HELP! I CAN'T DO THIS ON MY OWN. Four questions I ask myself in order to build a team.

Nine weeks ago when I jumped back into the role of Youth Pastor here at TheCHURCH at Visalia we only had a few volunteers serving in the Youth Ministry. If I was going to Pastor a growing church and lead the student ministry to where it needed to go, I was going to need more help. A lot more. 

So we started to ask questions and walk through a step by step process of team building. Last night we held a VIP Banquet for people that are interested in finding out how they can make an impact in the lives of the next generation. Sixteen adults filled out applications and were added to our volunteer team! 

I've found that statements like "I need more help", "I have too much to do", or "I can't do this on my own", never changes anything for the better. Statements don't cause change, questions do. 

Here are four questions I ask myself to help build a team. 

Why are we doing this ministry?

It is so important to clearly define why you are doing what you are doing. If people don't know why they are doing something ... they will quickly stop doing it. Give people a cause to role their sleeves up and rally around. 

What needs to be done each week?

What are the things that need to be done each week? At ECHO, (our student ministry) teenagers need to be greeted. We need to gather the information of all first time guest so we can follow up with them. Students need a great worship experience and message that will inspire them to change. We need to give teenagers a compelling reason to attend. Because of this, we we will have food for them to eat before service as well as activities for them to enjoy after the service. We need to follow up with those that attend. And students need to a place to draw close to each other as they draw close to God in a small group environment. 

Because these things are what need to be done; we will establish a ministry department for each of these items. We wrote up job descriptions for Host Team, Registration Team, Service Production Team, Cafe Team, Activities Team, and Community Groups. 

It is important to note that we wrote up the job descriptions before we recruited the workers. God will never give us anything that we are not ready for. So we create the ministry and then God will give us people to do the work of the ministry. 

Who do I know that I could personally invite?

I've found through the years that many high level volunteers are not primarily moved by corporate pushes to volunteer but rather personal invites. So I when I need help, I always ask myself, "Who do I know that would be great to serve in or run this ministry department". Then I set up a coffee meeting, cast the vision of "why", hand them a written job description of "what", and invite them to join the team. 

How can we inspire individuals from the church body to serve?

One of the best ways to inspire a large group of people to begin to serve in our ministry is:

1 - Inspire them with a message on serving. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. So teach a message on the "why" of your ministry and give them the faith they need to serve. 

2 - Give them an opportunity to respond quickly. In the lobby or online have people sign up to attend a special VIP Banquet to hear about the roles they can play. 

3 - Announce and offer sign ups for at least 3 weeks after your message. This will give more people a chance to sign up, and allow potential attendees to put the date on their calendar. 

4 - Hold the VIP Banquet. Feed Them. Inspire Them. Inform Them. Give them a chance to sign up. 

We have walked this through and are currently in the process of adding 16 new volunteers to our team and ministry departments. If this will work for us, I know it will work for you. 

If you are wanting to master the art of Team Building, I would like to invite you to enroll at Youth Ministry University our twelve month online training course for Youth Pastors. The cost is only $75  for the entire year of training. Find out more by CLICKING HERE

10 things to do when your service sucked.

We make sure that everything looks great on our social media posts. The room looks full. The stage looks amazing. The people look like they are having a blast. But lets be honest. Every message isnt epic. Every gathering isn't packed. Every service isn't amazing. Sometimes the worship was flat, the message was off, people are bored, and something that sounded great in a creative meeting, just didn't work. 

You probably can't tell it by my Instagram photos, but I've had more, "that was horrible" moments in ministry than I care to remember. So after 24 years of great days, good days, and "what in the world world" just happened days. I thought I would talk about the 10 things we do when our service sucked. 

1. Remind ourself of the "win".

Every time we have a service that is subpar, we get together as a team and remind ourself of why we do services in the first place. We gather together on a weekly basis to "Bring people to Jesus and help them live like Him".  In order to do this our services need to be "remarkable" and "life altering". Our worship and message needs to be so good, powerful, or thought provoking that people will leave not only remarking to friends about what they experienced but most importantly begin to change the way they live. 

2. Be honest.

When we gather together as a team we have to trust each other enough to be completely honest about what happened. Nothing will change without an open and honest discussion about what we did that was not remarkable and life altering. 

3. Celebrate the wins. 

Some things did not work, but some things did. We don't want to focus only on the losses of the day. We want to take some time to celebrate the wins. Maybe someone came to the church that had not attended in a long time, accepted Jesus as their Savior, or starting serving behind the scenes. These are huge wins. They might not change the fact that our message was flat, but they did build momentum in some way and they deserve to be celebrated. 

