How to master the first 6 months in a new ministry

2 Responses to “How to master the first 6 months in a new ministry”

1. chriswalker on July 25th, 2007 1:00 pm

   Ok, so I have held the same Youth Ministry position for 4 years now and I had to think back to when I was just starting out. I did pretty well on these tips, but I was sort of forced to fail on 1. I had to change things immediately when I took over because no program or format existed. The kids met every week and there were leaders there, but the students did pretty much whatever they wanted. It was like chasing monkeys around the church. So I had to lay down some kind of a foundation and give some direction to what the ministry was. This was 3 years before I read Purpose Driven Youth Ministry and got some help from the more experienced.

   Even though I had to make some changes, I was very diplomatic about it. It mostly affected the students because they were not able to walk all over me. They learned very quickly that I could be just as sarcastic and annoying as they were. So at first I spent most of my time investing in the relationships of the students to find out what they wanted in their youth ministry. I spent a lot of time with parents and church leadership to get a feel for what is expected of the youth ministry and I tried to blend the ideas of the group and come up with a direction to go.

   I really kept things very simple at first. Nothing too spiritually heavy until I had a chance to really feel out where the students were at. We did a lot of games and activities that focused on getting to know each other. It gave me a chance to test the waters a bit and then over the course of the last 4 years I have unpacked little by little changes that help to create a healthy youth ministry. It has helped to have the younger students come into the program fresh and dealing the the change from children to youth ministry. They tend to grasp the new program pretty easily because I didn’t change their weekly fun night as I did for the older kids.

   Now we are Purpose Driven and we have our purpose statement to help guide the leadership on the same course. We are building a stronger foundation every year and the changes that we are making now are coming with great support from both students and parents.

   My additional tip would be to have great patience and pray a lot.

   Chris

2. christian on July 27th, 2007 4:00 am

   Awesome post. I’m a 20 year old parish evangelist, fresh meat, just out of school and 2 months into my first post. Good stuff to reflect on and look towards. The one thing that really stuck out to me was ‘never go to lunch alone…’ thanks a bunch. Peaceeeeee.

   Christian Gowan
   Church Army Canada Evangelist.

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