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The 7 Essential Tips to GROW Your YOUTH MINISTRY! · Ministry Coach: Youth Ministry Tips & Resources

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today we're talking about seven essential tips to help you grow your youth ministry and stick around to the end, because we have a big announcement.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Ministry Coach podcast.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: My name is Jeff Lascola and this is Kristen.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Lascola and we are super, super excited to bring you this episode.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: This episode has been a long time in the making and this is all about how to grow your youth ministry.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And so today we're going to give you seven ways to grow your youth ministry, and the last one is extra special.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: You're gonna love it.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Stick around till the end.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's dive right in.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Number one let's just get it over with.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: If you have listened to our podcast for any length of time, this will not shock you, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Number one if you want to grow, your youth ministry, split junior high and high school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: There, I said it.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: You already knew I was going to say it Split, split, splitty, splitster.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's just Grow by dividing.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here it is in a nutshell High schoolers are not going to invite their friends to a Wednesday night program with 12 year olds present.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Or possibly 11 year olds, it's just not going to be how it is.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Junior hires.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: It's just not super age appropriate and my estimation for where they're at developmentally to be constantly with high schoolers.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I feel like we put them in an environment that is too much, too soon for them.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I know as a well my daughter's in fifth grade.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: She'll be in middle school next year.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: If her youth group my youth group was full of high schoolers I'd be like no thanks, you're not ready for that, even when she was in elementary school.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: She is in elementary school, but she would hang out with my junior hires because, they'd all be in the car together.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: we're going to the beach.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, like I never thought the junior hires were talking about anything inappropriate, until I had a third grader in the car with me.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Age appropriate.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but mildly inappropriate.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Like just stuff like oh my gosh, that girl's so hot, you know.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Like stuff, it's just like ee er, er.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Like that's just not where you're at developmentally, those are.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: That's kind of it in a nutshell.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: High schoolers won't invite friends.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: You're just not going to grow.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's going to stay stagnant and worse than not growing.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it's just not healthy for the long term.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You might keep a few really solid families that are bought in, but that's where you'll stay pretty much.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Junior hires and high schoolers have very, very different needs on all types of levels, so split it Okay.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Number two how to grow your youth ministry is develop a killer volunteer team.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Honestly, this is where the majority of your relational energy should go is into your volunteer team, because that is like it helps the leadership energy grow exponentially.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Where there are a lot of very capable, motivated, high capacity leaders, there is really good, healthy ministry happening.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And so you can't carry it all.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: You've got to learn how to duplicate yourself and build a team of people who you are mobilizing and equipping to go and do incredible ministry.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So some things to think about with that is make sure you have the right people on the team.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Make sure you're really pouring into them.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: You, as the youth pastor, you're gonna be the force behind the relational dynamic between everybody.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You are gonna be the one that builds a culture of fun and camaraderie and serving among the volunteers.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: You're gonna be the one who gets them excited.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: You've got to train them and resource them.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: They have to know.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Recruit them, like you said, getting the right ones in there.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and giving them what they need to succeed, never making that mistake of like they work for me.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: It's like no, you are going to equip and resource and train and pour in and all that energy toward your volunteer team and you should really have some kind of onboarding system when they first come in, it's not just like congratulations, you showed up.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Good luck.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Therefore, you are one of us.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: But is there an application?
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Is there an onboarding process?
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Is there ongoing training for them?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So you know, because proficiency equals competence and competence equals satisfaction and longevity.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: So you know, you're the force again behind all of this.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So build that killer volunteer team, because that is honestly what your ministry is going to stand on for the long haul.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: So if you're brand new or noise, you've been in it for a while, like that is like number one.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: If you've already split your junior, high and high school ministry, build those.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: This is number two.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Build that volunteer team Because with the right people that have the right skills and the right motivation, there's like nothing you guys can't do really, and they will grow.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Your youth ministry what did you say was competency.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Proficiency equals competency, competency equals satisfaction and longevity.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Basically saying, people stick around when they are good at what they do.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Everyone wants to be good at what they do.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: They don't want to be.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Those are four big words.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really smart.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be floundering and like I don't know what I'm doing.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Am I doing this right?
