Ministry and Meteorology? » BTFMinConn

What Should Our Focus Be?

jeff — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:13:49 +0000

Coming from a youth ministry background (almost 10 years as a volunteer in some form or another), it is easy for me to say that this post if off base. However, as I thought about it, what is the main complaint in youth ministry, or from youth pastors? Parental/adult involvement in the ministry of the youth/kids. I agree that maybe even my focus on the kids shouldn’t the be primary focus, but discipling the adults to do the youth ministry.

A first reason to focus on adults is that parents have the primary responsibility to disciple their kids. Sure, it’s rare for parents to do that. We’ll teach them to hunt, fish, cook, drive, and other things of life. But do we teach them them to pray? To read and understand the bible? To share their faith with others? To interpret their lives and encounters with the world in terms of the Kingdom of God? Usually not. At least in many UM churches, many of the adults are too spiritually introverted to feel “comfortable” doing these things. Better leave these really important things to the professionals, i.e., the Sunday School teachers and church staff.

I come from a United Methodist background, but in my experience outside of the UM, I see the same thing. Usually, the successfully run youth ministries have a lot of adult help and a lot of parental support.

Read the whole thing here.—>Bandits No More » Success in ministry.

Leave your comments below.

Cross posted on Big Ticket Festival Ministers’ Connection.

Dealing with discouragement?

jeff — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:40:00 +0000

I subscribe to and read a lot of ministry blogs, especially youth ministry. I found this while reading this morning. Here’s the lead in:

If you haven’t been discouraged in youth ministry yet, hang on, you will be. Discouragement is a part of the profile we cannot avoid. How we respond makes all the difference.

I agree whole heartedly, most of the pain in the church is compounded with the poor way in which discouragement is handled. Doug Ranck points out a good process to deal with it when it comes knocking at your door.

Here’s the link.

Cross posted at Big Ticket Festival Ministers’ Connection.