Latest / Student Ministry: What They Don't Teach You / Episode #2 - Your Ministry Will Eventually Outgrow You
Transcript
- Blake Lewis: So the moment I realized that I was in over my head was about the number one fifty. We had about one hundred and fifty kids. Everything shifted and it went from hey, I can do this to like ⁓ I'm leaving every Wednesday night exhausted. Like I was we had switched to middle school and high school and we're doing two separate ministries and I was literally like getting off the stage thinking, Hey, this is a great night. And then I look in the back of the room and I've got like three leaders with three different kids, like, hey, we had this incident, this kid got in a fight with this kid. And I realized very quickly, yeah, I'm in over my head. And so I had to learn to delegate and get other people involved on the the front end so that I didn't go sit in my office and cry every Wednesday after we finish. ⁓ if you guys don't understand what we're talking about now, we're today's episode, we're gonna be dealing with what do we do when the ministry outgrows me. And so ⁓ we want to have a conversation because that's something that happens ⁓ and I think a lot of people, Blake, think that that means that when I hit a hundred kids or two hundred kids, then that's when administrative outgrows me. But for some people, ⁓ that's 30. For some people, they get, you know, just what that area of growth. When you have been comfortable with a certain number of students, and then that number exceeds that number or like jumps about 20, then you realize very quickly that I have been ⁓ that I'm in over my head and I gotta make some changes. Yeah. And I would say that like you said, that number is different for each person, but like I would say once your number outgrows what a small group would be, like a life group size, I mean, you need to have more people with you. Like it doesn't need just to be you, it doesn't need to be you and your wife or you and your spouse. I mean, you need to start recruiting people because inevitably one day, Brandon, you won't be at the tribe. Right. One day I won't be at H Town Students. And if the ministry is built upon you and upon me, it's going to fail. Right, that is why we need to bring people alongside. Ephesians four talks about equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry. That is our job as pastors, to equip people to delegate ministry responsibility outside of us to help people do that. And so yes, I know exactly what you're talking about in your story. And you're talking about all these people that are looking at you like, bro, what are we doing? 'Cause you didn't and I haven't, you know, set those structures up. And so what would you say is some advice for how to begin ⁓ to delegate or how do you start that process of delegating or identifying what are areas of ministry that I could hand off. The conversation that I've had with lot of people, you see that a lot of people struggle with understanding that others can do the job just as good as you can. Yeah. ⁓ I know early on in ministry for me it was just easier for me to do it all myself. And so I didn't hand off those things because to me I wanted to do it a certain way. Or it was just be easy for me to do it and me to explain it to everybody. Well, the problem with that is, yeah, that's true for now, but then week after week, you just doing it and you got other people wanting to help. If you don't hand those things off, now those five things go to ten things, those ten things go to fifteen things, and now you're doing fifteen things every week and you just can't do that. And so as you grow, you learn very quickly, like you are only one person. And the things that you used to operate with 20 kids, you can't operate with 50 kids. And ⁓ and so learning how to delegate, learning how to hand those things off. If somebody can do it as 70% as good as you can, then let them do it. Yeah. And ⁓ I I had to learn that that ⁓ man, they can't do this as well as I can, right? Well, maybe they can do it 90% as good as you can, and that's okay. Like nobody really cares about the 10% besides us. We care about that 10% difference. But the average kid, nobody's gonna leave there saying, Well, they just couldn't do that just as good as the next person. It's can the job get done in an efficient manner? And so learning how to trust people, ⁓ and give them the freedom to do something. Maybe that's check ins, maybe that's you know, creating graphics, wherever the case may be, find other people and give them the freedom to do those things and not just try to handle all of that yourself. Absolutely. I mean, one of the the things, I mean, we go to conferences together all the time and you know I we we get to lead different stuff. ⁓ but like one of the questions I get most at conferences ⁓ is guys like, Well, I don't have any volunteers. I don't have anybody and and we'll