Hurdles in growing youth ministries

I did the tacky thing last week and posted our youth ministry numbers on twitter.  I did it because there are many church members that follow me on twitter and I know they would rejoice.  I also did it because it is worthy of a wow!  I am the first to admit that God uses the foolish to confound the wise but to give you a little background I am in Moncks Corner SC, a little lake town north of Charleston.  You may have heard Steven Furtick reference us from time to time (this is his hometown).  Moncks Corner is a small town of less than 10,000 people.  Yet in this small town in a few short years our youth ministry has grown from 30-50 to 350!  We have virtually NO budget, I just hired a MS pastor and our facilities are horrid.  So, that is why I posted the tweet.  The reason for the blog however is that many of you responded to my tweet wanting to know how it happened, how to grow past the ceiling you are in etc…

So, rather than type this out several times I figured I would do a blog or a series of blogs to get a dialogue going.  So here were some of the hurdles for us as we grew.

VISION – Most youth pastors don’t cast a big enough vision.  We simply look to the next step and declare THAT as our vision.  Come up with a goal that is SO God that only he can do it and THEN come up with measurable steps to accomplish it.  In May of ’07 we came up with HALF learn more about it here.

BE ONE STEP AHEAD – We always acted as if we were already at the next step.  What I mean by that is when we were a youth ministry of 25 we acted as a youth ministry of 50.  When we had 50 we acted as if we had 100.  We staffed, programmed and prepared as if we already had that number and grew into that number…rather than always catching up to your ministry you are leading your ministry.

THROW OUT ALL ASSUMPTIONS – When you grow you MUST get creative in handling challenges.  Too often we blame resources, facilities or staff on our inability to grow.  That is laziness on our part as leaders.  We are to be creative and if you are not creative surround yourself with creatives and be willing to do something different.  We have met in a YMCA, a rented office bldg, an old shoe store until we finally got our current facility.  We had over 300 before I hired any help and I have a budget of roughly $12,000 that counts my conference budget, and everything.

When we outgrew our current auditorium we were still meeting 6-12 grades together.  Having to do something we decided to have mirror services on Wed night MS and HS.  I preached 2 sermons, the band performed twice AND we did small groups on Wed nights as well.  It worked and still works to this day.  That was not innovation as much as it was necessity and creativity.

There are a few things that we strive to do around here in youth ministry.

1. We make sure everything is excellent.  The program, the environment, the volunteers…everything.
2. We don’t expect teens to act like adults and we don’t expect lost kids to act life church kids.
3. We preach truth unapologetically and creatively.
4. This is ALL we do.  (we don’t go to concerts, rallys, fun parks or baseball games.  We have Wednesday night experience, Small Groups and Summer Breakaway…THAT IS IT.)  All our resources go to make that great.

I will blog later this week on another struggle some of you have been asking me about and that is the battle between Evangelism and Discipleship in a large growing ministry. (Hint – I aint got a clue)

Please ask questions, add to the discussion or let me know if you think I am a flipping idiot.