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“how are the children?”

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How are the Children?In African cultures a common greeting between people from a tribe not their own would be “How are the children?” The idea behind that gesture is that if the children are doing well then the village/tribe is reflective of that wellness. We do similar as you meet an old friend or extended family member they, or you, will often say “How are the kids?” That question means something deeper within ourselves than we acknowledge.

With the events of last weeks Penn State sexual abuse and cover up scandal this question circles my brain and sadly, I cannot give a really good answer to it. With the history of the Catholic church abuse scandal always a possible topic of discussion for the last 15 years, to the weekly abuse by our very own tribe members we call ‘Youth Ministers’ our children are under some serious dangers.

One might say that is an over reaction.. possibly.. but as these are anecdotal incidents we’d be silly to assume they are isolated.

I spent my morning reading the Penn State Grand Jury testimony before I felt I could start to write this. One reason was my own curiosity. I spent some of my young adult & teenage years at Penn State with my sister and best friends graduating from there. It’s a great school and a cool place to be. I loved the tradition of “JoPa” as harkens back to a day of stability and relationships over promotions and successes. So, in a way, I needed to know.. Second reason, I am not a victim of abuse. I have reported people to DHS/DCS in my days of ministry and given witness accounts before, but I felt I needed to know a bit more about what it means to be a victim.

What I read in that report was a, quite disgusting, but mostly alarming was the ability to repeat behaviors that compromised the innocence of children. Over and over again there was the same story from victim to victim and I couldn’t help but wonder, how could this continually happen? It happened, in this case, as seems to be the case with the Catholic church because someone in a position of authority leveraged their trust given to them by others into aggregous acts against some of the most vulnerable of God’s Kingdom.

How then, can we as a church community, a people called “Christian” protect those who are most vulnerable in the Kingdom?

Our church, often throws out the needs for a Safe Sanctuaries policy, based off the works of Joy Melton and a book series by that name. I am not so concerned about you trying to adopt and implementing a policy today, but I do hope you take some time to look over the practices of introducing your teenagers and adults together that minimizes the opportunities for a an isolated or predator behavior to take place.

So what can you do this week with all of this?

1. Assess your policies or procedures that are presently the norm of your ministry.
2. Put into practice new policies as needed
3. Send out correspondence to your families, acknowledge what is happening in the news, don’t be afraid of it, and let them know what elements are there to protect their children.
What are things to assess?
  • Do you have background checks on your people?
  • Do you have a second adult rule for all ministry gatherings?
  • Is there a timeframe that people have to be around the church to become involved with youth?
  • Does someone, or you, interview each youth minister with your team?
  • Is there a reference check?
  • Are there yearly review processes?
  • Is there a response process if a child told you, or another adult, of something indecent that might have occurred?
  • Is there a care process for an after incident?
Having some policies in place can help you in the implementing process of protecting those in the ministry, youth community and outer community. It will also help give some clear direction in an otherwise emotional set of circumstances.
How do you go about creating or starting policies? If you are starting from scratch or need to see what others do you can do what we call an “invisible search” that will help you find files that are posted on servers, but not necessarily on the web. Check out this “safe sanctuaries” search. Download documents as you feel the need and see what others are doing and wordings (change the search wordings if you like).
Train up your people on the new procedures. Start practicing the new safety measures as soon as feasible (ie. two adult rule is easy, background checks take time and money). When you find push back, just assure folks, this isn’t a witch hunt, just something to assure each other and the families that we are conducting our ministries with the best safety practices we can. If the case of Penn State reflects anything, the adage of “we’ve known them forever” is no excuse for putting around protection measures for the ministry community.
Then share with the masses. This might be an email with the every policy/procedure that you’ve implemented this week, it could be a reassurance that you have safe measures in place already and people can trust the ministry, it could be just an acknowledgement of “This has happened and is tragic, we seek to be a safe place for your child to be a participant in the ministries of the church. If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s safety and what we do to ensure that as best we can, please contact us.”
NOTE: the implementation of the a Safe Sanctuaries policy doesn’t eliminate all possibilities of something happening in ministry, but it does greatly diminish the probability. From my personal experience, we had a young adult who’s first act that would red flag him was an assault on a child. We had some implied policies in place, but just finished approving our policies and background checking everyone. What was helpful for us was that we had approached the subject and our people were prepared, as best as could, for such an event. Certainly our reactions were not without various emotions, but our people held together as best as one might imagine for such a thing to happen to a church body.

