Everybody, welcome back to this very special episode of this is not the week. We're going to ask a lot of questions. This is the week that we're gonna. Try to give you a lot of answers, so on the youth ministry booster side of life, we have a meeting with equipping, encouraging and listening to a lot of people,
Speaker 2:ministry folks and a lot of various stages in youth ministry and some that are very new to the thing. Something that had been doing it for many, many years. Some that are adding new, setting some that are feeling a little bit burnt out in their current setting. And so in those conversations, one of the thing that we begin to piece together as well, we're going to call the youth ministry roadmap and so for the next five episodes, this one plus four more. We're going to try to outline the five major phases that your youth ministry is probably in or about to be in next. And so we don't have all the answers, but we think a lot of what most youth finishes are needing is a little bit of context. I know my city, I know my youth, but what about the process? Where am I at in the process, but there's a lot of similarity from youth ministry, Youth Ministry of what it looks like to grow, to lead and to hopefully have a successful youth ministry. So myself has been in youth ministry for 13 years and then my best buddy here, Chad Higgins, is going to tell you why he thinks this is so important and in his 15 years of serving in both the largest and smallest churches in America. So Chad Higgins, the wild roadmap. Are we going somewhere? What's going on?
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest things that as we've talked to a lot of different youth ministers that are in all different churches and different denominations to different sides is cultural settings. All of those kinds of things. There are some similarities that as we walk through these five phases that you're going to see at every specific size and right and as, as we're thinking through ministry, allowing us to have some basic common vocabulary together I think is going to help us as we move forward with youth ministry booster and after nine, um, and just as we talk with other youth ministers about student ministry and so over the next five days, we hope to unpack each of these areas that you're going to get to see, um, through this process of what it looks like to build a really, um, what we would call successful student ministry. And we will look at that and some different ways and define that. And, and so that's what we're going to get into over the next few days. And I'm very, very, so the hope of success. And if you haven't tuned us off already, if you've ever asked the question. So I guess if there is an afternoon question chat, it's this question, what do I do when I feel stuck? And I think a lot of folks that we've talked to have felt like they've tried a lot of things or they've done a lot of things, but it felt like it's
Speaker 2:generated the kind of momentum or to like leap, whatever that gap is. And so we hope that these five phases both identify where you're at and what it takes to get to the next phase. Again, it's going to be a little bit different for everybody, but I think there's a common language, a common vocabulary here that we want to really help share from ministry to ministry as you are encouraged and your youth ministry booster masterminds as you are having conversations and coaching calls with us. So for our booster members, both current and if you're listening, it's a chance to join. This is the chance for you to have some kind of shared understanding of where you're at, which is okay. And then where you want to be and what it might take. So Jad off the top. Here's the five. And then we're going to dive into number one in this episode. And then we'll get to two, three, four, five. And the next couple days, so here's the five for the youth ministry roadmap, phase number one, discover or discovery. This is the research and discernment phase, The r and d, if you will, if you're brand new to a place or you've been in a place long enough that you feel like you need to start over again. Discovery Phase, this phase, this first phase is for you. The second phase is the build phase. This is where we think a lot of youth pastors are living right now and that is them trying to cobble together, build the ship as they say, and so they are just trying to have a week do we program figuring out what curriculum do I have enough volunteers? Are Students going to help me out? Or they just going to sit in the back and twiddle their thumbs. The build phase is literally trying to have a roof over your head, so to speak, for your ministry or to put the ship together as you're sailing. The third phase is develop and develop as the phase in which you take what you've built and begin to refine piece by piece. Not all at once because you built it and now we're going to define and develop key processes when it comes to volunteers, student leaderships, programming, parent ministry, Yada Yada. Phase four is scale and so when all the pieces are in place and they're all refined and we feel good about the processes scales. When we began to implement other layers of leadership and begin delegating away some of those important processes so we can begin to lead at a higher level, and then finally the fifth phase is success or what we're going to dub succession or succeeding, which is not just I have a bunch of people involved in my ministry or I have a lot of great numbers to show off, but my ministry is healthy, sustainable, viable, and if I left, it would still live. And so there you go. There's our five of the roadmap. Discover, build, develop a scale and succeed.