4. Fix at least one thing before the next service. 

Some things that go wrong are going to take some time to get right. But most weeks can be fixed with small tweaks. We don't ever want to procrastinate, we want to be proactive. So we fix at least one thing before our next gathering. 

A few years ago we had an exceptionally bad weekend. The worship was flat. The message was subpar. The attendance was down and our offering was low. So I text my friend Perry Noble to see if he had any advice on how to bounce back from a tough weekend. The following three points are some tips that he gave me. We have applied them ever since.  

5. Realize it wasn't as bad as you thought. 

Because we are so invested in what we do, we look at it way more critically than others. Sometimes we are much tougher on ourselves than we should be. When the service is off a bit, we want to be honest about it but also realize it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed. 

6. Know that one bad service will not kill you. 

Jesus said that he will build His church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. If Hell itself will not stop the Kingdom of God, I doubt that bad song selection in one church service will stop God from redeeming the world. One bad service will not kill us. 

7. Keep your head up. 

Don't pout. Don't sulk. Don't put your head down. We are leaders. We can't lead anyone anywhere with our head down. We need to keep our head up and lead our church, lead our people, and lead our team. 

Making Jesus known to the world is the most important work taking place on planet earth. Because of that ... 

8. Don't Quit. 

Don't quit striving for excellence. Jesus deserves your best. Your people deserve your best. Don't have a "poor me" mentality and quit when times get tough. 

9. Do better next time. 

Regroup. Be honest. Fix problems. Do better next time. It's just simple. 

10. Remember it's never about us. 

It's not about our guitar solo. It's not about our funny story. It's not about our chance to shine on stage. The reason for gathering together is to bring people to Jesus and help them begin to live like Him.  When we have a bad service, we need to remember it's not and never will be been us.  

I hope this has helped. Now go do something great this week for Jesus!

If you want to get more practical advice check out Youth Ministry University and our Build Growth Curriculum. 

Why did we do an outreach event and not reach out to the schools?

Well, before I answer this question, let me give you some back-story. 

September of 2013 our church plant started gathering weekly. Out of our love for the next generation, we decided that our first full time hire would be a Next Generations Pastor to oversee Kids and Youth. Over the past two years we have seen many great things happen in our kids and youth ministries. Eight weeks ago our Next Generation Pastor left to seek a position as a Senior Pastor. When this happened I knew that hiring another person to run these departments was not the fix. We had to firmly establish the WHY and the WHAT of our youth ministry before bringing in another person to run it. So I decided to step in and become the Youth Pastor as well as the Senior Pastor of our Church.

When you start leading something it is more important to discover “where you are” before you decide “where you are going”. So over the past eight weeks in leading the student ministry I’ve been looking at where we are as a group. Here is what I’ve discovered. 

It is not a large group.   Before April we had about 25 students coming to our midweek gatherings on a regular basis. 

Still building identity. The group of individual teenagers that gathers is still trying to discover their identity as a group. They are friendly with each other but there is not a lot of cohesion between individual students. We are in one place, but we are not together as one. 

Young in age and faith. The majority of the students that attend each week are between the ages of 12 to 15 and many are very young in their personal walk with Jesus. 

Not enough trained volunteers. The few people that are a part of the youth ministry are incredible, but there is not very many of them and most are not trained in how to walk out leadership in a youth ministry environment. 

The students are hungry.  From the very first week in meeting with the students, I could see that they are hungry to do be a part of something special. If given the chance they would bring their friends, serve in ministries, and make an impact in their friends. 

Once we took the time to discover where we are, we started looking at not only where we want to be at in the fall, but what steps do we need to take as a group in order to get there. 

We will begin to grow the group.   Numbers matter because people matter. Every Number is a name! Every name has a story and every story matters to God. We want to reach more teenagers for Jesus! 

We will establish clear vision.  Vision is the thing that brings different types of people together. Give people a “common cause” and you will have “community”. 

We will build a strong, well trained team. Take the summer to establish teams of students and adults to run and facilitate the weekly work of the ministry. 

Use students hunger for more to gain momentum. The students want to have more fun, hang with more friends, and have more gatherings. So we will use the desire they have for more physical things, to give us the opportunity to see God do the spiritual things they need. 

Ok, now that we have the back-story set up. Lets answer the question that I’m blogging about today. Why did we do an outreach event and not reach out to the schools? 

Knowing that the students are hungry for more, we need to build a volunteer team, have a common cause to build community, and reach more students than we currently are. We decided to do an outreach event. We wanted to give teenagers a physical reason to attend, so we could share Gods word personally, and they could begin to be renewed spiritually. 

Four weeks ago we started planning out, and building momentum toward our first ever "Black Light Food Fight". Here is what the night consisted of:

Before the service- the first 25 teenagers at the door would receive a free T-Shirt.

