’ve learned from other people).
Before we get started, a quick disclaimer: this is not a blog about the importance of your own spiritual health in the midst of leading. I think we’d all agree about how vital our own faith & relationship with Jesus is to our ministry.
CULTURE & STRATEGY
I want to start with the idea of building the right culture & the right strategies. If I asked every student pastor what their job was, there would probably be a lot of different answers.
lead volunteers
build relationship
develop programs
disciple students
agree to accept the donation of a couch from someone in the church only to realize not even Goodwill would have accepted said couch
take the blame for anything that is broken at the church, etc.
To a degree those are all accurate. Creating culture & strategy probably isn’t an all encompassing answer to that question, but I think it covers more than we might recognize. And whatever it doesn’t cover doesn’t matter if you don’t have a healthy culture & a good strategy.
CULTURE
Let’s start with culture because it’s the most important. Strategy matters, but as Peter Drucker says, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Essentially, that means it doesn’t matter how great your strategy is if you don’t have the right culture to begin with. Culture can be challenging to define within a church or ministry, but it makes sense in other areas of our lives.
Culture is the reason you choose to shop at ____ rather than ____. It’s often why we choose certain restaurants over others. It often even outweighs the food. It’s why some families always have fun when they’re together & others can’t stand to be with each other.
The culture you create & the values you have in your ministry will be what ultimately attract volunteers to join your mission. It will be what will motivate your students to keep showing up & to invite their friends. It will be a deciding factor in their friends’ decision to come back.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “People probably won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel”? That’s culture.
Culture is sort of an all-encompassing idea that brings together a thousand intentional things. So, the challenge is you can’t exactly say, “I want to create a healthy culture” and then just do it. You actually have to be intentional about a lot of other things that eventually create the culture you want to have.
We won’t take the time in this blog to walk through what it looks like to create culture, but this Carey Nieuwhof blog is a great primer if you want an overview. You could also just google “how to build culture in ministry” and you’ll get more hits than Pete Rose ever had (154 million to be exact).
So, the big question with culture is
what do I need to do in order to begin building a healthy culture in my ministry and among my leaders?
Before we move on, a tension to recognize is the vast majority of us don’t get to build the culture of our church. That’s not our role or opportunity. To a degree, the culture of your church will inform the culture of your youth ministry, but it doesn’t necessarily have to dominate it. That’s one reason why it’s SO important that, when interviewing for a student pastor role, you are interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you.
STRATEGY
Before we jump into Strategy, let me stop and give another disclaimer...do your best to not change anything for the first year unless absolutely necessary. Instead, focus on relationships, learning the community context, church culture & preparation. Essentially, you spend the first year building the foundations, having the behind the scenes conversations & building the trust in order to cast the vision & make the necessary changes.
If it’s helpful, here’s a rough timeline from my last church. I started in June & for the whole next school year didn’t change anything big. Maybe some adjustments, but no big changes. I even communicated that before I started: no big changes in the first school year as I build relationships & learn what the best steps would be.
I spent that year having meetings with leaders, staff & parents. In Feb/March of that year, I put together a little proposal of where we were headed & started having conversations with key staff, volunteers & parents. In May, we had a big meeting where I casted vision for where we were headed & laid out the plan of changes coming in the fall so it gave folks a few months to ask questions & adjust before anything changed.
So, as we process...don’t get too overwhelmed if it seems like a lot to do. All of it will take time, so don’t get ahead of yourself. Force yourself to be patient. As my first Lead Pastor (shoutout to Jeff!) would say,
“If you move too fast, no one can follow you. So, you’re not leading, you’re just out on a walk.”
So, lead. Don’t just take a walk.
Ok, back to strategy. Strategy simply means to begin with the end in mind. So, what can we be doing now to get the desired results we want? To me, there are a few key pieces of strategy to really focus on in each youth ministry that revolve around students, parents & leaders.
First let’s talk about developing a Discipleship Process for students. With this, think process & steps over programs & events. I’ve been guilty of this. So often in the church world we don’t really have a strategy, but rather a plethora of programs and events that are good-natured & God-focused but don’t necessarily move someone forward. We tend to feel good because we’re busy, but the reality is that busy doesn’t mean effective or helpful in accomplishing whatever our ministry’s mission might be.
You know how some people go to the gym & just sort of wander around, looking at everything, and they’re not really sure what to do? They’re jumping from random machine to random machine. They’re getting exercise and that’s great, but the vast majority of the time that leads to them not getting the results they really desire. Compare that to the person who has a trainer with a plan, a strategy, a process for them. They guide them to what machine would be most beneficial for them & when. It’s far more likely the latter person with the trainer will fulfill whatever goals & mission they had.
