Latest / Student Ministry: What They Don't Teach You / Episode #5 - Wednesday Night Isn’t the Win
Transcript
- Episode #5: What I'm gonna do. You know, Blake, when I think about the moment that I had to mentally prepare myself for what ministry was all about was probably around when COVID hit, because that's when everybody had to learn to student ministry if they were in it for the right reasons. Why? Because your numbers did not reflect the work you feel like you were doing. And so when we talked about measuring success during COVID, I think we had to shift and really figure out well how do we measure success? Because like you and the rest of the the world or the rest of the country for sure, you may only had five people in your youth group on a Wednesday night when you were averaging a hundred before. And so if your worth and your idea of success came from how many people were sitting in your room during COVID, you were in trouble. And so how do we measure success? That's what we're going talk about tonight or in this episode is well when we talk about success in student ministry, how do you look beyond numbers and figure out what success is and how do you measure how you're doing? What you got for us, Blake? What do think is a great conversation with that? Well, yeah, and I would say and the title of this episode is Wednesday night isn't the win. I think a lot of students like when you talk to a student pastor, we go to conferences, we'd How's student ministry going? And almost immediately a lot of student pastors would be It's good, my Wednesday night numbers are this. And it's like, Okay, that's good. I mean, you need to know that. You need to know those numbers. You probably need to know your sun your life group or Sunday school numbers, you need to know your baptism numbers. Numbers are good, numbers are not the enemy. we need to know how to read those numbers and how to use them effectively. Because it's not, I don't think any of our goals should be this this year I had 50 on Wednesday night and next year I need 60 on Wednesday night. That doesn't mean you're doing things right because the numbers went up. That just means that may mean you're just being more attractional. You're doing things more fun. So like the goal isn't more numbers. The goal is disciples of Jesus. And so we're we'll get to what that kind of looks like maybe towards the end of the episode. But I do think you shared something with me a few years ago that really changed the way I look at numbers. And I absolutely loved it. 'Cause I was one of those that I would I would know my numbers, but I would know my averages on Wednesday and Sunday. And so you we mean you were just having a conversation like this just on a phone one day. And you had said something like, Hey, what is your three week numbers? And you said something like that. And I was like, What do you mean? He said, like, what do you average over a three week period? And I was like, I d I don't know, I've never done that. And you were like, Well, that will give you more details of how many students are actually walking your door. Not just that I had fifty on this Wednesday night, I had fifty two on the next one, and then I had forty-eight on the other one, you know, and then and you're like, Well, so you average fifty students. You you said, Well, no, how many individual students in that three week period walked in your door? Yeah, yeah. And so when you can do those numbers, you may flesh it out and see that you had eighty five individual students come to your student ministry in that window, but you would have thought in your mind I only had fifty. Well, no, you're reaching 85 students, but what one student is at mama's this week and daddy's the next week. And so he can't always be there. There's all kinds of context that goes into that. But I thought that was so cool. And so I love doing that now on a school year to look at how many individual students walked in our door three times a year from August to May. How many students did we actually reach, you know, to actually do a little bit of impact with? And so I just trying to that really changed the way I look at numbers, that it's not just Wednesday to Wednesday, but it's doing these bigger chunks of how many are we reaching and you know and what are we doing with that time that we have them. And so anyway, that's what's one of my way major ways to look at numbers. Yeah. I mean, understanding that your impact is not just limited to like you said, how many people showed up this Wednesday, right? Because very rarely is every single person, or if ever, every single person you re you connect with or you pastor will be in the same place at the same time. Yeah. And so it you're naive to think that My reach is only limited to this one number from this one Wednesday night. And it's like, yeah, you may have a core group of kids that are there every Wednesday. So say if you run a hundred kids, right? Maybe 70 of them are your core kids. And they're probably there three times out of the four in a month. But you probably had another fifty or sixty kids that's walked through those doors throughout the whole year. And you're just not gonna keep track of that. You're not gonna count that as a win because man, like the whole goal is reaching people. lost people and making disciples. And so I I had to learn that. And we learned it. I think we did it from our church perspective. Like how many people have walked in our doors. And I was like, that's a good idea. I should probably figure that out. And so you should try it, man. Because we look and see how many people have actually walked in, not just on a Wednesday night, not one Wednesday night at the same time, but like how many people have you reached? And you'll be shocked at how many people you've actually reached, how many students you've reached, how many parents you've reached. And man, it it would encourage you to see like Maybe they're not all in the same room at the same time, but we have we've we've reached a lot of people. So let me follow up with this, Blake. You know, when we talk about how to measure differently, and you talked about making