Church Budget

"I wish there were a way to do youth ministry without money." I can't even begin to count the number of times that I have made that statement to myself and to others. It seems like so often, the things that we want to do in ministry are often handicapped by the all-mighty dollar.

What happens in a lot of church all over the world is that the church leadership feels the pressure to higher a student ministry pastor but they are not ready financially to take on the responsibility.

I read an interesting thought on this by Mark DeVries in "Susatinable Youth Ministry." DeVries suggested that a church should be prepared to spend roughly $1,000 per student that is involved in the student ministry. Now, that number may sound high (or low depending on the # of students who are involved in your student ministry) but part of that number also includes the actual salary that the youth pastor is being paid.

That can be a daunting task for any church to take on, however, it is so important that a church be prepared financially to take on a growing, thriving student ministry. Not being prepared is often what causes a lot of youth pastors to become frustrated and often leave their ministry setting.

Stomp Team

In the middle of May, I preached on the importance of using the gifts that God has given for His kingdom. At the end we challenged ALL of our students to investigate within themselves what they were good at and ask themselves, "How can I use this for God?"

Well, anyone that knows anything about the town of Avon knows that it is known for it's marching band and drum line. They are the reigning Bands of America's champions and 7 time National Champions. There is no doubt that there are some very talented students at Avon High School.

I brought up the idea of putting together a Stomp Band to a few of the students on the drum line and they absolutely loved the idea. So two weeks later they put on their first performance and rocked the house. Today, they were asked to playin the Arts Festival at Arbuckle park and they were nothing short of amazing!

We could not be any more proud of them than we already are. If you want to check out all of the videos from today's performance (and maybe leave some words of encouragement), you can check them out here: YouTube

Battle of Schools Event - Pt. 1

Since the time I arrived in Avon, I have wanted to do something that would bring the students from all over Hendricks County together. So we decided to do an event called Battle of the Schools that is much like a HUGE pep rally where we will pit schools against one another in contests to win the ultimate prize: The Spirit Trophy. This will be an annual event for us and we are super excited about it.

As we began planning it, we realized that to make this event really work, it was going to take us meeting with the schools and gaining their "buy-in" to help promote it school wide. Any one who works in ministry knows that this is tough because schools have to be cautious about blending "church and state."

Today, God moved! We met with the "higher ups" at Avon High School and they have agreed to partner with us. They are going to promote this event school wide and encourage their students to go and represent their school! How awesome is that?

Passing the Baton

Last night, we held our annual Graduation Celebration in which we honor our graduating 8th graders and seniors.  Last year was real tough for me because I saw some students graduate that had been with me since I started at the church.  What was interesting about last night was that, even though I have only been at Crossroads for 6 months, I still found myself getting choked up a bit when it came time to say goodbye to my seniors.

Possibly the coolest thing we did all night was when we brought up a respresentative from the graduating senior class and a representative of the now senior class.  I talked briefly about the Apostle Paul and his "athletic-type" writings.  I wrapped up by using the illustration of track runners running a relay race.  Without being a track runner, even I know that the most important part of the relay is the hand-off.  If you don't get the hand-off right, how fast you run won't matter.  So our two seniors exchanged the baton and, in essence, passed off the responsibility of leadership.  It was a real emotional time for me and for some of the students.

Let the revolution begin!

The longer that I work in student ministry, the more I realize the HUGE importance that needs to be placed on relationships.  A very humbling revelation that I stumbled across in reading Jeanne Mayo's "Thriving Youth Groups" is that students will hardly ever commit to your student ministry because of the music, the sermon, etc.  9 times out of 10, students will commit to your student ministry (and more importantly to God) because of the relationships that are fostered within your student ministry.

Knowing this, I sat down with 30 of our core students and shared with them my heart and vision for our student ministry.  I shared with them how important it is that students (new and old) feel loved and accepted or they will not continue to attend our student ministry.  From there, I laid out a game plan with some key elements that we will begin implementing this weekend at our student ministry gathering.  Some of these essential key elements were:

• Greeters
  
• "Tour Guides"
  
• Row leaders
  
• A guest reception
  
• A strategic follow-up plan

While very basic, these elements can go a long way in helping new students feel like our student ministry is a warm and welcoming place.  

I can tell you that in my 10 years in student ministry, I have NEVER had students cheer in the middle of a meeting like they did as I unfolded the future.  On top of that, we ended the meeting by doing an old-fashioned group huddle and stacked our hands in the middle.  I loved the feeling because I knew that these 30 students were committed to this revolution.

So let the revolution begin!