I caught Josh at In and Out Burger and got a chance to shoot this quick video - brilliant - check it out!

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This week Tom, Matthew and Scott all jump into a conversation with me about how to pastor volunteers. Lots of resources and time is spent on training volunteers, which a part of pastoring them. But often we forget the shepherding and encouragement that is necessary in really caring for people. How have you pastored your volunteers?

Hosts:

Tony Steward
Tom Reopke
Matthew McNutt
Scott Mullens

Show Notes:

• Andy Stanley
• Rick Warren
• “Help! I work with Hurting Kids!”
• Group’s Volunteer Central
• Bill Hybels - LEAD
• Group National Youth Ministry Conference
• Youth Specialties National Youth Worker Conference

Picks of the Week:

• Matthew: The New Breed by Johnathan McKey
• Scott: What Matters Most by Doug Fields
• Tom: Rick Warren at the Exponential Church Planting Confernce
• Tony: Revolution Wordpress Themes (for having your church site run on Wordpress)

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Show them their potential.

I point out examples that I have noticed in their interactions with others that demonstrate leadership and public speaking potential. If they are outgoing, I praise them for it. If they are thoughtful in their words, I zero in on that. If they are a good listener, I talk about how they will be in tune with those listening to them because they are aware of others. I do everything I can to make them feel confident about their ability.

Require preparation.

I have them write out what they are going to say, whether it’s a prayer or a testimony. They don’t need to read it from up front if they are comfortable enough (they have it if their nerves get the best of them!), but I want them taking the time to specifically think through what they are saying. Being up front is a big deal and they need to appreciate that it warrants preparation.

Rehearse with them.

I go over it with them ahead of time! Anything I can praise I go after. Maybe I have some constructive advice, but for the most part I make sure that they know I am impressed with what they have put together. I want them feeling good about what they are going up front with.

Know your response.

When they’ve finished, I pump them up. It doesn’t matter if it was eloquent or had some mistakes - constructive advice will wait until the NEXT time. For now I make a big deal about it. If I can, I share in “big church” about how I was blessed by so-and-so’s testimony/prayer and how impressed I was that he/she was willing to get up in front of his/her peers and share. I publically praise the time they put into preparing and how I can’t wait to see what they will bring in the future, and I definitely let their parents know what a great job they did!

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One of my favorite and painful memories was when I purchased my first car back in 1984. It was a rusty sky-blue Ford Pinto station wagon and it cost me $500. I remember this so well because it was one of the few times that I heard my mom and dad argue. My mom was annoyed that I was wasting my money on a very poor choice of a vehicle. But my dad had this “that will learn him” mentality. Well, in the end I did purchase the car and it was the most glorious six months of driving that I ever had before it became a monument in my backyard. Yes, I did learn that I need to be more frugal with my money and select cars with a little less road wear on them. But what my dad taught me was that I needed room to make mistakes, and that mistakes weren’t horrible as long as I learned something from them. In fact, after my realization that I was swindled on this purchase, I remember my dad saying , “Well, did you learn something?” I said, “Yes.” “Then it could have been a lot worse. Now take my keys and go get us some KFC.”

In youth ministry I have learned, too, that I need to allow youth to fail. I’m not talking about allowing them to run down the highway with naked abandonment, but encouraging youth to try new challenges. As a dad, I have had to watch as my kids fall when they first learned to walk, for if I held them up all the time, they wouldn’t have learned how to pull themselves up and try again. I have seen too many youth afraid to try again after failure; they have given up on themselves and have become hollow shells of what they could be. In fact, that hollowness becomes filled up with fear and anxiety regarding new experiences or planning for their future. They become so controlled by this anxiety that they end up making poor choices that result in the lifelong scars of negative consequences.

When I have seen youth be successful is when they have been empowered to try some aspect of leadership where it allows them to stretch themselves. They start seeing spiritual gifts that they never knew they had. In Durham, England, the youth wanted to start a worship service for their fellow peers. They all went to the same school but they either went to one of 15 churches in the area, or were curious about Christianity but had no forum in which to ask questions. I did the ground work in setting up a worship service in an 800-year-old church, with a band, data projector and screen, drama, the whole nine yards. But I didn’t do it myself; rather, I walked with them as they took turns leading. One area was leading worship. Once a month a new person had a chance to coordinate the music and practices. I would show up for the practices and support them to let them know they were not alone. They learned to plan, communicate that plan, listen to their fellow band members, reevaluate the plan using input from their peers, and sometimes manage conflict.