 

Gavin Richardson is Digital Community Builder for YouthWorker Movement and the Short One at YouthWorker Circuit. He has been in youth work for almost two decades now, has been a writer and consultant on numerous internet and published projects for the church. He’s often a speaker around the country on church communications and community building. His current projects are working on developing online Youth Disciple Groups and finishing a new book “Sticky Sheep.” He is the part time youth guy at Good Shepherd UMC in Hendersonville, TN. If you ask, he will say that he is a “misfit” of the church. He lives in Nashville with his wife Erin, son Brooks and dog Crimson. You can connect with Gavin (and he’s totally cool with that) through http://about.me/gavoweb.

How to Create some Newsletters that Engage! Paper Still Works if You Do it Right

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Youthworker-Circuit-Newsletters-that-EngageYour teenagers have some 4,000 adverts that work to capture their attention every day, and that is a conservative estimate. So how can you go about getting their attention and be different from the other 3,999? Do something different. Go old school, keep the postal service in business, send out a newsletter. Really? Yes, Really. Here’s a some ways to create a newsletter that engages the teen.

Your disadvantage: You don’t have tv, millions of dollars in commercial appeal, do not have the time to inundate them with your message.

Your Advantage! They don’t watch tv as much (videos on the internet), you don’t need millions anyways, you know them personally and that is a step ahead of any marketing agency.

Why a paper newsletter? If you have taken our Surviving to Thriving training session we speak to having a communications plan for not just your core, but those curious and those in the community. Too often we get caught in the trap of communicating to our core, but yet we have so many more to communicate to that we probably only have their physical address.

  1. Design Counts: Wonder why Apple is such an appealing brand to teenagers? It isn’t just that their computers and gadgets are superior to everything else on the market (somethings are), but it is their attention to design. They’ve slimmed down functioning to give a sleek design element and people enjoy and revel in that. Do Not, pull up the old Publisher templates with clip art. They look cheap and that can be translated as “this is not really that important.” Whatever your program is, spend time working on a simple, yet captivating design. If you are not at all skilled in designing, no problem, do a Google search for some templates you can download for free or purchase. I see spending $30 on a good newsletter design as a great investment. I like to think an hour or two of my time is worth a whole lot more than that amount of money and I could then take that 1-2 hours catching up with teenagers in their circle.
  2. Think in Chunks: Wired magazine did an article years ago on Snack Food Culture where they highlighted our trend to chunking our information and taking it in ‘snack sized bites.’ How many words of a 1000 word article do you actually read? Not all of them, you’ll scan, some of you will just like this article because of the bold face type and bullet points, I’ve chunked my information. Put your information into your design in chunks with some eventual ‘next step’ ie. visit website, register on facebook, etc. Keep information in blocks and keep it small.
  3. Images Speak: Have some photos of the specific teens you are hoping to target with the newsletter. Not sure what that means, have a few kids in mind that you want to see this more than others. Next month switch that up. Want to get sneaky, employ the technologies of variable print, that’s a whole other level. This also brings up the notion of printing in colors. Doing a full color print can be expensive, but choosing a different colored paper or a heavier weight paper gets you almost there for less cost. However, if you are doing the newsletter with a nice design and in chunks then you are probably downsizing your newsletter to just one page. Images are something teenagers are looking for, they want to see themselves, their friends living life. You can even be tricky by putting unlock codes to photo posts on your website to tease out to kids to look for the newsletter.
  4. Personalize! This might be the most important part of the whole process. Get the teens attention by personalizing their newsletter. I don’t mean by just doing some mail merge that puts a “Hey Gavin, …” but leave some open space to write a personal note “Hope you did great at your soccer game last night! Maybe I’ll see you Sunday and you can give me a play by play!” “We prayed for you and your drivers test this week at youth last night. Good Luck!” Want to get even crazier, write your note over the other printed materials. Watch the kids bring that up when they come to church next “What was up with that?” “Why do you write notes to me over the newsletter?” This may not give some ground breaking conversation, but it is engagement where you might not otherwise had any, so we call that a start to building relationships.
  5. Mix it Up: Don’t always send the same newsletters. Have a few postcards thrown in there. Always directing people to that main hub of information, which could be the church or a youth website, maybe Facebook page, etc. I call this my p90x method, if the brain knows what to expect it will skip what it usually doesn’t connect with and go to the part that it does. Mixing it up forces the brain to adjust and look over all the information shared.