Speaker 3:So as we begin to talk about the discovery phase, the first thing that I want you to understand about the roadmap is it's not just a linear, a linear progression. As we look at this, we're going to start to understand that if you've been in student ministry long enough that you understand there's almost some circular cycles that happen in Boston once and you're done. Um, and so whether you're brand new at your church and you're definitely starting in a discovery phase or maybe you've been there for many years, some of the best practices that I've seen in student ministry is actually the men and women that have been there for a while. Coming back to this discovery phase and going, okay, now that I've been here five, 10, 15 years, what has changed? What's different? What is our culture look like? Now? Has the community around us changed? Asking all those questions, am I different? Right? And so we're beginning to ask these questions in a new way, new lie, and allow us to, to Kinda walk into the building phase with all the tools that we need. Maybe though for some of the listeners out here, you're not looking at your entire ministry. Maybe you're just looking at a section of your ministry, right? You understand that man, our small groups need some work and so you're going to walk through a discovery phase that you're asking questions specifically, fine tuned towards that small group ministry, all the things around it that you can then begin to build fine tune and scale and then succeed in that. And, and so as we began to unpack this development phase, the, the big thing that I want you to hear as this questions, questions, questions, because that's going to be the most important part as you walk through this discovery phase for yourself in your current context is what are the important questions to ask, how do I begin to compile that data and then what do I do with that data? Right? And so Zach, tell me a little bit about, um, what are some of the big questions that you want to be asking during this phase? This
Speaker 2:discovery phase, which typically if you're new is three months, 90 days, maybe six months, or if you're in kind of a rediscovery, maybe it's like a quarter, a season, a couple of months as you're trying to, you know, re look and evaluate the questions or at least the areas that I would want to probe and ask questions relate to the church and its history, so if you are new to a church, this sounds so cheesy, but walk around the church and notice things like if there is like an archive or if there is like a history book of the Church that has the important founders and how long the church has been around because there is a different reality for a church that has celebrated a centennial and a church that's only 10 years old. There's this certain things that come with that. Certain history. Find out if the church has moved locations, if they just built a new building. If there's certain families that have generations and generations that have been involved, discover the history of your church. Why are some of those questions on history important for student ministry? I think it is important to when you start asking the questions at what role has student ministry plate in this church, and I think that's one of the things that we think student ministry just like pops up everywhere, but for some churches student ministry is maybe the thing that's really new inside of an old church or student ministry was the thing that really grew the church 20 years ago and now it feels like it's the thing that's kind of dogging and we want it to be doing better. And so I think it's important to know kind of that broad history of the church. No, no. If the church is like, if you have paintings of the pastors of years passed on the wall, that's a very important story. Or you can go check the Bible's if there is a pew bibles, number one, that's an important factor of check the translation of the Pew Bible. Uh, if there's hymnals, if there's screens on their screens broadcasting, like all these little things that were like, oh yeah, I know that, but no, no. Take notes. Start building out what are the things about this church? And what they value because the more you see of it, the more they value it and the more you need to be clued into how that's going to impact your youth ministry.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, I think for a lot of youth ministers that will come into a new place. We often have great ideas of where we want to lead people and what that's going to look like. But I often think that we don't take enough time to ask this important question, how do these people need to be led? And I think asking these questions of who they are and where they've been allows us to really construct and start to create a plan of action of how do I need to lead? How do I need to communicate? What's going to be the most effective? Who are the people that I need to get involved in this? Because if we don't do that well, we're going to find ourselves with so many problems that were fighting with a great idea. Right? And oftentimes we have. We have this thought that man, if they just understand our great idea, they're going to jump on board. But we don't understand this very important thing that 10 years before you got there, this guy that was three youth ministers ago had a similar idea that wasn't near as good as what you wanna do, right? Obviously, but he led it poorly and so there's a lot of hurt, there's a lot of angst. And so when you step out and go, we need to do small groups in homes. And they go, whoa, don't grow. And they start throwing the brakes on the last time. That habit, it almost killed our jet. And so now you're already stepping out there leading and doing something and you didn't know that there's already pain and hurt in the water. And so asking these questions are vital and encourage as well. And I think that leads to the questions, uh, who, who do you ask the questions too? And so I don't think you have to start wandering the halls and being like, what do you believe in? What do you value?