Too often, the discipleship process in churches is less strategy and more quantity. Let’s do a lot of programs and hope that some of this sticks, rather than thinking through the fact that we have around 40 hours a year on average with our students. If we wanted to have the greatest impact possible within those 40 hours, what would we want them to do?
One of the greatest things we did with my last volunteer team was spend time thinking through all the attributes we would want our graduating seniors to have when they left our ministry. Then, we did our best to categorize all of those attributes and we ended up with 4 buckets. Those 4 buckets were what created our discipleship process.
[In case you're curious, those buckets were essentially belong, trust, become, mobilize.]
So, the big question for the strategy of your discipleship process is
who do we want our students to become & what can we do to help them get there?
The next part of that process is thinking through the question ‘how are we going to help make that happen?’ So, we started talking about our environments. You can use the word program if you want, but ‘environment’ has a more strategic feel & better ring to it in my opinion. Program feels too...involuntary...too mathematical in my brain. ‘You come to us to program faith into you’. An environment is a strategically designed opportunity for them to develop some of those attributes that we want them to have. Maybe it's semantics, but it's a helpful clarifier for me.
Also, if you have multiple environments a week, a discipleship process is so important to make sure you’re not doing the same thing twice. Each environment should serve a specific purpose...there are specific attributes that you’re trying to develop & create with each of those. If you have multiple environments with the same focus/purpose, you’re not creating a discipleship process for your students - you’re creating competing systems (and likely burning yourself out).
So, week in & week out, you need to have a strategy for what your environments look like and what they’re trying to accomplish. A curriculum with a multi-year strategy is your friend when it comes to strategy. Obviously, I work for Orange supporting our XP3 curriculum for youth ministry, so it’s probably no surprise to hear me advocate for this...probably feels like a commercial.
I don’t say this out of my current position, but my previous positions.
In my first 4 years of ministry, I spent WAY too much time developing my own series, messages, artwork and all of that fun stuff. Guess what...it wasn’t as good as the other stuff that was out there & not having a multi-year strategy meant that I didn’t have a very balanced diet with what I was teaching. I read the book 7 Checkpoints & realized I’d been missing out on a lot of things.
Soon after, I learned about the XP3 curriculum & it became such a helpful tool in our ministry.
It gave us a better strategy.
It gave us better content.
It created different ways for us to engage our students, parents & leaders.
It freed up time to do other things that only I could have done.
So...discipleship process. Have a strategy as to when & why you do what you do for your students. Think environments, not programs. Think process, not checkboxes.
So, the big question with the strategy of your environments is
What are you doing each week to help your students [insert your mission here]?
The other strategic piece with your students is Events. Events are an important aspect of student ministry, but we often try to do too many in a year or our events tend to be too broadly focused on being as effective as we want them to be.
So, here’s the thing about events: don’t do one unless it fulfills something in your Discipleship Process.
Yes, a ski trip could be a lot of fun...but does it fulfill something in your strategy?
Yes, retreats are great...but does it serve a specific purpose?
Make sure each event you are doing, planning for & investing in is helping you fulfill the strategy & the mission you have.
Internally, we called them our DNA Events at my last church. We essentially narrowed them down to 5 events over the year. Each one had a specific purpose that was a vital part of our discipleship strategy. They were a part of our DNA: who we were and what we were trying to do.
So, when it comes to strategy, having a discipleship process to lead your students to who you want them to be (not just what you want them to know) is so important in helping determine what your weekly environments will look like along with your events.
So, the big question with the strategy of your events is
are our events moving our students forward in our discipleship process?
Along with your students, you should also have a strategy for your leaders & your parents.
LEADERS
For your leaders, you should have a strategy for how you recruit, communicate & develop them. I won’t go as deep as I could with those here, but here are a few thoughts.
Recruiting - You should have a specific time of year you do a big recruiting push, and it should probably be late winter/early spring. You should know what you want to say & how you want to say it. You should know all of your needs & have all expectations clear. I’m working on an upcoming blog that will dive into some recruiting strategies.
Communication - For your regular volunteers, you should have a weekly, consistent form of communication with them so that they understand what is going on, what is coming up & what is expected of them. Maybe this is a weekly text message, a weekly email, a facebook group...maybe it’s all 3. But you have to keep them informed.
Development - You have to have a strategy in place for how you will onboard new leaders, but also how you will continually support, resource, equip & develop your small group leaders. How often are you going to ask them to all meet together? How often are you connecting with them individually? How can you make this accessible to them because the odds are, if you try to have a big in-person training, less than 50% will be able to make it. How can you take advantage of technology with this?