we'll have a whole nother, you know, episode on recruiting volunteers. But then the question I always throw back at that person is, All right, let's just imagine you did have ten volunteers show up ready to go. What would you have ⁓ do? Yeah. Almost every one of them stares at me like, hang out with hang out with students. No. No adult is not gonna give up going to adult bible study or doing whatever it is they could be doing just to go hang out with teenagers. They're not wanting to do that. You need to have specific things that you need them to do. So I would say Wednesday night is easy one. L sit down one day, whiteboard it out, write it down, put it in your notes, whatever. What do you do every Wednesday night and then figure out what can I hand off? What can I train an adult or a student to be able to do? And so one of my things that I like to do is I don't ⁓ I so the I've I I'm not gonna say it perfect, but one of the things was let me show you how to do it. So let someone walk alongside you as you do it. Let us do it together. So let's one us work together to do this thing. And then f let me watch you do it, make sure that you've got it, and then eventually you can walk away and let them do it. So oftentimes leaders will be like, Hey, I need you to go do that thing. You've never explained that thing, you've never showed them how to do that thing, they don't do it right, and then you're back in the office on Thursday and see like, see? That's why I don't let other people do stuff because they don't do it right. Well, that was your fault. You didn't train them to do it. Right. And so that's ⁓ delegation is not just being lazy. I don't want to do stuff. I'm gonna give it out. It actually involves you training them in such a way so that it does free you up, so that you can do other things and focus on other ministry aspects. And so that's kind of my my little key to to how to delegate well. Yeah, for sure. And I think another thing too is a lot of times we don't give people enough credit of like their skills. You know what I mean? Like ministry and I we'll talk about our kids. We're in Ephesians chapter four last week and talked about like how we all have different giftedness, right? And all different things. And like early on, I maybe it's because you're arrogant, right? We just think that we've got all the answers and we know how to do everything the best. And so one of the biggest examples I can think of is ⁓ my check-in system. I had to learn as we grew to from you know 50 kids to 100 to 100 to 150 to 200. Like having a check-in system and having somebody to help me on the front end organize everything. I am not administrative. So it's really funny to me to think that I was trying to do all the administrative stuff myself because I know that's my weak spot. And so ⁓ I've got this volunteer, amazing, and she's one of my small leaders, and she was just like, you know, I don't really want to be in the classroom, I want to help. In this area. And so for the longest, she was like, Hey, I can help with check-ins, I can help with all this stuff. And I would give her a little small stuff. And then one day she was like, Brent, let me just take it over. Like, let me just create this system and make this run. And the problem is that's what she does in the corporate world. Like she were like runs this like medical clinic, like five different locations, and that's her job is to like organize, hire people, or like do all those different things. And so I gave her the freedom. She took it over, and like our check-in system is incredible. Like No kid falls through the cracks, all of these things. She recruited people, created like folders and like all these different things. And I'm sitting here thinking, why would what took me so long to just give her this freedom? Because in my mind, I was limiting her. Well, she doesn't understand how this works. But in reality, she does this for a living. She can do this in her sleep and she enjoys doing it. And ⁓ I think one of the big reasons, and and I don't know if we all function this way, Blake, or maybe it's just me. I don't like doing something, and so I don't want to burden somebody else with something that I don't like doing. Cause I feel like I'm just giving up giving them all the boring stuff. But the problem is, or the beautiful thing about it is things that's boring to me are joys to other people. Absolutely. Like my mom is an accountant. I hate spreadsheets. I hate doing my own taxes. I hate all this stuff. My mom calls me, and for two hours she'll be on the phone just talking about her day at work and all the stuff that she talked about. I'm like, that sounds absolutely miserable. But it brings her joy. Why? Because God gave her that gift and it's stuff that makes me uncomfortable, that makes me miserable. Other people love that stuff. And so where I was saying, ⁓ man, I don't wanna I hate doing all this work of spreadsheets