disciples, you know, what are some specific ways, right? At the end of the year, as some people who've been in this ministry for a while, when we look at and say, To this year was successful in ministry, what would be some metrics that you use to say, we we reach these goals, and so in my mind. This was a successful year in ministry as a student ministry. What are some of those things you can look at and say, That's what I measure my success by? So the low hanging fruit is salvations and baptisms, right? I mean, those are those are big deals. and moving from a salvation to a baptism is a big deal because we could have people make decisions at events, but then getting to them to a baptism sometimes can be like the FBI can't find these people to come get to get baptized. So so but those are Not just me, but I'm in I'm in the middle of that right now. See you at the poll. Like we had a bunch of y'all. Where y'all go? What's up? So but I get that. But so but those are the low-hanging fruit, you know, salvation baptisms. But then also like hopefully you have opportunities for your students to lead. So like are you adding new students to your leadership team? And like we'll talk, I'm sure there'll be an episode we'll talk about that. Like we have a a game team, a worship team, a media team, photography team, greeter team. We have different teams that students serve on. Are you getting new blood into those teams? Or is it just the same old, same old, the same students that you love and you cherish? But are you adding new people that they can be discipled to be able to leadership team stuff? And we'll again we'll talk about that another episode. But are are those things, you know, growing? we have opportunities over the summer where we let students lead Bible studies all summer. lead whether that's a Sunday morning Sunday school class or they lead like a a little small sermon on Wednesday night. Do we have students that are stepping up, new students that are wanting to step up and lead that? Or is it the same old, same old that's doing that? I mean, and there's all kinds of ways that you can better journey groups for our church, that's discipleship groups or D groups. Do you have students going deeper into intense discipleship? There should be areas that are outside of just attending a Wednesday and a Sunday that you can look at and it's like, hey, are they catching vision? Are they plugging in? Are they serving? Or are they just coming to attend? those are just a few off the top of my head that I can think about. I think that you know, I want to read something. That I we st I stole from you, I think that the people need to hear. But I I think that the ultimate goal, at least when I tell my leaders and my volunteers, you know, and the parents when I when I have my parent meetings is that one day these kids are going to leave your youth group and they're gonna go off to college, they're gonna go start families, everything else. How have I prepared them for the next phase of life spiritually? You know what mean? And we can look at like what does that look like on a indo like on a micro level, but at the end of the day, the goal has to be have have you set goals in your student ministry to say like this is this is the ultimate goals that we want to reach when they graduate. And am I putting things in place that will use the stepping stones to get to make that goal happen? But for me, like the ultimate goal you have to have is if your ultimate goal is I just want to get a hundred kids in the seats every Wednesday. Then you will compromise Jesus at some point to make that happen. Because your goal is just butts and seats. And let's be honest. Giving kids fluff gets them in the seats a lot more than giving them the standard and giving them the the gospel and calling them out and and holding them accountable. That is not fun. That is not sexy. They don't like that. Kids don't want naturally to be held accountable. But if you give away shoes every week, if you You know, you give away money and you have the fun stuff all the time, that's going to get them there. And so if your goal is only to get butts in a seat, then you're going to find easy ways and low-hanging fruit ways to make that happen. But if your goal is, hey, I want to make disciples, I want to prepare them for the next phase of life. I want their faith to be able to to uphold to withstand the the waves and the storms of life, then with that in your mind, you're going to build things that's going to say, I We're we're gonna do these things, even though they're not easy, to prepare you for that. Now, going back to what I asked Blake a while back and he gave he he sent me eight core goals. This is eight Blake's eight core goals that I stole because they're amazing. And so I still use it. I while you were talking, I was pulling this up from a parent meeting that I did for a preview night because I tell us to all my incoming six graders. So if you I want you to write this down, grab your pen and grab your paper. Eight core goals that by the time your kid graduates, they won't they should know, right? And so these eight goals, this is what Blake, the Dr. Blake Lewis came up with. One is understand the gospel. Two, understand the Bible. Three, understand worship. Four, understand community and church. Five, understand prayer. Six, understand evangelism and missions. Seven, understand the Holy Spirit. And eight, understand apologetics. Okay. So what Blake just give you understanding. He's saying that. When your kid comes to me in sixth grade, and by the time they graduate high school, they should understand these eight core things. Right? Is that accurate, Blake? No. And so So it's really cool because, like, when when you look at a parent and say, Hey, these are the things that we are trying to accomplish with your kids. These goals are like, these are the things that we want to accomplish. So I mean, think about it. It's just like school, right? You have these things when you are my kids in elementary school. And so I know they got their benchmarks at the beginning of the year that they've got to reach and they got to get to. And