Tag Archives: Ministry

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Helping Others Succeed

Leadership happens at a variety of levels in any organization. So many different levels equals a lot of different people contributing to the success of the mission, and the accomplishment of the vision. With so many irons in the fire, how can each of the players participate in seeing success?

Success Starts Here

Take a church for example. Our church has several different levels of leadership. We have a group of elders who are the primary, spiritual leaders of our church. Then there’s the lead minister, which is my role. I play a very visible part in the leadership of our church.

Then there are our deacons, and ministry team leaders, and various other levels of leadership.

As perhaps the most visible leader in our church, I see my role being fulfilled in a couple of different ways. First, I play a significant part in casting the vision to our leadership team and to our congregation. But second, I also want to make sure that the rest of our people here are successful in their roles.

In a very real way, their success… in the children’s ministry, or the worship team, or benevolence and outreach to the community… is my success. And that equals success for the church as a whole.

I see four ways that I can help others in my organization succeed, so that we all win.

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Teaching My Passion

Over the past few years, I’ve had a pretty solid relationship with and connection to the Creation Truth Foundation. So much so, in fact, that we actually considered joining the staff there, teaching the history and truth found in the early chapters of Genesis.

CTF Banner

Through CTF, I participated in a series of classes they offer for ministers, called The Institute For Biblical Worldview Studies. This was a series of classes, taught at CTF, investigating in detail the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

I enjoyed this class so much that I decided to sit through it a second time, gleaning even more information and knowledge.

As a youth minister, I never really had the opportunity to utilize this learning experience as much as I would have liked. Sure, pieces of the information continually popped up in my teaching to teens, and I even developed a series for teens using some of the material.

But I never really had the opportunity to teach it fully.

Until now.
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When God Shifts Your Focus

Twenty-three years ago, I started volunteering in a small youth ministry near Ozark Christian College. A couple of years later, I was hired as a weekend youth minister at Park Street Christian Church, my first “official” youth ministry. And from there, I continued to grow in my ministry effectiveness and skills as a youth minister.

Cabool Christian Church

If you had asked me at any point throughout most of my time in youth ministry, I would have told you that youth ministry was all I could ever see myself doing. And for a very long time it was.

However, as I have aged, God has changed my focus gradually. For some time, I’ve been thinking and feeling that my effectiveness as a minister to teens was coming to an end. My passions have been changing from planning events and lessons to writing sermons and articles. My relationships have shifted from hanging out with teens to parents and beyond. God has been shifting my focus into new areas of ministry.

Recently, one of the students from my first youth ministry contacted me, asking me if I knew of anyone interested in a position with the church where he was serving as worship minister in Cabool, Missouri. Since it was a preaching position, I didn’t think twice about it. After all, I’m a student minister, and have been for more than two decades. But after much prayer, and a few more conversations with that former student, my wife and I decided that this might be where God was calling us to go. So, we should check out the possibilities.

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7 Advantages Of Starting A New Youth Ministry

This post is part of the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series. Check out the rest of the series!

Just over four months ago, I moved my family from the middle of the United States to the Gulf coast of central Florida in order to accept a new youth ministry position.

It’s been a crazy transition. We have five kids, with one one the way, so that means a lot of stuff to move. We’ve never moved this far before either, which made things even crazier.

And to top it all off, we moved out of the Bible belt of southern Missouri. The culture shock has been pretty significant. But we are adjusting nicely. The kids are building new friendships, and so are my wife and I.

New Sprout

But for the past few months, I’ve been the “new guy” in the area.

One one hand, that means that I may get lost trying to find someone’s house, or even the local Wal-Mart, but on the other hand, I’ve noticed some great advantages to being the new guy.

I have the opportunity to build this ministry the way I want

When we moved to Brooksville, I was told that this youth ministry had experienced some struggles. As a result, I have the opportunity to build this ministry from the ground up.

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Impacting The Future With The Past

Have you ever had one of those moments where you didn’t expect the day to be extraordinary, and God turned it into something extravagant?

Yesterday was one of those days for me.

JAARS Missionary

Sometimes God speaks from the past, teaching me about the present and giving me better insight into the future.

My oldest daughter and I departed yesterday morning from our home on the Gulf Coast of Florida for JAARS, a missionary recruiting and training center. I spent the first part of the week with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade kids at church camp, and had enough time home the previous evening to wash some laundry and spend some time with the family.

Hannah and I got up and left at 4:00 am, anticipating a 10-12 hour drive to North Carolina. I expected yesterday to be a day of riding in the van, getting to know the people on the trip, and catching up on some lost sleep from camp.

It was all that, and more.

Upon our arrival at JAARS, they invited us to an ice cream social. Nothing big, right?

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

That little event may just be the biggest, life-changing moment of the trip for my daughter and I.

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Back In The Saddle Again

Gene Autry wrote and recorded a song in 1939 called Back In The Saddle Again. Reminiscent of the Old West, Autry’s distinctive voice carried this song through the years to become a well-known classic. Here are a few lines:

I’m back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin’ to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again

Starting Line

It has been a very busy season for my family, especially for the last couple of weeks.

In case you missed it, we moved halfway across the country, from south-central Missouri to the Gulf Coast of Florida. We left Missouri on April 30, arrived in Florida on May 2, and have been unpacking boxes ever since.

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Three Important Things I Learned From My Youth Ministry Network

Today was my final opportunity to meet with the other youth ministers from the south-central area of Missouri where I’ve been serving for the past few years. It was definitely a sad moment for me.

Missouri/Arkansas Youth Ministry Network

Today, we celebrated our time of ministry together by eating at a great little Thai restaurant in Mountain Home, Arkansas.

These guys have been a great network of peers during my ministry here. In fact, they’ve been great friends. I’ve enjoyed our time together.

We’ve shared resources with each other. We’ve suggested books to read. We’ve encouraged each other through times of great joy, like when one of the guys lost over 100 pounds, and when another got married last year. And we’ve been there for one another through tough times, like when my dad and step-dad passed away last June.

With these guys, I’ve always known exactly where I stand, and if I needed something, I had but to ask. And many times, they would see my need and stretch to meet it before I could even speak out.

And they are all different, in tremendous ways. I can have great discussions centered around favorite authors, like Timothy Keller or C. S. Lewis, with a couple of these men. And with a couple of others, we could stay up till the wee hours of the morning playing Phase 10 and laughing our heads off.

We’ve planned summer camps, and winter retreats. Some of us floated the Jack’s Fork River for three days, in January. And once, four of us loaded up in my car and drove to Colorado for CIY’s Wilderness, camping out downwind of a cattle slaughter house on the way.