Want to explore that Variable Print idea? Give the folks at UMR Communications a ring, tell them I sent ya. They work with churches all the time on various sized projects from posters to 40 page booklets. They can even help you with your design, print and then mail it.. You miss out on that personalized writing part if they mail it for you.

Here’s a mock Newsletter I drew Up.. Kinda Like it, might be using it for my own Youth Ministry, with some photo and information changes.

Gavin Richardson is Digital Community Builder for YouthWorker Movement and the Short One at YouthWorker Circuit.  He has been in youth work for almost two decades now, has been a writer and consultant on numerous internet and published projects for the church. He’s often a speaker around the country on church communications and community building. His current projects are working on developing online Youth Disciple Groups and finishing a new book “Sticky Sheep.” He is the part time youth guy at Good Shepherd UMC in Hendersonville, TN.  If you ask, he will say that he is a “misfit” of the church. He lives in Nashville with his wife Erin, son Brooks and dog Crimson. You can connect with Gavin (and he’s totally cool with that) through http://about.me/gavoweb.

7 Youth Ministry Numbers You Really Should Know

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Youth Ministry Numbers TalkThis article was originally published October 4, 2011.
One of my favorite pastors had always noted, we need to be ministering to who we are accountable for, and that isn’t always who is on our rolls. Rolls are a terrible statistical number.

 

In the business world a good “ROI” or return on investment in a project is considered pretty successful if it reaches the 5% mark (sometimes less, sometimes more depending on the endeavor). That doesn’t transfer very well to the church world, where every person counts and everyone has to be involved. This is the reality we live with as youth workers.
Years ago my friend Mark DeVries suggested me to a church in my area that was looking for a youth leader. His Youth Ministry Architects had done consultant work with that church and in their report (which Mark gave to me & was made available on the church website) gave me some new understandings to “numbers” in ministry and what is feasible. I have carried much of those numbers with me in keeping some idea on the growth and health of the ministries I have been a part of.
Some numbers have been around for years, and you will probably hear similar in some youth ministry workshop that you go to in the future. Some of these Mark has written more extensively in his book Sustainable Youth Ministry.

 

1. 10% of the worship congregation makes up a healthy reflection of numbers in the youth ministry. 200 people in church on Sunday then you can range around 20 teenagers. Sure you can be healthy and be higher or lower for varied reasons, but that’s a good measure. It is important to distinguish the worshiping congregation over the church rolls. An unhealthy congregation cannot expect to have a thriving youth ministry that exceeds its own metrics. If it does it may not be sustainable. Churches that look for youth to be the magic pill saving their church are going to be disappointed. Rolls then become your new outreach focus, not group.
2. 7 the amount of Friends a teen needs to have in the youth group. (This I believe picked up from on of the myriad of Chap Clark writings) You know the question every teen asks when signing up for an event or deciding on signing up, “Who is going to be there?” They need to know that there will be a collection of friends there to talk to and hang with. This number ensures that someone will be there that they know. Small groups, and small youth groups, help to fill this need. The hospitality of a group helps with this. Cliques are killers to this. Notice who isn’t there, list out their friends from the group, are those friends coming? Can you list seven teens? If that sounds silly just think about where you go that doesn’t have some friendships involved. It is a number that is important.
3. 4-6 is the amount of teenagers that an adult can know intimately in a spiritual mentor type role. This makes a great case for the need for many youth leaders in your ministry. Jesus, though he had 12 disciples, is known to have kept just a few of the fellas closer to him and invested in them more than the whole group. This is fluid, a teen you are tight with this month you might have fallen away from the next because you have started to invest in another teen. That’s natural progression and perfectly okay in my book, but you want other leaders in place to fit that spot. So if you have a ministry of 25 youth, then you need 5 adults who are fully invested in the lives of the teenagers, that is if they are equally spread out. Best to have 6 or 7 so that everyone is known.
4. $1,000 per kid per year. The folks at Youth Ministry Architects through their work over the years have given a range of 1,000 per kid per year spent on youth ministries in the budget & staff salary for the youth ministries. In the case of my small church, we have 32 youth on rolls, 3 that are irregular attenders (family dynamics), so for the 29 I feel we are accountable that would be $29,000 a year for the budget. We do not quite meet that, but we certainly know it and we work to fill gaps as we can. We also know that we are not going to have bust out growth years without some financial investment.
5. 50 the general ceiling of teenagers that a paid staff person can keep up with on an effective basis. Do you see business managers who manage 50 people on their own? No, businesses know it’s a stretch and ineffective so they’ll throw structures/positions in place to help. Youth ministries are generally without that. The solo youth pastor at a 200 youth church (active) might be the manager of 50-60 adults throughout the year. Not to mention the programming and administrative tasks. If this is you, you need to be asking for some help. If help is not available in paid help then search out ways to fill in some gaps with parents gifts and talents. But again, that becomes more people in the equation.