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Like how do I discipline?
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Like you want to make sure you've trained them on how to do ministry effectively.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: They don't want to feel ineffectual, because I think that just makes people burn out quick.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: If you've ever been in a job that you just were bad at and nobody was helping you grow or learn or develop a skill, it's just like drudgery, it's terrible and you don't look forward to it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: But when you're great at something, you're like heck, yeah, let's go.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Right, you feel equipped and ready to go.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like wind in your sails and we want to do that for a volunteer team.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: They are there to do the ministry 100%.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: What's number three?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Right number three have a student leadership team.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So we covered adult leaders, small group leaders, whatever, but have a student leadership team, and the reason for that is, I think every youth group really needs like a core that you can, a core of students, because students relate to students differently than adults relate to students, and students need your ministry DNA group that you're training and developing and discipling into, because then they mobilize and they're like so much of this, so much of the theory behind all of this is more mobilization duplication.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: You can't like DNA duplicates, right, Doesn't it I?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: don't know, but you're like proficiency, incompetency.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: This is a very scientific conversation, but trying to recreate the force of ministry that you bring to the table in adults and students so that everyone, like a new kid, could come in and be talked to by student leadership kid and welcomed and invited and come sit next to me and all those things, and we're teaching them how to do ministry.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And I've noticed, when I don't have that team, when I don't have a student leadership team, it's just like everyone's kind of like.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: There's no anchored group who is showing the rest of the group.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: This is how we do this to be part of this group.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: you know, and I even train them on things like you better participate in the games, like, if you don't want to play, oh well, you're playing, because we need to set the example of it's cool to play, it's cool to participate.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Look at those kids having so much fun.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Look at those kids doing the hand motions during worship.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Look at those kids singing.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Look at those kids being respectful to the leaders.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Look at those kids bringing their Bibles and you're, you know, having this DNA spread throughout the group and that impact that you want to have increases.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So now you have student leaders and you have adult leaders Again, where there's a lot of really good leaders.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: There's usually a lot of really good stuff happening and a lot of really good growth happening.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Where there's very few leaders and very low capacity leaders, not a lot of stuff is happening, not a lot of stuff is growing and not a lot of stuff is healthy.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: So when people have ownership and they're excited and they get the vision and they start spreading that, it's just like this domino effect.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Watch them invite their friends, watch those people be bought in, watch them get committed to what you're doing.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, and all of this is not in the name of youth group.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: It's not like because we want a big youth group.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: You realize we're talking about this so that as many people are coming into hear the word of God as possible.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: That's an obvious statement that probably should be stated, because we don't just want to pad our numbers so we can pat ourselves on the back.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Look what I did.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I have 300 kids in my youth ministry.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Okay Well, is it just a YMCA?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: No, we're teaching the gospel.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: We want as many people to hear the truth as possible.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Right, and you bring up a good point.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Obviously, this is not just about growth.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: It's about healthy growth.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, because you want your youth group, your youth ministry, to be very healthy and grow that way.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: You don't want it to go the other way around where you're growing but the health is not there, right?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: It's either absent or it's constantly trying to catch up, because that's a bad situation to be in.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: If you just want to grow, pay kids to come, there, you go Simple Episode over.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: If you want to grow in a healthy way, this is what you need to be doing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Well and sustainable, because I hope that if you're listening to this, you're thinking I want to be in youth ministry for a really long time and laying all these foundations of student leadership and good, healthy leaders and laying all these foundations, they all pay dividends for years to come because it will just start to be the culture.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: It's not like you're going to have to reinvent it every single time.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It will just become.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: This is who we are, all right.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Number four make it fun.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So let's just be honest.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Students have a need for fun and youth group should be fun.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I think that is a real love language that we speak to students of.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: You can come here, you can kind of Abandon relax relax, abandon yourself, have a good time.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: You know we play a game that's like about 20 minutes long.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes youth groups do a real short little five minute game and then a 45 minute message.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything wrong with a 20 minute game.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Walls are coming down, people are laughing, people are relaxed and I think that sometimes literally walls are coming down with some of the games, the light fixtures are coming down, the projector is coming down, all of it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: But I you, yeah, you break through those barriers.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: When people come in, especially if they're new, like Never been here before, like what is this?