and all this stuff. And so I don't wanna I don't want to take advantage of my leaders. And my leaders are sitting there thinking, like, no, give give that's that gives me life. I want those things. Let me do it. So for some of us, we gotta just let go of those things and understand, ⁓ man, I hate doing this. Well, the thing that you may hate, God may have placed somebody else in your ministry that absolutely loves it and they can do it fifty times better than you. Like I could never do the stuff that her name's Roxanne, that Roxanne does for our ministry that she kills it. And I could never do it because she's gifted in that area and she loves to do it. Yeah. And something I wanted to add too is I know maybe I struggle with this and maybe I'm alone, but whenever I first started delegating things out, I thought that made me look weak. Yeah. That like I can't do it all. Because there was a little bit of pride to say, you know what, hey, I'm do look at all this stuff that I'm doing. And ⁓ but but it doesn't make you weak. It actually makes you look to me, you're a wise person to be able to s identify because I I do believe this is a skill to identify what you're not good at. Like you need to be able to say, Hey, these are the things that I struggle with, kinda like what you're talking about. Like we have a fifth quarter coming up where we have dunk tanks. ⁓ we're gonna dunk ⁓ two of our local principals in dunk tanks. Our kids are fired up about it because they get to dunk their principal. I have no clue how I'm gonna get all of that water from inside of the dunk tank, inside of our gym, outside. I don't know. That's not my gifting. I'm not mechanically inclined. I don't know how to do that. I reached out to one of my leaders, his name's Dustin. I said, hey Dustin, this is my problem. He's like, ⁓ yeah, I got a tank that'll, you know, shoot it out. I'll have it all out in 10 minutes. I'm like, okay. ⁓ but like he's so excited and he's he's talked to me two or three times about it. Hey, I've got the pump ready. I got recruited this guy, he's gonna help me do it, and he's fired up. That was something I was gonna spend hours. Yes. I I have no clue. Uhhuh. But because I'm willing to say, Hey bro, I'm dumb. I don't know how to do that. You just help me. I mean, that's that's okay. And that's what going back to what I was saying, equipping the saints, man. Let the saints do the ministry. We're not all gifted the same way. And that's a beautiful thing. I think what's cool too, Blake, you've and you've seen this as well as we've grown. The more you give your people ownership as well. ⁓ yeah. The more they buy into it. And we talked about that whole thing you said in the beginning. Like when we leave, and that's one of my greatest fears, is that I when I leave where I'm at now, it all goes just back to nothing. Like it just crumbles because it's all around me. So I've spent the last couple of years trying my best to make sure I'm building this ministry to to thrive, not around Brandon. And one thing I've learned is when I've given my small group leaders, I've given Rox the Rock Sands, all these different people, the parents, the The all the people in the church ownership in our student ministry, it no longer is just, well, Brandon's ministry. Now it's ours. And so I'm very confident. Like if God calls me somewhere else tomorrow, it's going to continue to be to thrive because the heart, I'm not the heartbeat anymore. And because I've given them ownership. And one of my things that, and and maybe this is naive, but it worked for me, is that the the verbiage that my leaders hear all the time for me is hey, you got it. I trust you. I trust you. They come to and they're like, hey, what do we like? And obviously like some stuff, like we have to have the final say and all this stuff. But when they come to me about small stuff of just like, hey, should I do this or should I do that? Hey, you got it. I trust you. And on the back end, we will we will like tweak it, but like I want you to know like I trust you to go out there because you've bought in and I know you know how to handle this. And I wanted to add to that, you actually have to trust them. Yes, you've got to trust them. Like you you have to and sometimes you have to be okay with the end result. Of like you said earlier, it's not a hundred percent what I would have done. It's seventy percent, but the task got done. Jesus was still glorified, you know, everything still happened. ⁓ but you know, maybe on the back end be like, Hey, I loved how you did that. Next time, let's try this. You know, whatever. But hand it to ⁓ and let ⁓ have it. Don't don't give it to them and then try to wrestle it back the night of. Give it to them. Unless it's going horribly wrong, it's gonna fail, then you do it. But if it's yes gonna get completed, let them do it. And like you said, actually Trust them. So yeah, and it goes back to, you