Latest / Student Ministry: What They Don't Teach You / Episode #6 - You Can’t Do Everything Well
Transcript
- Episode #6: What I'm gonna do. Now, Brandon, you may be a better person than me. And actually, I know that's true. But but I'm just telling you, I I struggled a long time and probably still to this day, struggle with the idea of comparison comparing my ministry or like try I want to do everything well. I know in my mind I'm a perfectionist, and I know that can be a good thing, but also can be bad at times and be detrimental to me and my my brain. But like I want to do everything really well. And so, but like it need we it's that's important for me to understand I can't do everything well. Like there's some things I'm gonna struggle with, there's some things that other ministries are gonna just kill it, they're gonna do really good at that my ministry maybe is not gonna do. And so it's important for us, I think one personally to figure out what do we need to say no to? What are some things that maybe, hey, they're really good at that, and I'm and praise the Lord for them that they're able to do that. What is a priority for us? but then also like ministry wise, what are some things we need to say no to? What are some events? That we're trying to do just to keep up with the Joneses down the road that maybe we need to kill. But let's I think today it'd be really good if we talked about what are some things that that we can figure out that you don't have to do everything well. What are your what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think one of the phrases that I have to remind myself, one of my monsters is what worked for them may not work for you. You know what I mean? And so oftentimes, man, we get on social media, which can be a great way to like get ideas. But it's really, really bad if everything that you see, you just immediately think I can do that because it's gonna work and I need that win right now. Because what you're left with is total confusion. Your youth group's confused, your volunteers are confused, your parents are confused, and ultimately you will be confused because you've got to you've gotta figure out your identity, what works for us, what's beneficial for us, and then everything else you kinda kinda let lay leave to the side or shelf it and maybe pull it out. And so I think some of the the the hard conversations that I have with a lot of young youth pastors is basically when they call me and they're asking me questions about this event or that. And I have to be the bad guy and say, hey, have you thought about not doing that at all? Yeah, yeah. You know? Because they see us, right? They call us and say, man, we saw this event that you did. And that's dope. I want to do that. Or, hey, I'm thinking about, you know, splitting my youth group into middle school and high school and all different things. And I'm like, yeah, that's great in the correct season, but you can also do a lot of damage to yourself and to your ministry if you do things before you're ready to do them. and so I had a meeting, man, with one of my old students. I just came from lunch with them, and we were talking about, you know, the dangers of social media and the comparison game that you get into. And how a lot of times we put ourselves in seasons that we're not prepared for. and it ends up causing more damage because we're not prepared mentally, emotionally, physically, all different things for these these seasons that we're we're rushing. I think a lot of times in ministry the same thing happens is that we, you know, we are we want what our friends who've been in ministry for 10 years have right now. And it's like, yeah, I don't think you understand. It took me 10 years to get here. You can't. You're on year one, man. Slow down because you don't have the infrastructure to make these things happen. And so before we get into the specifics, I think the first thing you gotta understand is what works for them may not work for you. And the sooner you accept that, it it will save you a lot of headache and a lot of heartbreak in the long run. Yeah, because I can't tell you the amount of guys that will There'll be year one, year two, and they'll they'll see, like you said, stuff that either we're doing or y'all are doing or like a church down the road's doing, and they immediately add it to their calendar a month from today, and then they do it, and then they're like, dude, this didn't go well at all. It's like, well, I don't think you prayed about it first of all. I think you just saw something good. And you're just like, Yeah, let's copy that. But like but also they don't have the what's the word? not credibility. But they haven't earned the right from the families to trust them to do these things. It's there's not gonna be immediate buy-in. Like one of my events that that I get people call about a lot is our four twelve student conference. We just did it a few weeks ago. And I love it. But it's it I was in year five or six here, whenever I even pitched the idea. I had to pitch it to a core group of students to get them on board. I had to pitch it to a core group of parents. get them on board. I had to pitch it to the staff to make sure they were all on board. Like I went through a about a year long process of making sure that this wasn't just something that Blake wanted to do, that it would be fun. But like, hey, this is something I feel like guys laid in my heart. It was a process I worked through, got buy-in before we did it, and then launched it. And so I would just challenge, you know, any student pastor has listened to this. If you have something that you see someone else is doing, yeah, God may have put it on that student pastor's heart for their students. That doesn't mean that you have to do it. Now That doesn't mean don't steal events. I've stolen events all the time. There's an event that I've stole called preview night. Chris Hargrove is who I stole it from. And I was at a breakout at Conclave. Chris told me about how he did preview night. I was like, wow, I never thought of that. That is unbelievable. And so I stole it. I tweaked