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And if it's really stuffy and very overly formal, I feel like it's a huge turnoff to someone that's new.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: It's like I don't know your, your traditions, I don't know your, you know the stuff that I keep on watching, your weird things, but it's like it probably is weird to them.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah so what's this?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So when you have fun, when you break down those barriers, when you realize, hey, this is a fun place, a relaxing place to be.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It just brings people in, it connects people so much easier.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It totally does.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And please don't give in to the myth that if we're having fun and laughing and having a good time, it must not be very Spiritual, and those things can completely co-exist.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Our messages are heavy and impactful and Saturated with truth and uncompromised, not watered down.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: And then we have a dance party, you know, and we play a really not every week, but last week I told the kids I'm like Do you guys just need to dance?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And they're like, yes, I'm like me too.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And so we had a really fun dance party.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone was like just so relaxed and it's just almost like a breath, like we've got to breathe.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: This week we were at school and we were doing homework and we were at practice and we were with our family, and now we're all just like Heck yeah, it's like this is my.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: finally, this is my time.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, why can't that my time be with God?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: absolutely.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: And when kids start to make that connection of I feel good, when I'm at church, I'm having fun, I have a smile on my face.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's cathartic really.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And we want them to associate church with Good things, with things they enjoy and keep in mind.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Humans are multi-dimensional.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: We have our spiritual needs.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Are Interwoven into our human needs?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I think a little bit so like, yes, of course, worship and the word and Bible study, those are all very spiritual things.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: But who's to say laughter, fun, relationship, camaraderie, moving your body and enjoying life that's also very spiritual.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Read the book of Ecclesiastes, you know.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: There's a whole big argument for being merry and joy life.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: This is all we have right now.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Let's just like stop worrying and enjoy what we've got.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: And I love that attitude, I love that posture.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Don't let anyone make you feel un-spiritual.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: If you hype up the fun, those things can Coexist and your youth ministry will grow because of it, because people will be attracted To where the fun and the joy and the energy are and where they have permission To dance right and it becomes that much more or something that kids can invite friends to yeah what your students are not gonna want to go out and say, hey, do you want to come to these four walls where we just sit there and it's very boring?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: No one you know whispers talks, or anything.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: There is one stained glass.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You know that's kidding.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: But like when all of a sudden you're saying, hey, come to this, my youth group.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: It's so fun, we do all these things, we learn about God and it's like one big giant fun party for God.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Like, how exciting is that?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: So exciting versus this is really boring.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I usually don't like going, but you should come too right, you know.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And we?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Here's the truth you want students to get to the point where they're begging their parents to take them, not parents forcing them to go and In our youth ministry.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: If a student gets in trouble, if they don't finish their homework, whatever parents start to take away youth group and Kids, kids cry.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Kids are so sad if they don't get to come on a Tuesday night.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Parents will tell me like you know, he's crying because I told him he can't come to chaos because he didn't get his homework done.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: You know, instead of like I'm having to force this kid to go and like what a cool world where kids are forcing their parents right to take them to church.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Also, what a cool world to live in when, all of a sudden, sports versus church, church actually starts to win out.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Well, our kids who, just I, have sports there's nothing I can do about it even if they only get to come for 45 minutes, they'll come yeah they'll come for the last little bit and their parents will say, well, he gets out of practice, is it okay?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And they'll show up in their uniforms.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I have a girl who comes in her baseball uniform every single week.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: She comes late but they don't want to miss it.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: It's like even if all they got to do with small groups.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I had these two girls that were on the dance team and they would come a Half hour before we quit before Program was over small and all and I said, well, all you guys will really make it to a small group, so like we don't care, we just want to come.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It's cool.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It is so cool that you know it's not just like, well, I had sports, so I miss the whole thing.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: They're like what part can I?
