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Youth Ministry & a Daily Bread

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I stumbled upon this website which had some compiled data / comparisons of the average salary of a job position in an area. I was reminded that my corner of the world doesn’t do to well at taking care of their ministers.

I chose in this captured instance to look at the average salary of a ‘Director of Youth Ministries’ in part because my United Methodist tribe seems to like that title over Youth Pastor or Minister. My best guess on that reasoning is that we have a lengthy ordination process and some might see the ‘pastor’ title as not quite earned by some youth leader. A ‘youth worker’ made significantly less than either a Youth Pastor or Director of Youth Ministries. Not sure why that would be except maybe it averages in some other non-profits.

I was payed pretty well as I considered it at my last church position. Sobering thought however was that many of our pest control employees made more than me for work that had less responsibility. What might be even more sad, I know some of our ordained clergy (and to be ordained you’ve gone through at least masters level divinity education) made less than I did.

Where these wandering thoughts had me going was, how do we provide for our leaders ‘daily bread?’ Now, I am well aware that making more than a dollar a day is richer than some 80% of the worlds population. But in the United States of America those can be some really struggling numbers to make housing, transportation, food/health, debt (M.Div is the worst investment from financial perspective ever), etc. It is probably a shallow reasoning to, but depending on the church you serve you have to ‘keep up with the Jones’s.’ It’s true, if you work in a affluent church, chances are you’d feel some pressures to dress to that culture. Sure it is shallow consumerism, but just because it is that doesn’t mean that it is very real.

So 1) this was kind of a fun site to play around with, so have fun there. 2) and most importantly, can we look at how we as a church are taking care of our people who we claim responsibility for as an employer and ask if it is really something they can provide their daily bread with. Even if the answer is ‘no’ and ‘we cannot do anything more’ at least it helps to acknowledge the value of a person until a church can.

Why YouthWorker Circuit?

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In the past year I’ve been getting a number of questions asking, “What are you up to these days?” It has been a rather loaded question as I’ve been leading up to this point. I’ve been doing some side work, which has been fun and viable, but all the while wanting to put something like YouthWorker Circuit together. But why YouthWorker Circuit?

Well…

We believe that youth ministry is a calling.

We also believe that youth workers don’t have time to do it all and are probably distracted from the parts of youth ministry that they love by the parts that they don’t. And that good youthworkers walk away from their calling every day because they feel under-resourced, over-tasked, and alone.

So we thought..

What if there was a place where you could have instant access to quality Wesleyan curriculum and program ideas? What if there was a resource that prompted you with inventive organizational ideas, guiding you toward better, more personal ministry?

What if there was an opportunity to regularly share genuine, live conversation in community with likeminded youthworkers from across the country?

So we have done..

Open Source Helpfulness #pcn11

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One of the best kept secrets in Nashville & probably around the world is the “unconferences” known as BarCamp & PodCamp. Erin & I went to the very first BarCamp back in 2007 at the Exit In. It was a great day of learning for both Erin & myself, from iPhone app development, corporate blogging, twitter, artificial intelligence, marketing, the emergence of Facebook.. wow!

But it is more than that to us!

What was, and is, best of that & the on going experiences of the PodCamp & BarCamp’s here in Nashville is the open source nature of the helpfulness that is embraced by the mass of creative and technical thinkers & practitioners. From sitting in with some great people at these events to having breakfast or drinks on a monthly basis talking shop, family, or events. I have come to love the sharing nature that is embedded within our towns tech community.

I’ve done what I can to give back, sharing some of my different slants on technology & culture in a few speaking gigs, put in time volunteering & show up in supporting by presence. Through this I have made some invaluable friendships and a host of innovators to lean on for guidance and advice. When I had my transition from local church vocation into the larger consumer pool it was my friends of this community that provided some of my greatest tangible support.

How bout you?..