 

6. 20% ceiling for youth ministry is where numbers can begin to become unpredictable. At this point the numbers associated with investment do not always work directly with growth.
7. 1 Family is what you have so don’t sacrifice them. If you are like me then had some ceremony that was before God where you took some vows to another person and thus created a family. You probably didn’t have anything in the vows to uphold, protect, and nurture a youth ministry. If you are single with/without a child/ren similar applies. There is a responsibility to that relationship first no matter what the church says. That isn’t to say that your family cannot do that for a youth ministry, just remember where your priorities and commitments stand first and foremost. Way too often I am seeing youth leaders get caught up with the youth culture and being the ‘everything’ for the teenagers that they are leaving nothing for their family, and sometimes leaving all together. Keeping up with numbers, growth, friendships, and other metrics are great, but the most important number is your family.
As with any statistic you can claim it means something different, but these are pretty observable if you go through writing down who you know really well right now. It probably isn’t that many if you are honest about it. If there are kids who come infrequently then write down who their friends are in the group, it probably doesn’t come to 7. Numbers can fluctuate depending on contexts of environment. Areas that have a single set school system (one junior high and high school) could bring in higher numbers than those who have a spread set of school systems.
So have fun playing with some #’s.
Shalom
-Gavin
Gavin Richardson is Digital Community Builder for YouthWorker Movement and the Short One at YouthWorker Circuit.  He has been in youth work for almost two decades now, has been a writer and consultant on numerous internet and published projects for the church. He’s often a speaker around the country on church communications and community building. His current projects are working on developing online Youth Disciple Groups and finishing a new book “Sticky Sheep.” He is the part time youth guy at Good Shepherd UMC in Hendersonville, TN.  If you ask, he will say that he is a “misfit” of the church. He lives in Nashville with his wife Erin, son Brooks and dog Crimson. You can connect with Gavin (and he’s totally cool with that) through http://about.me/gavoweb.

7 Choices You Can Make To Keep From Losing Yourself in Youth Ministry

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I had a reality check six months ago while sitting in a volunteer training seminar. Our instructor suggested that youth ministry volunteers focus on their hobbies and figure out creative ways to get the youth to participate too (a youth flyfishing expedition? Why not?) He had us start with a list of our hobbies… and I realized that I didn’t have any hobbies outside of my job in youth ministry. This cannot be healthy.

In a profession like youth ministry, it’s easy to get caught up in the role of youth pastor/youth director and lose touch with who you are as a person. Youth workers almost by definition are givers, people who sacrifice their goals to help others. It is almost universal that youth workers will ignore their own needs every chance they get. But you have to spend some time taking care of yourself or you will find yourself where you have nothing left to give, and probably at the worst possible time. Here are 7 choices you can make to keep from losing your sense of self in your job:

The first 4 choices are internal things you can control – basically ways to take care of yourself. The last three involve external factors that you can work on but you might have limited control.

Internal Choices to Make to Keep from Losing Yourself in Youth Ministry

1. Choose to care for your own soul. You pour your heart into helping others. But who is your pastor? Consider finding a pastor who is not your boss. Who holds you accountable for your own spiritual growth? The best way you can minister to other people is to make sure you are spiritually fed yourself. Choose to make time for personal Bible study, retreat, worship – whatever you need for your own spiritual growth – and make sure to do these things before you get caught up in work. Do not get in the habit of putting youth ministry before your own relationship with God.

2. Choose to care for your mind. What do you think about? The questions you ask will become habitual. What kind of thoughts are you letting into your head? Are you reading positive things and surrounding yourself with a positive helpful message? Just the simple act of reading positive material can keep your mind from spiraling down into negative thoughts. (check out some inspirational books, read Scripture) You need to keep yourself in a positive and healthy frame of mind.

