Leadership Resources

I CAN’T EXPRESS  to you the importance of having a pastor mentor that pours leadership into me daily.  Not only is it important that he teaches me things such as encouragement, the love of Christ, leadership and accountability just to name a few, but he is constantly giving me new leadership resources to dig into.  Here are a few that I have benefited from that I hope will help you:

The Global Leadership Summit by Willow Creek

Incredible resource that is put together by Willow Creek that gathers all of the top business and spiritual leaders from around the world and brings them together to train and inspire the leadership of the church. More info here.

Catalyst Conference

A lot like The Global Leadership Summit by Willow Creek, “Catalyst is a powerful gathering of young leaders, a movement of influencers and world changers who love Jesus, see things differently, and feel a burden for our generation. Catalyst seek to learn, worship and create together with a momentous energy passionately pursuing God.”  This will be my first year attending by I am very excited about what God is going to do through this event. More Info here.

Leadership Books Recommendations:

Good to Great by Jim Collins

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Humilitas:  A Key to Life, Love, and Leadership by John Dickson

Books I Am Reading

1. Thriving Youth Ministry: Secrets for Growing Your Ministry & Creating A Friendship Culture by Jeanne Mayo

2. Your First Two Years of Youth Ministry by Doug Fields

3. 99 Thoughts for Youth Workers by Josh Griffin

4. Move:  What 1,000 Churches Revealed About Spiritual Growth by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson

Measuring Success in Youth Ministry…

A good friend of mine brought up a great point via twitter today (@derek_maples):  How do you gauge the success of your youth ministry?  I guess that there are a lot of different avenues to come at this question.  Whether that be personal success, a committee’s view of success, a supervisor’s view of success, volunteer’s view of success, or success of the actual group.  Because in all honesty, every single person that looks onto the youth ministry is probably going to have a different view of what “success” is.

You have to keep in mind that strong people (volunteers tend to be strong people and to be a youth worker or committee member you have to volunteer) will define success for themselves.  So, since our core values and views can be different, that means that success can be different things to different people. So part of having success in ministry is communicating what success in our ministry is to us to others.

To have success (and be able to measure it) you have to have goals to mark you progress.  You have to think about how you want students to look and act as a result of their direct involvement in your ministry. Then determine how you want your ministry to impact the church, kid’s friends and families, and the community.  Once you figure out these things it is much easier to determine success.  Then make sure that you communicate the measure of success with staff, parents, and committees/volunteers.  All of these groups have a hand in your ministry whether it is through prayer or direct involvement.

Communication could be a success in its self.  Measure communication and you could apply that to success.  Basically once you decide on your God given vision for your ministry than you should communicate it with yourself and others as best possible so that not only you see the success but so do others.

We all like to stay away from the numbers game.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked, “How big is your youth group?” or “How many are coming on Wednesday nights?” even “How many came to know the Lord the weekend?”  All of these questions can be very frustrating.  Ministry is not about how many are coming, it is about who is going. On the other hand maybe we should get beyond the question of whether numbers are right or wrong.  The better question could be whether we are looking at the right or wrong numbers.  Maybe we should ask questions like:

 

1. How many students do we have? I am talking exact numbers. You have to know exactly how many you have so you can reach them.

 

2. How many students are actively pursing Christ? Quiet times, small groups, serving in the church somewhere.

 

3. How many students are taking the next step in their relationship with Christ? Who is serving?  How serious are they taking it?

 

Basically, I view success as meeting the vision that God has given you for that year or season of youth ministry. Success is not about how many attend or how many have made commitments (although these can be important to help us progress that vision), or how much of an impact you made this year.  It is more about following God’s plan that he gave you for your ministry.  Then communicating that so others know what that success is and can achieve it as well.

I am sure there are many, many more questions we could ask to measure success but hey, I definitely don’t have the answers.  These are just some small thoughts to a large question.  But that is what I started this blog for.  For community and us to help each other out with thoughts like this one.  So thanks to @derek_maples for inspiration.