it to fit my culture and my context, but it worked out well. And so don't think that you have to do what everyone else is doing for your ministry to be successful successful. Pray and say, guy, what is it that you want us to do here? How can I, like we talked about last episode, understand the goal of being a disciple maker? How can I use my my talents, my gifting, my abilities to form that through the events that we do, not just comparing or trying to do well what other people do? And the goal ultimately is you want to build momentum and not kill it, right? And if you do it the wrong way the first time, you're setting yourself up for failure. Perfect example 412, let's talk 412 and it just to give you an idea of what 412 is, is is a student conference. That you invite other student pastors and counselors, everything else to come in and lead breakouts, right? For your students. Blake has been doing that, right? We've but I've been here at our church for seven, almost eight years now. Blake's been in his church for a while. I have a I think a healthy youth group. I would call it a healthy youth group with the mature students, all different things. And Blake's been doing that for five years. I was like, man, that's something great. I want to do it. And I'm still terrified of if our kids will actually enjoy that. So much so that I said, you know what, instead of me just you know saying, you know what, I'm gonna throw the event out there and do it, I say, you know what, this year for D now, I'm gonna add breakouts to D now so that I can see how my kids will react to breakouts and if they really like it, I'm like, man, Brand, this was dope. Well, good. I got an event for you. Like, I'm thinking so much about wanting this to be successful that I am doing it in phases so that it's doing it. Like instead of just saying That's a great idea. Let me just take it and run with it. Like, are you prepping for this for it to be successful? And for yourself, again, you want your leaders, you want yourself to not be burnt out. Are you doing these things? And so some stuff you gotta walk through these things and learn. Is this okay? And so if we do breakouts and my kids say, Yeah, I didn't like that. All right, well, 412 ain't happening here. You know what mean? And that's okay because I and I have to be okay with saying what's good for them may not be good for my kids. And there's some things that I do here. That may not be good for Blake's kids or other people, and I have to be okay with that too. Well, and and I was just gonna say, that's the maturity of learning to say no. Yeah. Like you can say no to things and that's okay. Like and you may have an event that you've done for 30 years, not you, but your church has done for 30 years. If it's not reaching what you're wanting it to do, it's okay to kill something. Now don't just kill ever don't be year one and you're three weeks in and you kill everything and how they do stuff. Don't do that. But once you've earned credibility and you evaluate something for multiple years, it's okay to kill stuff. Like we killed our Super Bowl party. We did Super Bowl parties for years. and we would have, you know, 70, 80 kids show up. but then I I just I we we evaluated, we're like, hey, this is not beneficial, this isn't helpful anymore. So we killed it. we killed our paintball event. We've done it for 20 years. We killed that not too long ago. And again, no one has batted an eye. We've replaced it with something that fits our culture now, it fits our students now. And so it goes well. And so I that's the ministry side of saying no. But I do want to touch, we just have a few more minutes in this episode. How do you, as a minister, learn to say no on personal things, like outside of your ministry? Because I know you get you get asked to speak way more than I do at different things. But I remember being early on as a youth pastor, is that I want to speak at stuff. Like I I see that youth pastor speaking at events, I see that guy leading at other things. I want to do that. Well, how do you, once you kind of get in that rhythm of being asked to do stuff? Learn to say no to things. But what what works for you? So the the biggest thing you have to evaluate all the time is your family dynamic, right? because when you're younger, I mean if you're if ministry is not a monolith, so you it doesn't always look like start at nineteen, you know, get married, have a kid. A lot of times that seems to be the case. So when Brandon was twenty one, twenty two, when me and my wife first got married, we didn't have any kids. So I can be gone a lot more because it's just me and her. You add kids into the mix. Now I'm leaving my wife and my kids. And now she's gotta stay at home with the kids by herself. And so I'm getting asked to go speak more. And I'm driving, you know, and I got my own events that I'm doing. So I can't just say, well, you well, babe, I'm only l going to speak four times this year. Well, yeah, but I also have my own five or six events to take away from my family at home too. So I'm really going twelve weeks out of the year, you know what I mean? And so, you know, and summer camps and all those different things. And so I had to learn to say no to speaking engagements because it wasn't worth more to me than my family was my family health. At the end of the day, these people are gonna go back home to their own families and I'm leaving my family to come speak to you and pouring to you. And so I'm very selective about when I'm going to speak at places and and and putting a cap on it to make sure that I'm honoring my family because I I've been guilty of this. Is is putting the ministry above my family. And it hurt it hurt us. It cost us some happiness and some hard conversations we had to have because of that. And so you have to learn in ministry very early on that the people you call the minister first is your family. And so make sure they come first. Make sure that praise God, man. If you are if he's gifted you with the built of communic gift of communication and and people want you to come speak and you feel like that's a call