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: be, a part of, because they get FOMO and they want to come and it's always fun and they want to see their friends and we've just built so much fun and relationship and learning and truth and worship and they love every part.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: And here's the coolest thing too we have so much fun.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: But when you ask a kid what's your favorite part of our youth ministry small groups they usually say small groups or worship.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they say the message.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Try not to get my feelings hurt.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Very rarely will I have a kid say the game.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: One out of like 20 will say that it blows my mind.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And then we stop doing small groups for this event we do in October.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: That's outreach driven and they're always like what are small groups coming?
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: back.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: When is worship coming back?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And so don't think well, if I let them have too much fun, that will be their only motivation.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: A who cares, as long as they're there.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But, B.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That's not really what they love.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Love deep down.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: That's not like the only thing driving them.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's just-.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like they come for the fun.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: They stay for the message and for what they're getting out of it, yeah, cause if it was all just fun, I don't know that that would work either.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think they'd be like coming in droves.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I think they need both.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: They need their outlet, they need to get their energy and craziness out and have a great time, and then they want something good for their soul.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: All right, they're exhausted at that point, so let's move on.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I love fun.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Number five be organized and have a high level of excellence.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: One of my leaders said this recently and I'm like you.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Hit the nail on the head, andy, thank you.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Andy said this.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: He said nobody wants to be a part of a half-baked plan and I was like you're right, I hate a half-baked plan and when we're really organized, we create a program that people can be proud to be a part of.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what Andy was kind of saying.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: He's like you communicate things well.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Everybody knows what's going on, everybody knows what to do, everybody knows what's expected of them.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: There's no guessing.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: It's so organized, so polished, done with such excellence.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I feel proud to be a part of it and it keeps me going because I'm not like scrambling ever.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like what are we doing?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Where are we going?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Where are we meeting?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: What time is this at?
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: So you have as the youth pastor.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: This is sort of in your hands is how organized is your youth ministry?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of really genius people out there that are really good at youth ministry and they're really unorganized.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And if you're, you have to be a certain level of talented for that to be okay and people to look past it.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Just that's the truth.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I've noticed If you're a top of your game writing books and you're like world famous, people will put up with like oh, this guy is just not organized.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Very few of us are gonna reach that level and it's not cute when you are just starting out and you're trying to build something and you keep people guessing.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: They don't appreciate.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Well, but they're a genius.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, how can they be expected to keep track of all the details?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It's, they're genius.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody is going to think that of us.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: You know me and you guys they're not gonna.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Usually they'd probably be smart enough to get somebody else on their team who could handle some of the organizational tasks, but that's.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Most of us are not gonna have that luxury.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: That's right, and a lot of youth pastors say, oh, I'm just, that's not my skill set.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I hate to tell you, but unless your church will hire an admin for you, you've got to make it your skill set.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Because, if you want to keep leaders and if you want to keep leaders happy and if you want people to come to your events and participate.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes youth pastors are like nobody's coming and it's like, yeah, they don't know where to go and what to do.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And you told them five minutes ago and you didn't promote it and you overpromise and you underdeliver and you always say this event's gonna be great and it never is because you're not prepared.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So it's the level of excellence that you put into what you do.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: We can't be the youth pastors that just fly by the seat of our pants because we're not genius enough for people to overlook it.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It's like you just have to do a really good job.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Just do a really, really, really good job.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that's gonna take for you.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know what tools you need to get organized and stay organized.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: But it's not just for you and I think maybe if you could realize the motivation behind it, it's not so that you'll have a better work week, no, it's so that your volunteers stay informed and happy and motivated in their role and respect you and honor the ministry and feel proud to be a part of it.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: And for your students and their parents.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: It's for them, so that they feel confident in your leadership ability, so that they will invite their friends.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: When things look like a well-oiled machine, people want to invite their friends, but if they have to like apologize, like okay.