3. Choose to care for your body. We all know youth work can mean lock-ins and a seemingly limitless number of occasions to eat pizza. That might have seemed like the ideal job in college, but we’re not getting any younger. Be honest, are you eating well? Getting enough rest? Exercising? You know what you need to do – do it! We all need to take care of ourselves physically – get adequate rest, exercise regularly, wear sunscreen. If you are taking care of your body, you will find that you have more energy and you will last longer.

One of the healthiest things you can do is to say “no” when people are asking you to add another commitment to your schedule. Consider this: When asked the secret to making amazing products, Steve Jobs said “It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much”. Your ministry works the same way, do too much “not amazing stuff” and you can’t focus on the truly important stuff.

4. Choose to develop yourself outside of your profession. Get a hobby. Learn new things. Keep your mind sharp. [Have a bucket list? No? Make one. Have one, cross one off this month. Who do you have fun with? In the military they say at social events, “never open the hangar doors”, which means when you are at a social event with people in your unit, focus on the fun, and don’t talk about work. Having trouble turning off the worker mode and relaxing? Maybe you need friends that are not involved in youth ministry [in any way shape or form].

External Choices to Make to Keep from Losing Yourself in Youth Ministry – these are
about your relationships

5. Choose to make your home relationships a priority. It’s too easy to take your family for granted. If you are married, you need to make sure your marriage is a priority over youth ministry. This might mean turning the text messages off when you get home, scheduling date nights and not letting youth events conflict with them, eat regular meals together. If you have children, you need to be demonstrating the priority your own kids have over the youth events. Bonus: when you choose to make it clear that family is your priority, you are being a great role model for youth. Set boundaries.

6. Choose to build positive work relationships. Church politics is [not any different than office politics, when people who have different opinions and values work together, sometimes their personalities don’t fit. It’s] unavoidable. [But you can be part of the solution instead of feeding the problem.] Make sure you are keeping things positive with your coworkers. Try to understand the pressures the senior pastor might be under. Take the janitor out to lunch. Lift people up. Work relationships are one of those things that make the job joyful when they’re great, miserable when they’re bad.

Work relationships also include your relationships with volunteers – be positive, affirming. [And if there is a problem with fit or calling] be loving but direct, [not everyone is going to be a successful long term volunteer].

Along those same lines, choose to have healthy youth relationships – set your boundaries and make sure your relationships are appropriate. [If you are not doing safe sanctuary where you are consider adopting it as a standard, it helps keep everyone safe, and it doesn’t leave room for any inappropriate rumors to take root.] Remember that your role is not to be the “cool buddy” of teenagers, you are an adult. Being a youth worker is not the same thing as being a youth. You can coach your students, you can listen, you can cheer them on, but you are not there to live life for them or through them. Choose not to be alone with youth or to be in situations that can be misunderstood.

7. Choose your job wisely. Churches and youth ministries have different personalities; just like youth workers have different personalities. If you are working in a church that has unrealistic expectations for you or just isn’t a fit for your personality and gifts, you might be miserable and on the way to
losing yourself before you even begin.

Choosing the job that is right for you starts with an honest self-assessment.. What are your strengths? Gifts? Passions? Are you an extrovert that gets your energy from having a large number of people around? Then don’t go to work for a small church with a high average age and few youth. If you are passionate about student leadership, will you be content working for a church that expects you to produce programs? If you are passionate about discipleship, will you be content working for a church that expects big outreach events and large crowds? How much time does your job really require? Will this work with your other priorities for spiritual growth and healthy relationships?

If you find yourself in a church that doesn’t fit your personality and gifts, it may be time to make the difficult choice to make a switch. The more you can align who you are as a person and how you are comfortable in ministry, the healthier you’ll be.

Erin Jackson is a veteran & certified youthworker as well as part of the Youthworker Movement team. She lives in Arlington Texas with her husband Dennis and three kids. She can be found blogging at http://umyouthworker.com/

When He had hair He was Working on This!!

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Leadership LabI’ve known Hank Hilliard since 1995 when I was doing short term missions work and he brought his youth group to our camp. Back then we were both much younger and we both had a full head of hair. Well, I still do have a full head of hair, can’t say the same for Hank. But since then Hank has been working up and developing how to create student leaders in his ministry and he’s pulled this together in a tested out resource (not something he just made up and is throwing out there) called Leadership Lab.

Check out Hank’s own thoughts on this tool.

Pick up your copy of Leadership Lab through the Cokesbury website.