Sony Alpha Nex-3

I just purchased the Sony Alpha Nex-3 digital camera the other day.  I will give a full report back to you here in a few months to tell you what I really think about the camera but for now I will give you my first impression after the first few days.

The Nex-3 is kind of a hybrid camera if you will.  It has the size of a point and shoot camera but the lens capability, picture quality,  and imaging chip of a DSLR.  It also has the ability to shoot video in 720p format.

One of the main reason I bought this camera was for the 720 video that can be shot.  I have seen other who have used DSLRs to shot video and it has almost always turned out incredible.  So being a media major with most of my emphasis on video I decided to try this out.  The price wasn’t too bad to step into the DSLR kind of camera so I thought this would be a good place to start.  Here are a couple of images I have shot just playing around:

To preach or not to preach…

Last night was our normal youth night.  This time of year numbers are up and down like crazy due to the holidays.  Things like family, school (exams, programs, sports), and many other things pull kids in 500 different directions.

So this is my question:  When you have prepared a very in-depth sermon that you are very excited about to share with the whole group but your numbers are low should you preach it or do something else and save it for next week when the numbers are sure to be up?

Obviously there are plenty of pros and cons to both.

DVD Ripper 2.0 Released

So I was recently introduced to an application that I have been searching for, for a while.  Since I have an iPad, I have been in need of an app like this one that takes the dvd’s you already own and rips them to your computer.  For me this accomplishes two major things:

1. I don’t have to carry all my dvd’s around with me.  This can become a hassle that we have all experienced especially when you carrying around season of “The Office” or “King of Queens” like i do.

2.  I can put them on any platform with apps like VLC.  Not only are the on my macbook they are now on my iPad and iPhone.

It is differently worth the cost at $9.95 ($4.00 off at this link).  I have never had a problem with it and the quality is better then any other dvd rip application I have ever used.  And, now it is even better with the ability to skip previews and extras, saving even more space on your rip.

White as snow…

This time of the year is my favorite.  There are so many awesome things about winter and Christmas time.  Just let me explain.

Here is my list: (in no order)

1. Jesus being born

2. Holiday Drinks (peppermint milkshake from Chickflia and Starbucks)

3. Snow

4. Time with family

5. Presents

6. My Birthday

7. Snow

8. Skiing

9. Bowl Season

10. Basketball

11. Christmas Parties

12. Cold

13. Fires

14. Christmas Tress and Lights

15. Snow Days

16. Hot Coco and Marshmallows

17. Christmas Music

This is not the complete full list but you get the idea.  I just love this time of year.  But this morning when I woke up and looked out the window I was reminded of something.  The ground and roads were covered with snow and as I said a small prayer, praying that they were too bad to get to work I started thinking about Isaiah 1:18, “…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…”

Probably the best part about this time of the year, aside from the snow, is the promise that I am reminded of during every snow.  It helps me remember how dirty and full of sin that I truly am. It shows me how God’s love covers me by God taking on human form and coming to earth to ultimately die on the cross for my sins so that I can be made clean and look as white and as pure as snow.  This is all  just mid blowing.  It also helps put things in perspective during this time of the year and I am very greatly for that.

You know the story…

Everyone has seen this post before and most of us have probably written it.  It is the “hey I have decided to start a blog” post.  A blog, the majority of the time, is born out of pure boredom.  This one is much like that but instead of doing a post of two a year I am going to do my best post at least weekly maybe more.

If I don’t have any readers thats okay because I can look back at this in a few years and remember the different seasons of my life that I was in while writing certain post.  It won’t be a perfect blog, in fact it will probably have a lot of errors.

This will basically be a place to share the things that are working and not working for me in ministry, current media (music, books, websites, etc.), and technology.  Hopefully it will be a place to connect with others and interact to help each other out.