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So the youth pastor is like really great, but like she just doesn't really.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: She's a little scatterbrained but we love her.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You know, don't make people make excuses for you.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Make it very easy.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: This is all in the name of the gospel.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I know how am I making a connection between organization and the gospel?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's because we want to make it easy for people to invite their friends and if we're scatterbrained and have a half-baked plan that we're expecting will come and show up.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: But we may not even be there because sometimes we're not fully prepared and we cancel youth group last minute.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And then we won't tell you where we are or when we're coming back or whatever you know.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: It's like you're not making it easy for anybody to invite or be proud to affiliate with you and say this is our youth pastor, this is our church, this is our youth group.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You want to make them proud to be able to say I can invite people I love to this, I can invite people I care about to this and they'll be well taken care of.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And excellence says that.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Excellence says I'm going to take really good care of you and I'm going to be a good steward of this ministry and this youth group.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: All right number six.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: This is teaching, so all about teaching.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Have relevant and accessible sermons.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Accessible meaning things that students can understand, digest, apply.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Age appropriate.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Age appropriate which kind of goes back to the split, your youth group, because if you have the 11 year old with the 18 year old, you're basically shaving off the top portion of what you can talk about with some of those older students and the bottom portion because it's too kiddy for the younger ones and it's really narrowed down to this very watered down middle of the ground.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: We don't really go deep on anything.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: You know, we talk about God, which is good, but when some of the issues that students are dealing with well, we have to make it very, very vanilla.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is that saying?
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: If you try to reach everyone, you're reaching no one.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I think you say that all the time.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Another thing Good for me, that's a great quote.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: You're so smack.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Chris Brown, our senior pastor, says and I've said this again, I'm like a broken record of when he says the Bible's not boring, it's taught by boring people.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: You know, and so many of us grew up in churches like that, where you're like I love God, but, oh my gosh, you know I am going to fall asleep.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: My mom used to pack.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: You remember those little drawing pads?
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And then you would lift.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: It was like this red, not even a pen, and then you would.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: It was like magnetic or something yeah color on this film paper and then you go and you lift it up and it would erase.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: She used to pack those for me during church because it was so boring that it was like what am I doing?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I don't understand anything you're saying and all you do is just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: So as youth pastors, we get creative with our messages, not that we're up doing a.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Clown show, dragon pony show or something.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: It's not a three ring circus where we're like I'm going to make the gospel crazy, it's more just.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Engaging, interesting, engaging, interesting, and that's what the Bible is.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: It totally is.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Know what you're going to say, how you're going to say, how it's going to apply to them.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Be very intentional, because we have the most important message in the world, the most important like, because this is the only message that transcends this world.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Anything else you learn in life.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: If you forget it, oh well.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: If you don't learn this, if your students don't know the gospel, if they don't know why God, how much God loves them, what he's done for them and why that matters, and if you can't preach that in a way that they can understand, I mean, this is the only thing that, like this, is devastating.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: If they don't get this, there could not be anything more important.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So, handle the message with care, do it justice, teach messages that your students are able to understand.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Teach it with passion.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Prepare, prepare, prepare.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Don't show up flying by the seat of your pants again.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Know exactly what you're teaching, how to illustrate it, how to get them to understand, how to involve them.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Tell them why it matters to them and get creative.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Spend time preparing your sermons.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Make it really, really good each week and then watch their hunger grow.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: You know I had this.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: We were talking about life and death.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Right now we're doing a series on like heaven, hell, life, death, all of it, and this kid comes up to me after he goes when we're done.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Could you do series on revelation, cause I think I wet his appetite for like the end times a little bit because, we were talking about the Bima seat judgment, the great white throne judgment, and we were talking about the end of time and the book of life and all of this stuff, and he's just like whoa, I wanna learn more.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: You know, and I think when you teach it well, I'm not saying I taught it so well, but it was like so interesting that he's like wait a minute, I gotta know more.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I wanna talk about revelation and I was like, let's do it let's do it afterwards, you know.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So maybe you're sitting here.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: This is number seven, the best one.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Just kidding.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're thinking, okay, cool, but how, how do we do this?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: How do I execute all of these six things?