There are TONS of great resources out there these days to do this well. Orangeleaders.com has some great resources. DYMU has some great stuff too.
So, the big question with the strategy for your leaders is
how am I helping my leaders have the most influence possible in the lives of their few
while also making that a beneficial experience for them?
PARENTS
And finally, you need a strategy when it comes to your parents. Not like, your mom & dad...but the parents of your youth.
How & how often are you communicating with parents?
How are you making sure they know what they need to know?
What are you doing to connect your parents to their child’s small group leader?
What are you doing to develop the parents to be the lead spiritual influence of their students?
How are you resourcing them, how are you connecting them with each other in this season?
How are you setting them up to win at home & continue conversations that you’re having at church?
Again, to get really practical, let me share how this could look.
EMAIL NEWSLETTER
Send an email newsletter at the same time every week. Give it 3 sections...This week, Coming Up & Resources.
This week would give the bottom line & verses you’ll be teaching on that week along with the link to the ‘parent cue’ for the series (an XP3 resource). Maybe even a good question to ask their students on the way home from church (or after the zoom).
Coming up would be the info for upcoming events. Make it short & point them to a website for more info.
Resources would be a podcast, video, an article, etc that might help them be a better parent in some way.
To be honest, your email to your leaders could look pretty similar to this each week too.
PARENT MEETINGS
Outside of that email, what do your parent gatherings look like? I liked having 3 big parent gatherings a year. One would be the first Sunday in August after all of the school systems had started classes. One in January once all schools were back in session. Then one in May on the last Sunday before the first school dismissed.
At one point, my parent meetings were just live versions of the emails, if I’m being honest. We were asking an hour of their time to just read through everything we wanted them to do for us and what we wanted their kids for. It wasn’t great.
Over time, we landed on the formula of…
1/4 - cast vision. Remind parents why you do what you do, what you hope for & how environments & events exist to make that happen.
2/4 - small groups. Separate parents to spend time with their students' small group leaders. Give your leaders a seasonal agenda to work through to guide the conversation.
1/4 - inspire/resource. End with a few minutes to inspire or equip them. Two examples would be talking through a Parenting Beyond Your Capacity principle or a guest speaker talking about social media, etc.
So, the big question with the strategy for your parents is
how are you helping & supporting parents to normalize faith conversations at home?
Not only do we need to have those strategies, but we need to have some systems in place in order to make sure those strategies work.
SYSTEMS
For a deep dive on systems, head to this blog I wrote. But in short, systems essentially answer 2 questions:
How do we make sure ______ happens?
What do we do when_____ happens?
Creating systems allows you to automate as much as you can for the sake of efficiency & effectiveness. It also allows you to delegate (which we’ll talk more about soon).
Yes, there are a lot of situations in ministry that should push us to handle them differently based on the circumstances - and having systems doesn’t mean you can’t call an audible - but systems are an invaluable resource in your ministry that you can’t afford to not create.
Here are some systems that you should be creating... attendance, follow-up, MIA students, parent communication, parent development, leader communication, leader development, volunteer recruitment (future blog deep diving on this forthcoming).
For example, what do you do when an adult says they’re interested in volunteering in your ministry? You shouldn’t have to even think about it. You should have a checklist, a system, a process you work through with that person.
Here’s an example of what part of that process could look like.
1. Give them a copy of Lead Small to read.
2. Send them an application that includes a background check & references.
3. Once they’ve read Lead Small, take them out to lunch or have them come into the office to talk through the book & do a little bit of an interview.
4. If all of that checks out, they come watch and shadow for a couple weeks.
5. Assign them to a co-leader & a group for the upcoming semester.
6. Continued training & development.
What about when a new student attends? What do we do when a student hasn’t shown up in 3 weeks? How will we even know when a student hasn’t shown up in 3 weeks? How do we inform parents about what is coming up?
All of these things, once systematic, will help create more consistency, reliability & margin for you.
So, the big questions for your systems are
how do you make sure____ happens & what do you do if ____ happens?
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Next is personal development. The idea that leaders are learners shouldn’t be new to any of us & the fact you’re reading this is evidence this matters to you. But no matter if you're 21 and fresh into ministry or 45 and just starting at a new church, personal development is such a huge factor in the health, effectiveness & longevity of your ministry.
So, develop your own library. Listen to podcasts. Read articles. Ask people you trust for recommendations. If you care about any of my book recommendations for starting out, I’ve got a few at the end of this blog.
Look outside of yourself to help with your development, too. Find a coach or join a mastermind group - even if it means trying to get some budget money in your church’s budget next year. It will make a difference.