Speaker 2:You can just do a simple check of Pew's versus chairs tell you a lot of things like a Bolton board size, right? Like if if the senior adults and the children's have giant bulletin boards and the youth minister has a very small bulletin board that doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you something, at least how you know life has been in the youth ministry in the last year, couple of years or so. So who do you ask these questions to? These are the two group of people that I think are really important. So the first group is the staff. You need to discover the staff culture and ask questions of the staff. The second is the stakeholders, the people that are directly invested in your youth ministry. So for staff culture, whether you just got hired or about to be hired or been there for awhile, you have got to sit down and have a coffee, a lunch or a meal with whoever the senior leader or leadership is, and just ask them questions about the church don't have answers. Maybe you got interviewed and you got grilled. You set up an interview and you ask questions. Hey, how long have you been here? What have you noticed? What do you love about this place? What's one thing that you think is exciting about this place? It wasn't one thing that you think hasn't worked really well. Maybe we should avoid what is, what is the the Sunday morning kind of crowd like? What are the will seem to be really excited about and I think understanding both what the staff values because these people are going to be working with even at the staff, as a senior pastor or secretary in you, there is still a culture and there are still things that are valued based on the day to day basis in the office or on Sundays as we need to be. Asking the senior leader or senior leadership, however your church is structured in that way. The questions of at what level do you feel responsible for change? At what level do you feel changed has been implemented well now what? What do you think is the best thing that we've got going on? Like these are the questions you need to be asking and don't offer opinions. Just listen and take notes. You know, one of the big things when we're talking about staff and stakeholders and our church and exactly explain stakeholders a little bit more going forward. One of the big questions that I would really encourage you to be asking is based around expectation. What are the expectations that your your senior pastor has? What are the expectations from your children's minister? What are the expectations of stakeholders, your parents, your leadership students, these kinds of things. And when we start to have this idea of what successful student ministry looks like in their eyes, then we start to get a better view of where we need to kind of center ourself as we lead these people. Because here's the truth. If you have a view of what a successful student ministry looks like and it is different than your senior pastor, well here's the great news. It may be similar to your next, your next senior pastor because the current one may not be your senior pastor for long. Right? And, and so when we, when we start to venture out and start to leave without the idea of the overall vision of the church and falling in line with that, um, and fitting in with that staff and asking those appropriate and important questions, um, then then we're going to be behind the eight ball in some sense. And so we want to make sure that we're asking all of these questions that all of these places and gathering the information that as we start to move into this building phase, then we have an even better picture than just an idea that's good. So ask questions of the building as questions of the people walk around. Take notes. Have meetings is many one to one meetings with the rest of the staff as you can possibly muster. If there's other people that our children's ministry staff or departmental staff or if there's other age graded staff, ask them questions. Going up and down the hallways and asked the custodial staff or the support staff. What do you love about this church? You work here too. What do you love about this place? What's great? Because it'd be great to hear their point of view, their viewpoint on what makes this church great and why it's. Is it worth showing up every week? Okay, here's the third category. We'll kind of lay out the umbrella and we'll kind of go through each one, the stakeholders of your student ministry, so these are the people that are going to feel invested or accountable or as the tide rises and falls with the success of your ministry. They are directly or mostly it directly or indirectly related to it. So these are the parents, the volunteers, the student leaders, and then the hiring team or committee that brought you on board. These are the people that want you to succeed or at least want to know what you're trying to do to succeed. And so these are the people that were going to tell you have some listening parties, so for your staff conversations. Try to have one to ones, but as much as you can, have some opportunities in a 30, 60, 90 day window where you set up times and either go to a coffee shop or restaurant and set up base and invite people or have ice cream parties at the church and half the students to come hang out, but you need to hear what the expectations of the parents, the current volunteers and a lot of the key students are for what student ministry should look like and then also what they value as successful. Because if you're walking into an environment, a church context that has a student ministry that was existing at some level before you. They already have some notion, some idea, some concept of what success looks like and if it doesn't look like yours, you are in for a short trip. Because if they want you to be at every school, lunch, every football game, and you just want to plan the next great event or mission trip. Those two ships are going to pass in the night and it's going to be a rough go. So listen to what the parents want from the youth pastor. Listen in to what the volunteers