If you come to Podcamp this March 26th at Nashville’s Cadillac Ranch (right on Broadway) you might not have this immediate connection that I have benefited from over the last four / five years. But you will have the opportunity to plug into a community of people that has a ethos of not just being a Source of good knowledge & practice, but also very Open to meeting and sharing with others, and offering Help all along the way.

I’ll be there at all costs!

I will actually be doing a speaking engagement in Memphis the Thursday & Friday beforehand for my youth ministry church leadership type vocation. I am really excited about that. They wanted me to sit in on a number of panels with some very high profile leaders within the church the Saturday of the event (which happens to be Podcamp day), which would have been great exposure for my new transition. But, this community is a part of me that I cannot make any other decision but to be there. So I am driving through the late evening and then getting downtown as early as I can to, 1. get a good parking spot, 2. make sure that I do not miss a thing at this years event.

branding your YOUth ministry

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I wrote up this posting for YouthWorker Movement & encapsulates some of my ‘short session’ from Perkins School of Youth Ministry last month.

Last month I did a session at Perkins School of Youth Ministry on “branding” ones youth ministry (the image above is my whiteboard, minus that “revitalize church” not sure what that’s from).

Brand, is a very ambiguous term. In many ways its best to understand what some brands are. Mac/Apple, has the bitten apple logo. McDonald’s has the big yellow ‘M.’ Nike has it swoosh. Beyond just a logo though, Coca-Cola has a very distinct and branded glass bottle, so much so that it was designed to be recognized even when broken (true story). ‘Your’ brand is more than just a logo. So how does one identify and move forward developing a brand in the church environment?

Well, this is how I see it happening.

Acts 2: “..because each one heard their own language being spoken..”

I have this idea of Pentecost being about the enabling of effective communicating to the masses through the power of the Holy Spirit. Read the story, that scene was a mess before the Holy Spirit came to inspire & enable the leaders. Today it is a present reality that we speak and understand in brands, that combination of who we are along with our sensory identifiers. My opinion is that we need the Holy Spirit in finding out who we are and what we are about to us and others to be able to accurately and adequately communicate to others about our ministries.

Matthew 16: “When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

I love this scripture, in part because I feel this is all about identity and many of us, our teens especially, struggle with identity. Christ outlines those cores questions we need to answer for ourselves & our ministries. Ourselves? Yes, as I’ve highlighted in Christ’s responses, he renames Simon to Peter, which translated is “rock” and so “on this ‘rock’ I will build my church” telling me that we are integral to the identity and ‘brand’ of our ministries. Are our ministries all about us, heck no! but they are very much a part of us and many times take over traits and gifts unique to us. That isn’t a bad thing. God gifts us & enables us for ministry. We bring that to whatever ministry we enter and lead.

So, how do we go about answering the questions?

I have a process of discernment that I feel has value to help us open to the Holy Spirit and find the answers. Only after this can we move forward in doing the ‘things’ of branding our ministries.

Discernment

Prayer – Emptying Prayer, get rid of all the junk in you head about what could be, what the Baptists are doing, or what the big mega church in your area is doing. Certainly get rid of those advertising ideas from some national chain that you think are cool. (Do this first as individual, then as a group)

Prayer – Return to prayer after you are rid of all that junk and ask God to give you clarity as to “who you are?” and “what do others say you are?”  (Do this first as individual, then as a group)

Reading – Because God doesn’t give answers immediately (that’s my experience, maybe it isn’t yours). Spend time in reading, read scripture (Searching the Scriptures), art books, local newspapers and magazines, read poetry and creative writing, etc.  Stay away from church growth books are my suggestion, they don’t translate often and confuse, plus you need to go back to that emptying prayer exercise.

Conversations – Begin conversations with a myriad of people. Those involved in your ministry and those outside your ministry. Ask those people the two questions, be okay with whatever responses you get.

Visualize – At some point around here you will see some themes emerging. Start to jot them down and then organize the themes of your ministries identity. What do you want to change? What do you want to emphasize? What do you want to be about? Vizual how you might want to get there.