During the service  - we would do a message titled “The Value of You”.  You can view this message by Clicking Here

After the service - we would give away a Hover Board and do a giant food fight. 

In order to reach out to more students on this night, we decided to: 

Announce it for four weeks in Youth Service. 

Announce it for four weeks in our Weekend Services at TheCHURCH. 

Do Social Media Pushes. 

Give students “food fight” bracelets so they could hand them out and personally invite their friends. 

The reason that we decided to not do anything “corporately” as a student ministry in the local schools like; school lunch visits, school assemblies, or passing out flyers to students. The reason we did not work with FCA, Sports Teams, Music Departments, or other student organizations is simply because we know all of those things work. Reaching out to the local schools, would have caused a lot of students to attend our event and that is exactly what we did not want. 

With where our youth ministry currently is, reaching out to the schools would have caused us to have more students attend than our student and volunteer base could have handled. 

We would have had an incredible night. If we would have done what we know to do in the schools, we could have had 150 to 200 students show up for the Food Fight and it would have been a complete loss.

Here are three reasons why:

Current Students:

Our current students would have felt completely lost by the overwhelming number of visitors to their group. They don’t even know each other yet. With the size that we currently are, to have 100 to 200 strangers in the group would not have brought the group together it would have torn it apart. We need our students to know this is their group, so they stick around, get plugged in, pursue Jesus and become a foundation that can be built upon. 

Current Team:

The team we assembled could have run the Black Light Food Fight with out much trouble. However, we could not have continued to minister to 100 to 200 students on a weekly basis, The team currently lacks the size and training to minister effectively on a weekly basis to that size of a group.  

Lost Momentum:

Because the ministry is not ready to add 100 to 200 teenagers. Going into the schools and getting all of these kids to show up would have been an incredible night, but we would have quickly lost all of the students that we gained. Pouring 5 gallons of milk into a one gallon container makes a mess. We are not looking for a mess, we are looking for spiritual momentum in the lives of teenagers. 

Those are the reasons why we did an outreach event and didn't reach out to the schools. However, what we did do was inspire and equip our students to bring their personal friends to the event and it worked. 

8 weeks ago we had 3 adults volunteering ... at the food fight we had 18. 

8 weeks ago we had 25 students attending ... at the food fight we had 73. 

This outreach event was a great win. Because it gave us what we need the most. It gave us momentum and not a mess. 

We will take the summer to cast vision, build teams, build relationships, and build disciples so that in the fall, we will be ready to reach out to the area schools! We started.  

welcometoecho.com

Here are some questions for you and your team:

Do you know where you currently are?

Do you know where you want to go?

Have you thought through the steps you need to take in order to get from where you currently are to where you want to go?

Nine Things Your Team Needs You To Have

1 - Personal Pursuit of Jesus

I Timothy 3:1-7 

Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)  He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

The reason you should pursue Christ is not so others will follow you more effectively,  but because you are a sinner, in desperate need of a Savior. That being said, you cannot lead someone anywhere that you either have not been or are not going. You cannot lead people to follow Jesus if you are not passionately pursuing Him yourself.

2 - Unwavering Courage

Each week you are working with the toughest thing on the earth - PEOPLE 

People are a tough crowd. They have their own language. They have their own style. They think they know everything. There will be weeks where you feel like you are absolutely waisting your time. In those moments you are going to need, courage. Courage to keep talking to someone that doesn’t seem to care. Courage to keep serving someone that doesn’t seem to want your help. Courage to look past who this person currently is, and see who they could be in Christ. 

If you are going to be successful in Ministry, you are going to have to have and model unwavering courage. 

3 -  Self Control

A leader can’t expect to control others, if he is not able to control himself. 

If there is one thing I would encourage you to control, it would be your thoughts. What you think, is what you speak. What you speak is what you do. What you do becomes habitual. Your habits will develop your character and your character will determine your destiny. Who you are and who is around you in five years will be in direct proportion to what you think today. 

4 - A Road Map

No one will follow a person if they do not know where they are going. Because of this, a great leader takes time to map out where they are going in great detail. It is very important to have short, medium and long range goals for the ministry you lead. What is your small group, registration team, or worship band, going to be like in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months? If you don’t know, why would anyone join you?

5 - Something EXTRA

The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the word, extra.  If you want to do extraordinary things in life or see God do extraordinary things in the lives of people. Then you are going to have to add something“extra” to all the ordinary things you do.

When you give extra-time, extra-study, extra-prayer and extra-planning, you open the door for God to do the extraordinary. So give something extra. 