Development isn’t just about building & honing your skills. We’ve got to pay attention to self- awareness & emotional intelligence, too. E.I. has been getting more and more popular over the past 10 years, but if you’re not very familiar with it, the definition is “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.”
I’ve met people with TREMENDOUS gifts, whose lack of awareness & emotional intelligence have shrunk their influence & impact. I’ve also seen the opposite...people who don’t have the strongest gifts, but whose strength of awareness & emotional intelligence expand their influence & impact far beyond where their gifts could have taken them.
Don’t just take the time to develop your skills & knowledge. Continually develop your social, emotional & empathetic gifts too.
Finally, when it comes to personal development, find a network: a group of other youth leaders to connect with. You can do this online for sure. There are some great youth ministry groups online, but I think finding a local group matters too. My friends at National Network of Youth Ministries can help you find one if you’re looking.
So, the big question for your personal development is
what am I doing to hone my gifts & interpersonal skills & what community am I doing it in?
DELEGATING & DUPLICATING
Next up is delegation & duplicating yourself. These are two necessary skills that you’ll need to develop in ministry.
Many people in your church think that your job is to do everything. That may or may not be what your job description says, too. Biblically speaking, I’d say your job is to equip the saints to do ministry. Of course, there’s plenty that you’ll be doing. However, there will be a healthier you & a healthier ministry if you learn to do this well.
Delegating is equipping & empowering others to do what you don’t do well & what you do do well (do do). Bad with details? You probably shouldn’t be the main person who plans all of your trips to deal with hotel rooms, reservations, etc. If you try to, you may end up going $8k over budget for your high school trip because you booked the charter busses last minute. Trust me.
Use assessments like Strength Finders to learn what you are good at and what you enjoy doing. Use it with your volunteers & even some key parents too in order to figure out who might be able to fill some of those holes.
Just because you don’t like doing it doesn’t mean someone else feels the same. I would often end up doing tasks I didn’t enjoy (and was bad at) because I felt guilty if I passed it along. After all, who wants to book hotels for a large group of teenagers?! Would you believe me if I told you some people LOVE DOING THAT?!
I know...it blows my mind, too. But when we refuse to delegate things we’re not great at, not only do we do them poorly, but we’re robbing someone of contributing in meaningful ways.
So, if there are things you’re not great at or don’t enjoy, do your best to delegate those. But even when it comes to the things you might be good at or enjoy, you still need to learn how to duplicate yourself.
If you love teaching and are good at it, awesome! But you still better make sure you are equipping others to be teaching & giving them opportunities to do so (preferably someone who doesn’t look like you or have your similar experiences). If you love planning & running events, great! But you better make sure that you have someone else who knows how to do what you’re doing.
First, this is just an important part of leading...helping people develop & use the gifts God has given them. It’s also a practical piece of having a sustainable ministry.
It’s a little morbid, but one of my Senior Pastors used to ask me “what would happen if you got hit by a bus today?”. It wasn’t his way of asking if I’d go to heaven or hell...he was asking me how well I was duplicating myself.
If I had gotten hit by a bus 4 months before camp...would anyone know the plan? Would they be able to pick up the ball and run with it...you know, after mourning me and all?
Does anyone else own the mission, vision, strategy & get the behind the scenes picture of what we’re doing? Or is it all on me and all up to me...so when I leave, everything falls apart?
So, the big question for delegating & duplicating yourself is
what should you be passing off & how are you pouring into other leaders to give them opportunities to lead?
That’s All I Got (for now)
To recap, if you’re new to student ministry or starting at a new church, these are the key pieces I’d suggest you really focus on as you get rolling...
Create healthy culture
Develop strategies for students, parents & leaders
Develop systems
Personal development
Delegate & Duplicate
This is a lot of stuff to remember & to think about implementing. I totally get it. To be fair, it’s not even an exhaustive list, but if you are jumping into ministry for the first time or if you are about to start at a new church, I hope these ideas are helpful as you get started.
Remember, take it one step at a time! You’ll likely want to move faster than you should or than you’ll be able to. So be realistic & give yourself grace if you’re feeling impatient. Take your time & build something sustainable for your sake & the sake of the ministry.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
If you’re still reading and care, here are a few of my book recommendations if you are just getting started in ministry.
Sustainable Youth Ministry by Mark Devries
Think Orange by Reggie Joiner
When Relationships Matter & Lead Small by Tom Shefchunas, Reggie Joiner & Kristen Ivy
Just a Phase by Kristen Ivy & Reggie Joiner
Your First 2 Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields
Simple Student Ministry by Eric Geiger & Jeff Borton