know, just kind of as we begin to wrap this thing up, but like you know, y you talked about like the the beauty of delegation and understanding and knowing, like making us feel actually like we know what we're doing, we hand off things. You know, I think about Moses and Jethro, right? Yep. That's what Moses is trying to do. Moses is trying to do everything by himself. And Jethro's like, what are you doing? Like, give this thing off and do this thing. I I I'm a football guy, I come from a football world, you know, and I look at myself as like I'm the head coach, right? And as a head coach on a team of a hundred guys, there's no way the head coach can go around from position to position and coach everything. The head coach's job is to cash the vision, cash the culture, say, Hey, we're gonna have a up tempo offense, we're gonna do defense, like create the standard and then say, Hey, I'm gonna hire all these coaches that are gonna go out now and each position, and O-line coach, receiver coach, you know, D-line coach, linebackers coach, all of your guys' job now is to end the like you take this group of people. And now you coach them up on the the the theme of the vision that I've given you. And that's what basically what we're doing. And so like yours, as you the bigger you get, the more you have to pour into your small group leaders because your small group leaders are the ones now making an impact on the the groups of kids. And now as your job, you're supposed to make sure everything is running smoothly within that. But having learning how to delegate and bring people along, if you're still the head coach, but you're trying to coach everybody by yourself, you're going to fail. There's no way you're gonna be effectively coach and minister to all those kids like that. Again, you got 20 kids, you are the guy, but you also need to be training ⁓ up leaders because you're expecting God to give you more and now you got a system in place to help that to handle that. My last word and we'll wrap up is this like what my one of my mentors taught me when I was growing up in ministry when I first started, you don't recruit for the holes that you have. You recruit recruit for the l holes you eventually will have. You know so you're not trying to plug holes and recruit people in that moment. Hopefully you can get your team ready to go and you I hate to say never feel satisfied, but you're always looking for that next leader. Always right now on Wednesday nights, ⁓ for my boy classes, all of them have three leaders. That's more than I want. I want two in the room. But I had men that are that I see are are potentially gonna be good leaders. They have very young kids and they have a kid that's like a sixth grader. I'm like, all right, if I can get him plugged in now to be with this leader that has a senior that's gonna I know is gonna rotate out. If I can get him in and trained and he's a third in the room, great. You know, don't ⁓ d if you have adults that are there, plug them in, figure out ways to get them serving. It's cause you don't want to be in that moment where you're like, crud, I need six leaders tonight. And you gotta try to find them and plug them in. And so it's the exact same thing that I that's exact that's exactly what I would say is tell people like every time I tell people if you have a hundred kids. You always asking, all right, if God brought me 30 more, does my system still work? Right? And that's exactly exactly what you're saying. Like, I'm always telling people, you're thinking ahead. If God's giving me 20, what happens if he gives me 40? Am I prepared for 40 kids right now? And if your answer is no, then you gotta recruit more now. Like use your because if you wait until they get there to say, like, all right, I gotta prepare for this. It's too late. They're already gonna leave by the time you get it figured out. And so, like you said, I've got I'm like that. I'm the same way. Some of my small businesses. Ha my small groups have three leaders in it because I'm already thinking about hey, next year that's gonna make a great leader. So I'm preparing them now so that when that groom that the if 15 more girls show up, that happened to me a couple years ago. We started off with two, six great girls. By the end of that month, we had 12. I had to split that group within like a month. And I was like, ⁓ no, I don't have enough leaders for this. And so, like ever since then, I'm always ha preparing myself. To have more leaders than I need so that when the time comes and I need to say, I've got to spend a little group, or this leader falls off, we've already got the system in place to handle it. So So I don't know. We didn't intentionally do this, but this is a great tease because the next episode is Volunteers Are Your Ministry. So we're gonna talk about volunteers, how we recruit ⁓ all the things. Check us out on the next episode. We'll catch you guys later. What? ⁓