are craving from you in leadership and hear what the students say and what they value. I get it. You don't want to do the lock in that they've always done for the last four years, but hear them talk about the way in which they love having weakened time together outside of Sunday. You hear them talk about their passion for missions. Hear parents talk about you putting together resources for them because they feel under resourced and knowing what to say to their teenagers. Here, your small group leaders and volunteers say, I don't know how to lead a group. Well, can you show me how to do that? Can you model that for me? You don't have to answer all those questions right now, but those need to be on a list somewhere at your desk or office because those are your objectives. It's not just about you bringing your philosophy of ministry, but it is about adapting what you see as valuable in light of their expectations because what you value and what they value an inappropriate level expectation. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is that one of the big things I think is really important during this process as we're asking questions from our students or parents or stakeholders in our church, I think it's really easy for us as ministers to hear some of their responses and to immediately want to like correct, right? Like, oh, no, no, no. That's not what successful student ministry is. Let me tell you what's his actual student ministry is, and then we start to lay out a vision mission strategy. I think it's important as you're walking through this phase that you're discerning enough to know, right now I'm asking questions and I'm listening because when we start to move into the building phase, then then we start moving the ship somewhere. I almost want you to think about the process like this during the development phase. You are about to run a race with all of these people. You can either be the guy that's 30 yards in front of ongoing, hey, you idiot shouldn't start over there. You should be over here. Right? Or we can be the leader that goes, okay, let me figure out where you're at. Okay, okay, you're right here. I'm now going to come stand myself right beside you. Then I'm going to point way down the road. Hey, that's, that's where we want to get. Will you run with me? And then we start to get to move the people instead of just telling them, oh, you shouldn't be doing it like this anymore. Oh, we're not doing it this way. We're doing it this way. Now during this, during this phase, we are asking questions. We're learning from them or figuring out where they're at and why they're there. And so as you start to ask questions, think through that of what of these people already walked through? What would maybe excite them that maybe they've never seen before? Right? There may be some things in you know your back pocket that didn't work at the old place, but for whatever reason, this new place with a new culture, man, it's a hit there, right? Because it's different people and so and we're not going to know that until we asked those questions. Figure out who they are, figuring out the things that they're excited about.
Speaker 2:Well mentioned at the top. You should also bring on the hiring committee team that brought you in to this process. Here's how you do that. After you've been hired, after you been brought in, or maybe you go back to some of those key folks, if you're rediscovering this as someone who's been there for awhile, invite them to pray for you and hold you accountable to ask sharp questions. If they are responsible for bringing you in, you better believe they want you to do a good job. If they were put on a team of five, seven, or nine people to bring in the next great youth minister for this church, they want you to succeed. Ask Them for help. Ask Them for prayer. They are your prayer warriors and your prayer support team. Keep send them out for those first 30, 60, 90 days. Send them a weekly email of, here's what I met, here's what I've heard, you know, pray for this, and maybe they can offer some course correction of like, oh yeah, like she's a great one to listen to, or no, that's right. That's absolutely right. Have them help hone and refine the things that you're hearing so that you can ask this question of them and other key people. What do I need to know that I don't know? What is it about this church that I don't know that I need to know because everything about this phase is for you to research and then discern and then once we've done that, we can begin to design and move into the next building face, so questions, questions, questions.
Speaker 3:The final group that I would, that I would suggest that you ask questions about, is this the community around your church? The schools. I'm just in the neighborhood that's around you and asking, okay, who are these people? What are they about? What are they excited about? Is your town a soccer town or a football town? Maybe they enjoy baseball. Are, is there a a heavy, you know, speech debate, arts culture in, in the high school, right? Do you know these kinds of things? Who are the students that you're trying to reach? Are you more of a suburban town or you intercity? Are you a rural environment? All of these kinds of things are gonna play into that building phase, and so knowing as much of that as you can is absolutely going to help you. So when you sit down with your students, ask those questions, not just about them in the room, but their friends, the people in their halls, right? You want to get a good perspective of the community God has placed you into and so then when you begin this next phase, you have the information that you need to begin to structure and build a platform that reaches and engages. Not just the few that are in your seats, but those that are in your community.
Speaker 4:All right, that's phase one. Discover what does it mean to discover or rediscover as we journey through this roadmap. We'll catch you back for the next one as we learn what it looks like to design and build a successful youth ministry.
Speaker 5:Stop.