 6 - A People Personality

A leaders greatest asset is not money, facilities, or programs. His greatest asset is people. A great leader knows how to communicate with, respect, enthusiasm and love for people. Here are some tips for having a people personality. 

Smile.

It is very hard to be distant or “shut off” to someone that is smiling at you. So every time you talk with someone, pull them in and open their heart with your beautiful smile. 

Ask questions about them.

Peoples favorite word is their name and their favorite story is their own. When you talk with people ask them questions about themselves. Get them talking about their life and they will love you.

Leave your problems at home. 

Don’t bring your stress, drama and life issues with you to the ministry. Carrying that stuff around makes us angry, irritable, and frustrated. Those three things do not open peoples hearts to God. So check that stuff at the door and turn your heart towards the people and not the problems around you. 

7 - Great Communication

There is nothing that we will ever do in ministry that only effects one ministry. Everything we do will include other departments of the church in one way or another. Because of this, we need to keep other people and ministries in the loop with all of the pertinent information. 

Without teamwork, we will fail. To be a great leader you will need to communicate well to the people above you, beside you as well as under you in ministry.

8 - Attention to Detail

It’s not the big things that will hurt you. It’s the small details that will kill you. Pay attention to details. 

9 - Responsibility

If you are going to be successful you must be willing to accept responsibility not only for your own mistakes and shortcomings, but also for those of the people under you. When things go well in your department give the credit to those around you. When things go wrong in your department, you step up and take responsibility for your team.  

Nothing ever gets accomplished by pushing the blame off on others. We all make mistakes from time to time. 

Three things to do when you make a mistake. 

1- Own up to it. 

2 - Learn from it. 

3 - Move past it. 

Which of these do you poses and which ones do you struggle with? I would love to hear from you in the comments below. 

Three things every Youth Pastor needs to do when arriving at a new Church.

Transition happens to all of us. Here are three things that you have to do when you arrive at your new Church. 

When you transition from one student ministry to the next, you will see so many things that need to change. That is great but you can’t change everything at once. 

I read a very good book one time that had a phrase that went something like this “The steps of the righteous man are ordered of the Lord.” If you notice, the scriptures do not say the leaps of a righteous man are ordered of the Lord. God orders and ordains our steps … not our leaps.

Coming into town and trying to tackle, facility, recruiting, outreach, discipleship, small groups and team building all at the same time would not be a step – that would be a very large leap. Because of this you have decide to accomplish His vision for your ministry one step at a time.

3 things you need to do when arriving at your new Church.

Side Note – Changing the Youth Group Name is not one of them!

Step One – Build relationship with students.
When you first arrive, you will be so excited to get to know all of the students in your new family at the Church. However, they don’t have a clue who you are, what you are like or if they can even trust you. They most likely have gone through several Youth Pastors and they all came in talking about how much they love them, and how God is going to do some great things in the ministry. They have heard it all before. When you first arrive don’t tell them you love them… show them! Take every opportunity during your Youth Services, weekend venues, off day trips, ball games, gatherings at your house and retreats to simply get to know your new friends as well as let them get to know you.

Relationship trumps everything!
Teenagers are your ministry so, build relationships with your students and you will be building your ministry! 

Step Two – Build relationship with parents.
You have to begin to look at everything through the eyes of the parents. You have some incredible families at your new Church. So take some time to establish trust, build friendship, as well as cast the vision of where you are taking the student ministry and inviting parents to bring their teenager along for the journey. 

Talk to parents in the halls of the Church. Set up times to grab a coffee. Go to one of their Children’s games, sit on the bleachers and just get to know them. Other than your relationship with your Senior Pastor, your relationship with Parents is the most important relationship in your ministry, so be authentic, be real, be a servant and get to know them. When you do, they will love you! When they love you, they will make their teenagers come to your meetings!

Step Three – Build the team.
Nothing can be done alone. In order for you to do what God is calling you to do, you must build an incredible team. When I transitioned to a new church a few years ago, we had an amazing summer planned. We also had a brand new launch coming up in the fall, so we took 13 weeks of the Summer to cast not only cast vision, but to recruit, train, and release new workers into the roles they were going to play at Student Ministry in the fall. 

We arrived at the new Church at the end of May. We took time to build relationships with teenagers, build relationships with parents, we recruited and trained 70 new volunteers and in 13 weeks the student ministry went from 40 students at our first service to 395 when we launched in the fall. 

When Jesus came to the earth, He did not come to promote or push a program, He came to the earth for people. It is the same with each us us. God did not call us where we are to promote or push some program! He called us to live and to love His people. 

Build HIS people and HE will build HIS church! 

If you want to find out more ways to grow, and build your team, be sure to check out Youth Ministry University. Click (HERE) to find out more.  put link to YMU page on website