This becomes then a planning process where you want to go back to many of those people you had conversations with. As you present you leadings from the Spirit you will find that others will understand as well and jump in to help making this new branding a reality.

At this point you might have some specific planning options to help along the way.

  • What is your name? I can’t example that one for you
  • What is our visual identifier, ie. logo? How to create it?
  • What is our language?
  • What do we do? Mission, Discipleship, Worship?.. I’m a fan of identifying three key words, forget mission statements, they are useless and communicate nothing to teenagers. imho
  • What do we do best? Discipleship?..
  • How are we going to do this? Detailed plan for reshaping or building your culture
  • What do we want others to know us by? How to share that; email, outreach projects, community events, etc?
  • How to keep doing that? I call it the, rinse and repeat

In our workshop session on of the participants brought up how Gatorade was re-branding itself. Which brought up for me an important example of jumping this process and mis-branding your ministry. Note: I have this information on good knowledge because my brother-in-law is a national sales member to the Gatorade team. A few years back Gatorade heard that Tiger Woods was entertaining a new brand of Powerade line with his name on it. Someone in Gatorade felt, and enough others agreed, that they couldn’t allow this to happen so they rushed to jump over Powerade and sign Tiger to a huge endorsement and created a whole line of favorite Tiger flavors of Gatorade. Well, the whole line was a super flop (financially speaking) and when Tiger got into trouble it was a fortunate circumstance to break from that failed venture. Gatorade got away from “who they are” and more into who they wanted to beat. It failed for them & will fail for any of us who go that route in ministry as well.

Do you have any questions about branding a ministry?

Naming it.. We’re stuck in between Pastor Roles

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The other month I was a church communications conference and had the privilege to meet Dr. Craig van Gelder. Now, Craig (cause we are close buds now) wasn’t on my radar per se, but we were both speaker peeps at this thing and he sat in on my session & I on his and we got to chatting in between times. I really enjoyed the guy.

Anyways, his main keynote went through a history of roles for the pastors of churches. It was rather fascinating to see how he broke it down. How I’ll break it down for you is this, in the earliest histories of the church the pastor was a “resident theologian” (the guy who did all the study and translation for the individual church) or maybe the “civic leader” (you see this in movies how the pastor is always one of the town leaders, or main leader). Fast forward and you get into the 20th century and the pastor role has shifted to the “pastoral counselor” (we want mainly pastoral care as well as a good sermon). But today’s church has moved into more of this “entrepreneurial pastor” role (we want a pastor who can build, and build big.. as well as give a good sermon).

All this swirled in my head as I started reading this posting by Mark Meyer on what the church can learn from business. Mark has some fine points for record, I wouldn’t argue out that they are thoughtless or anything like that. I will say, they do reflect this new culture of pastoral leadership, this ‘entrepreneurial pastor’ type.

The problem here is that many of our pastors and those who have grown up to be a pastor came into the calling with a ‘pastoral counselor’ identity. They want to give guidance and assistance to people, they were not necessarily called to build big temples and have huge audiences (though some believe they were, that’s fine). The trip here is that our congregations are stuck in some limbo that they can not name. And it is that tension that exists because people don’t know how to examine and name that cultural set up we have.

Truth be told, business is taking over way more church practices than church needs to take from business (the base of Stick Sheep, go read it!). Churches are already well versed in business world practices, they’ve been around for a few centuries or more.. not sure many businesses that can claim that. Mark’s issue & many others is just that the church doesn’t want to become entrepreneurial again..

So I’m naming it, in my own UMC we’re stuck in this in between of a culture of pastors taught to be pastoral counselor when yet, our culture is telling our congregations that we want a pastor who will come in an be an entrepreneur. It’s a real pickle to be in and has been the torture of some really great pastors.. that unfortunately were not called to an entrepreneur.