into you and you're doing it for the right reasons, one thousand percent go take up those opportunities you feel like it's God's put on your heart. But make sure you're not putting those things and your the work at the at your church above your family. There's so many events. We talk about the comparison game, right? I look around sometimes. I'm like, dang, I gotta step my game up. Man, these other churches like they're doing events almost every week. And I'm like, I I got my same boring free events that we do every year. And I'm like, yeah, a new event though is more things that have to I more time away from my family. You know what I mean? I look at these youth pastors and they're You know, they have leadership teams and they're inviting them over to their house, those different things. I'm like, man, I need to start doing stuff like that. But I'm like, that's one last night with my family that that's already busy that I'm taking away for a lot from my wife and my kids. And my kids are doing sports now and you know, all different things and all the other youth passes are every sports game, all different stuff. And my students, Brandon, where are wh why weren't you at the game this weekend, right? Our our our local volleyball team, they w won North State last night and I I We're so proud of them, man. Like they're going to state and they're like, Brand, were you at the game last night? No, my daughter had a soccer game. So I got to watch little girls run around and kick the ball into the wrong goal like six times. And you can say, Well, you know, well, their game was way more important than my kids' game. But no, like y'all got your parents were at your game. So why why wouldn't I be at mine? You know what I mean? And so learning to say no to ministry stuff is extremely important. Because you've got to protect your family first. And I think that's something as a your an early age in ministry, you better learn now. Learn how to say no and set up healthy boundaries. Cause if you don't do it now, as the ministry grows, you're gonna get consumed by it. Yeah. And we're we're kind of in the last few minutes, so I'll kind of shift back to minist to ministry now. But kind of the the goal kind of behind everything we're saying is priorities matter. You have to identify what is my priorities. One as a as a minister and my family, what is our priorities? And nothing's gonna supersede number one and nothing's gonna go above number two. You what I Like you figure out what those priorities are, but also for our student ministries, we have to figure out what is priority. And so I would hopefully hear I want people to hear me say this that I think Wednesday nights and Sundays should be a high priority. I think what people tend to do is they make events the priority. Where camp, D now, you know, the retreats or whatever else that you throw in, and then all your other miscellaneous events that you throw in, all of your energy, all of your focus goes to those, and then your Wednesday nights and your Sunday mornings get your leftovers. That's where you're gonna actually make a difference, is on those Wednesdays and Sundays. Don't neglect Wednesday and Sunday. I'd rather only have three events all year long, but my Wednesday nights are solid. I'm putting and and this is convicting to me. I did this several years ago. I begin to notice our pastor is so generous. He'll let us preach on Sundays a few times a year. And I'm so thankful that he does. I would notice my sermon prep for Sunday was way more than my Wednesday night. Preach it. And you and you may say, Well, Blake, you're preaching to adults versus middle schoolers. No, no, no. God didn't call me to preach to adults. Yep. Like I do sometimes, and that's cool. God called me to preach to middle schoolers. I need to be as invested in preaching to those middle schoolers and invested in that Bible study that I would as a Sunday morning. Who cares that it's more people and that it's older people? Those middle schoolers need me to be pouring into God's word and be ready to share in them, share to them. And so, guys, figure out your priorities. What are they? And I would say Wednesday and Sunday needs to be high on that list, not leftovers that you just kind of fumble through and make happen. Those should get your attention. And then you also pour in those events. So if you're saying Blake, I have too many events, learn to say no, learn what needs to cut the fat, and learn what is going to help me make disciples. And so anyway, that's that's my Massachusetts. Sorry. That's good. No, that's good. Drop mic drop right there. Yeah, man. Hey, listen, understanding what's important and it is it is healthy to kill things. I think healthy ministries learn to kill things and don't let them linger because they're going to take away from the main things. And I think you hit it on the head, man, that Wednesday and Sunday, that is your every week consistent things. They better get your A game. And are your events helping those things thrive? Or Is it dividing your your your mental space and your energy to the point to where your other things are suffering? If you got too many irons, you know, in the fire, it ain't it ain't gonna work out. So learn to to to cut That's good, man. The good episode. and we're excited. I don't know what the next episode's about, Blake. Let me let me hold on. Let me Blake normally does our intro for the next one. You want me to do it? I got it teed up. I got it. I got it. I said, okay, You know, and so we talk about I I'm cooking right now. When you talk about, you know, letting things die, what you also don't want to do is let your ministry die when you leave. And so we're gonna talk about how not to build a ministry around yourself to the point that you become the heartbeat, and when God calls you away somewhere else or calls you home, because you did, you don't want your ministry to die because you go to Katari, didn't it? But I'll be on next episode. How not to build a ministry around yourself. So can't wait to see y'all next time. Catch you on the next one. Peace. Peace. Yeah. Amen. Right. Right.