Things didn’t always go smoothly. One youth, we’ll call him “Nigel” (’cuz that’s a good British name!), was very talented at drama, but he often didn’t show up for the drama team’s practices and when he did, he didn’t remember his lines. I sat down with Nigel and asked him a series of questions: How do you think it went this week? What do you think you could do to make it run better? And so on. Nigel came to realize that he had been taking the gifts God had given him for granted, he had let the team down, and he hadn’t been a very good example of a Christian leader. We came to the agreement that he was going to take a few months off from the team and spend more time working behind the scenes. Over time he ended up being the first one at the church to set up for the service and the last one of the clean-up crew to leave.

Why is it called Holy Failure? Because, to be holy is to be other, other than what society expects one to be, other than what we expect ourselves to be. We have a relatively short amount of time with youth before they head off to sights unknown. So, what if we as youth pastors encourage a track record of not only succeeding, but also a track record of learning through mistakes? The mistakes would be in a safe place in the light of God. What would happen in the future? Only God knows.

Is this hard? Anything worthwhile is going to be hard. There is a certain mindset that is required to do this. That mindset is to:

• Bathe everything in prayer.
• Act boldly.
• Acting boldly requires risk.
• Risk annoys people. (Especially parents!)
• Learn from the mistakes that you make so you can lead by example. Show others that failure is not the end, but the beginning of learning.
• Be objective.
• Help youth to identify their mistakes.
• Don’t tell them their mistakes, but rather help them identify their mistakes with their own eyes. Ask questions, such as, “How could this event have been run better?”
• Don’t pressure or yell, but make sure that youth follow through on their plans.
• Be patient! This kind of patience comes from God.
• Love them as Christ loves them.

“My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

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1. When you are looking at how you are to be used by God, you must understand the gifts God gives us. Once you understand those gifts, then you can fully be used by God and His way of doing things. This comes from reading His Word and praying for guidance and understanding.
2. Being open is another way to have a shapable heart. When God gives you these gifts, if you are not open to what He is doing for you then he can work through you. God does not want the worst for you, He wants the best. Then if we are open to his will our heart will be ready to be shaped.
3. Acceptance of God. When you are being used by God, you must be willing to do what God wants. This is very hard to do. We want to be in control. This is human nature to have control over all of our lives. But if we are willing to let God lead us we will be able to be used by Him.

These three ways are what I work with every day in my acceptance of what God wants for my life. My heart is ready to be used but it took a long time to have a shapable heart, and the journey never really ends.

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Special thanks to our new show sponser YouthMinistry.com. This week’s show is specifically sponsored by Congratulations You’re Gifted,C by Erik Rees and Doug Fields. If you leave your suggestions on how to help students discover their spiritual gifts in the comments section then you could win a free copy of Congratulations You’re Gifted!

Show Notes

• Lifeway Spiritual Gift Survey
• Skype
• Off the Map - Jim Henderson (author of Jim and Casper go to Church
• Living Your Strengths
• Strengths Finder

Pick’s of the Week
Tom’s Pick: Flip Video Camera and Flip Software for Mac
Lee’s Picks: The Present Future and Jim and Casper go to Church
Scott’s Pick: animoto.com
Matthew’s Pick: The Journal of Student Ministries - Youth Specialties
Tony’s Pick: Congratulations You’re Gifted - Erik Rees and Doug Fields

Host Links

• Tony’s Facebook and Twitter
• Matthew’s Facebook and Twitter
• Tom’s Facebook and Twitter
• Lee’sFacebook and Twitter
• Scott’s Facebook and Twitter

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Whoa! My life has been sabotaged by multiple issues (work, computer, etc.) over the past couple of weeks - still no excuse but here is the show we did on Photography in Ministry. We talk about what cameras work best, what to watch out for in posting images of students and what tools to use to get them online. Thanks to Tom and Scott for jumping in with me late at night for the show!