so now you can track these things. And when my kids graduate or my seniors at the end of their senior year, and I'm looking back and say, all right, do they understand the gospel? Do they understand how to pray? Do they understand evangelism and missions? I have these goals, and I'm like, what am I doing to ensure that they're reaching these goals? You know what I mean? And when you do that, and if you have 30 kids, if God has blessed you with 20 kids. But those 20 kids know those things, that's a win. You know what I mean? It's not about how many butts are in the seats. Your community, the church you're at, you may not have the capacity for 300 kids. And that's okay. But are you being faithful with the ones that he's given you? And so so many people, man, they get so caught up in this butts in the seats, and it's like, all right, God has blessed you with these people. Now, what have you taught them? They know how to make a mean ice cream float. I mean, they they they know how to, you know, do all the fun stuff, but like. When they walk out of here, do they have a solid foundation of their faith? Or are they gonna walk away when they get to college and somebody challenges them? And so that's what the metrics of winning is. But you gotta add to I love it. You gotta add to that, man. This is your eight-core goals, man. Give me give me give me some follow-up on eight-core goals. So I love I love calling them goals. That that really does fit well. So the the the origin behind those eight things was I was watching my first sixth grade group walk across the stage on senior Sunday. And I was just thinking, dang, what did they learn? You know, they were they've been with us for seven years. What did we teach them in those seven years? So I started kind of thinking back and I was like, okay, okay. And then I reached out to like twenty, thirty different youth pastors from all over the country just asking, you know, what are the seven or eight things that our students need to know before they graduate? And so I didn't come up with those. It was just a group of guys way smarter than me that all sent me these. I mean, you were one of the guys I reached out to. And then I culminated this list of eight based on what everybody said. And so for me, that's my scope and sequence every year. So every year I'm doing a Wednesday nights, my Wednesday night sermon series are all eight of those. Now they're dressed up differently, they're different titles, they're different scriptures that we use, but I know every single year I'm hammering all of these topics. And I'm not like poo-pooing on guys that do like 45 week sermon series through Ephesians. Like I'm sure that's really good and that really is helpful for students. I just for for me, I only have so many years with them. You know, like I'm gonna let the pastor walk through long books of the Bible and like go through all those things, which are great. And again, not poo-pooing on it. I think there's a lot of good that comes from it. I just think, man, I got a short amount of time, and especially my context is middle school. So like I only have three years with them. And so like I'm trying to say, what can I teach you in these three years to make sure that you know, you know, evangelism, you know the Bible, you know Holy Spirit, you understand these core concepts. So when you sit in that first philosophy class in college, you're not wrecked. Because you don't understand the foundations of your faith. But you're able to stand up and be like, well, no, I got a good core here. I can go with that. And so and and the way that we are able to build those goals is we know what we're trying to make, which is a disciple. So for your student ministry, whether that's just you, you and your team of volunteers or whoever, y'all need to sit down and say, What is the goal of this? What do we want our students to look like? And then you gear everything around that, your calendar, your teaching, your curriculum used on Sunday morning. Everything you do should be to make a disciple and you have to decide what it is what is a disciple. And that's where discipleship strategies come in. And I don't want to get too boring and and bore people to death with all that. But but that's that's what you're you're measuring is how do we make disciples and what and you need to have an idea of how to measure that disciple. Anyway, sorry, I rambled. I got on a soapbox, I felt like. Sorry. No, that's good. That's that's what I I I wanted you to touch on it. But I mean I I think if nobody else don't hear anything else if you listen to this numbers should be tracked right keep track of the things that you're doing but they cannot be the end all be all and so the last thing you want is man we had 50 seniors and they all walk away from jesus when they walk out of your doors because you didn't you didn't set goals and and help them grow spiritually having a big team is is is not great if you're losing every game you know what I mean it doesn't matter if you have a big team But if y'all not winning, then it doesn't mean anything. You just a big group of losers. And we don't want that. So we want you to make sure that you aren't getting discouraged. If God has blessed you in this season with 10 kids, man, you be faithful to those 10 and you make sure that you are setting goals for them to grow. Because even just one of those kids, man, can go and be the next mover and shaker in the next generation. But it starts with us making sure we're setting them up for success after we finish. So big I I think that was good, man. We what do you think? You think we got we got enough to end? Anything you want add? I like it. No, we we can end on that. And I I do want to kind of preface what our next episode's gonna be, and it's you can't do everything well. So it's figuring out how do you have priorities. What do you figure out? What is a priority for my week? what are some things I maybe need to say no to so that I can do what we're talking about, end up making disciples. So come back for the next episode to find out you can't do everything well. We'll catch you guys soon. So you. What? Right.