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Because I care about my youth ministry, I love my students, I want to be everything that you're talking about, but how?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Like I don't have a youth ministry degree, I was put into it because someone saw something in me and God called me Just filled the need because they needed it.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and God put you in that position on purpose, and a lot of youth pastors just feel so ill equipped to carry this stuff out, so we got you.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a solution number seven is essentially help.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Everybody needs, everybody needs help, but we have provided something.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: So over the past year and a half, we have been creating what we call youth ministry growth accelerator, which is basically condensing decades of information that you have accumulated and Condensing them two decades.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: You make it sound, jackie donate.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Condensing it into days and through something that is like a roadmap, essentially to go through to grow your youth ministry in a healthy way.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, and so it's not.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It's basically like the best way I can describe it to is a College course in youth ministry.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: It's like youth ministry 101 here is everything you need and it's not theory.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: So as a young youth pastor, I would get so frustrated when people would say like Love your team.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Mmm, but no practical, Okay, I will.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I love you, I Check, I love them Okay but how tell?
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: me.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: What that means tangibly and that's what youth ministry growth accelerator does is I take you step by step in these modules.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Videos.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: You can watch things you'll have access to for the rest of your life.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: You can also share it with your team.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: You can watch it alongside them to say here's what we do.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Step one, this step two, this Stuff that we were talking about today how to develop your volunteer team, how to make it the best it can be.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you exactly how to do it.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Here's what I do you can too.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Here's how to launch a student leadership team from the ground up.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Here's how to make some really fun events.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Here's how to communicate really clearly and really well.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I'll even give you some of my best events of how I run them, start to finish.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So I don't just say do this kind of event, your kids will love it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I say here's how to do this kind of event start to finish step one buy this.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Step two Print this out.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Step three very, very like full proof, yeah, a lot of practical application that you can walk away and say I know what I need to do.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even with sermon building and sermon prep and teaching and all of it.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: It's like all the nuts and bolts of youth ministry that I've learned over only two decades Okay, 20 years fine of youth ministry to say this is what built my youth ministry and I didn't know it then.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I know it now because I looking back on it going that is what worked right and it's replicable, and I remember the it was hundred percent.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It was in any context kind of created.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Because I asked you one time I said if you ever changed churches, moved to a different state, somewhere where you didn't know anybody, and you were asked to be a Youth pastor there.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Could you recreate what you currently have?
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: And you said absolutely.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And I said, but how would you do that?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: And you were kind of laying out what do this, this and this and this, and it's like why?
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: the course.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: So if you guys are interested in checking it out and signing up, go to grow your youth ministry Dot-com and make sure you get signed up, because I think this is Something that, even if you've been in youth ministry for a long time but maybe you feel burnout or stuck, I think it's for you, but it's also for the brand-new youth pastor.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: It's like I was thrown into my job.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: I really truly do not know what I'm doing.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I have no help.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: This is meant for you as well.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm, it will be like your.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: It will be your help.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the podcast, but super.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Hyper focus hyper focus zeroed in.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Here's what we're learning.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: It's like a workshop Bite size.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: This is what you're gonna learn.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Here's what we're gonna do.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Here's how to make it happen.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Go and do it, yeah with the lifetime access you also anything that we add to it as we go along, which we have along the way.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You get access to that as well.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: So it all comes with it.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: So check it out, make sure you guys check it out.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: We thank you so much for watching and listening and we will see you next time welcome to them, welcome to the ministry coach podcast where every week, we bring you weekly.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Every week we bring you weekly today we're Both.