Picks of the Week:
Scott’s Pick: drop.io - online storage exchange points - GREAT PICK!

Tony’s Pick: Audio Books - Audible.com

Tom: Prince Caspian Insider Videos!

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We have the gang back again with Tom, Scott, Matthew and myself talking about everything from eating and exercise, best practices for weekend programming and our picks of the week!

Picks of the Week:

Tom’s Pick - Six Reasons a Pastor Should Blog
Matthew’s Pick - DVD Ripper at www.aoamedia.com
Scott’s Pick - www.wetpaint.com - free wiki software for group collaboration
Tony’s Pick - SuperDuper - backup software for Macintosh Computers

Show Notes:

Simply Youth Ministry
Josh Griffin in Dubai
Rick Rolling
Rick Warren
Techcrunch sues Facebook
Google Documents
Matthew McNutt’s Biggest Loser Story
Marko’s Biggest Loser Content
Planning Center Online
John Eldridge
Focus on the Family Institute
Media Shout

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Planning Center has lived up to its own promotional material. It allows you to develop a matrix that can track all songs used, track and notify volunteers, and give you critical control of all aspects of the service.

The biggest and most useful part of PC is that all the information regarding a service is located in one centralized place. Since it is web based it allows all users and participants quick and easy access anywhere anytime. 

I found it especially useful with our youth praise team since they are all currently students and regular face to face communication during the week is complicated. I can add the plan for the next several weeks, plan the flow, songs and get feedback from the students at their leisure. Probably the most powerful component is the scheduling feature. You are able to manage a list of volunteers, email any and all plans that they be assigned and most importantly quickly find and conflicts. This is especially useful as several of our students also serve on the adult worship team.

Planning Center has a very clean look and uses a “drag and drop” editing feature which makes it very flexible. It handles multiple plans, service times and even rehearsal times. And I found that the learning curve is very short.

Beyond the weekly youth service, I have used it to manage our community events i.e. fall kickoff, SuperBowl party, even overnights. Planning Center gives you the ability to walk through an event from start to finish, provides a record to review for post-event critique. For productivity it is an essential tool in student ministry.

[This is a guest post by Tom Roepke , one of the excellent hosts for the Who Are These Guys Podcasts}

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Okay, obviously I’ve done the fast food thing. I value-mealed my way right onto Biggest Loser! The whole “my second office is Taco Bell” line was absolutely true for me. But now I’m trying to keep myself at an appropriate weight and still eat out on a youth pastor salary … is it possible to do fast food without big time damage? Here’s a few tips for what to look for:

1. Find out the calories in what you are eating! Every fast food restaurant has the nutritional information somewhere! Whether it’s in the form of a poster or just a pamphlet, they’ve got the calorie counts in print. It only takes a few moments and it can make a world of difference in what you eat - the calorie counts for similar looking items can be wildly different. If I can do a fast food meal for around 500-700 calories, I’m thrilled.

   Sometimes that means simple modifications; removing the cheese and mayo from a Whopper lowers it’s calorie count by over 200 calories, and hitting the Fresco options at Taco Bell mean I can have two to three burritos for around 600 calories.

2. The easiest step is to make a choice before you ever go through the door: if you want low calorie and healthy options other than a salad, then you’re not looking for Burger King. You want Subway, Baja Fresh, or some other fast food place that has the ingredients fresh and out there, ready to put together something that isn’t deep fried, or otherwise mutilated. There’s a reason why Jared lost so much weight - Subway blows away McDonald’s any day when it comes to healthier options. And while I can’t speak for your town - it’s just as popular to the teens in mine as the Burger joint.
3. Finally, skip the regular soda! One 32 oz. Coke has as many calories in it as a healthy portioned adult meal! Piles of sugar! Lets be honest, we youth pastors and youth workers like to have our caffeine by the gallon, but let’s be smart about it. Do water, or at the very least Diet Soda. And yes, you can retrain your taste buds to like Diet Soda! I sure did!

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Show Notes:
Jesus Quit Church
Direct Mail
First Christian Canton
Great Park Church
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Journal" (Stephen R. Covey, Debra Harris)
Franklin Covey
"Moleskine Ruled Notebook Large" (Moleskine)
"Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld" (Palm)
"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" (David Allen)
43 Folders
Circus Ponies Notebook (Mac Application that Rocks!)
Tony’s Business
Google Documents

“Apple MacBook

Hipster PDA
LifeHacker.com
Bi-Modal Work Styles
Church 2.0
Starbucks
Gmail GTDInbox Firefox Extension
Matthew McNutt
Simply 3 Day 15% off Sale

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http://live.yahoo.com/simplyinsider

It is pretty cool to not only see the show live but to interact with the usual 50 or so youth pastors that are chatting away as it happens.

See you there!

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Over at Dumb Little Man they have a great article on how to protect yourself from “Energy Vampires” I like the way they put it because these kind of people “feed” off of everyone they come into contact with, they don’t really care if you care or listen, they just need to bring someone down with them to feel better instead of dealing with their issues.

My favorite excerpt:

5. Don’t give them too much time. When a Vampire walks into my office I stand as if I’m about to go somewhere. I’ll give them a few minutes and if I feel we’re heading down the same old path, I’ll start walking and shut the conversation down.

click here for the rest of the article…

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So those values listed are it. As my friend Brad says, “there’s nothing sexy about them.” However, these values encompass so much than is described above. We are still in the process of implementing these values and making them truly the life-blood of the ministry. I am hopeful that they will help me to focus on the right things with students and help to truly awaken and inspire them to the reality of God. I would love to hear your thoughts and/or critiques. Leave me a few comments. [From What to Value in Ministry « Dan Stoffer]

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This week we talk about how to deal with a competitive spirit, and how it usually comes from an inaccurate measurement for gauging the success of your ministry to yourself, your pastor and you congregation. We also talk about mobile blogging, productivity and other resources.

Show Notes:
Utterz
Tom’s Utterz
Tony’s Utterz
43 Folders
David Allen - author of Getting Things Done
Inbox Zero - Merlin Mann
Tom typing in the background
Malone College
Skype
Church 2.0
Twitter.com
Purpose Driven Youth Ministry

Mentioned Resources

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" (David Allen)

"Purpose-Driven® Youth Ministry" (Doug Fields)

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The typical project starts out great but then our motivation and interest wanes as time goes on. It’s natural. Staying interested in a project over a long period of time is a challenge for anyone. The longer the project the thinner the tail. You’re not going to do your best work in the tail. [From Tiny projects keep it new - (37signals)]

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It is automated web browsing and filtering - and looks like it could save you a bunch of time.

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This place, just about every place, has a shot at greatness, at becoming a destination, a place with profits and happiness and growth. Along the way, it’s easy to start compromising your marketing, because it seems like in that moment, it’s expedient. When this starts happening, the answer is not to do it more. Instead, it’s worth a full stop. Is this what you set out to do? Is compromising everything going to get you to a place that was worth the journey? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just stop selling trains and do something else (lottery tickets, even) but do it really really well. [From Seth's Blog: The long slide to gone]

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Show Notes

We are back with a new Who Are These Guys podcast episode! This week Tom Roepke and Scott Mullens both join me in talking about the struggle to keep balance in youth ministry, social networking and Macintosh computers. It’s a great show and we are excited for next week when we will be talking about what to do when dealing with competitive youth pastors and ministries in your area.

Be sure to check the blog for guest posts and practical tips in ministry!

Links
Simply YM
Simply Podcast
Josh’s Blog
Tony Morgan’s Facebook Death
Social Networking in Plain English
Contagious Solutions - Show Sponsor
MySpace vs Facebook
Tony’s Twitter
Tom’s Twitter
Scott’s Twitter
Andy Stanely Article: cheating the Church
Saddleback Services Live
Top Stand Alone Laptop for Ministry
TWIT [This Week in Technology] Podcast with Leo Laporte
VM Ware Fusion
37 Signals
Call Recorder
Planning Center Online

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So, that being t