Ten years ago I spent nine days with a group of students serving at an orphanage in Venezuela and I held an orphan in my arms for the first time. I had read about these types of orphanages, I’d spoken to people who’d been there, I’d researched the country of Venezuela, but none of these things ignited any kind of passion in my heart. Holding that child in my hands that day, however, was a moment I was changed forever. It was the beginning of 10 years of serving with students at orphanages all over the world.

The fastest way to a person’s heart is through their hands.

It’s not that teaching, small groups, and Bible studies aren’t effective, but it’s serving that ignites a passion in the hearts of people. It’s what moves faith from the pages of scripture and makes it real. This is why it’s so vital that we do our best to give students an incredible experience serving in our church community, local community and global community. If we don’t, they’re missing a vital piece in their spiritual growth that moves truth from head to heart.

When students serve like Jesus on the outside, they become more like Him on the inside.

By not providing opportunities for students to engage in serving within our churches regularly, we potentially rob them of the most life changing opportunity we have as followers of Jesus, being a part of God’s story. When students move from observers to participants in ministry, they begin to own their faith; from head to heart.

Instilling a heart for serving, and equipping students to make a difference means we’re passing the baton to the next generation. We’re giving God the opportunity to change hearts that want something from the kingdom to hearts that want something for it. That means an impact that ripples long into the future. CEOs, nurses, plumbers, pastors, lawyers that have a heart to change the world with the love of Jesus, that’s the big picture.

So, we’d love to hear, what ways do you plug your students into ministry opportunities? Where have you seen life change as a result?

I’ve likely never met the families in your ministry, but here’s what I know, they feel that life is complicated. On top of that, they feel their lives are bombarded with information. I’ve likely never met the staff at your church, but here’s what I know, they feel church life is complicated and overloaded with information to communicate.

So what does that say to us as leaders and communicators? Is our role to contribute more emails and handouts, add more points to our message, vision cast for more programs? Or is our job to be simplifiers? Not to make God’s truth about our lives and our church community simplistic, but simple.

Simplistic is watered down and condescending, like the high school teacher who spoke to you like you were in kindergarten. Simple is profound and cuts through the complication, like walking your daughter down the aisle, having coffee with a best friend, or hearing your child pray for the first time. Communicating God’s truth and His vision for your church in a simplified way is like a light, a compass, a map in a forest of complication and information.

How do you communicate in a way that’s simple without being simplistic?

1. Hard work. Anyone who’s given or seen a complex, boring sermon knows being simple is hard work, being complicated is much easier. Saying five things is always easier than saying one thing well.

2. Why before what. Know why you’re saying what you’re saying. Is this application of scripture, or this direction in your ministry relevant to where people are at in their lives?

3. Clarity is key. Remember that how you say what you say is as important as what you say. Is what you’re saying focused, clear, and memorable with an unmistakable ask for action?

4. Rinse and repeat. Leverage every opportunity possible to repeat the concept. Rarely do people remember a concept or truth after hearing it the first time. Keep repeating it until you hear people saying it back to you.

What helps you to keep your communication simple, but not simplistic? What questions do you ask yourself to help you stay focused in your messaging?

“Are we here for a good time or a long time?” In one form or another, that’s what every person who walks into your meetings is asking internally, especially volunteers. Really the question has nothing to do with the actual length of the meeting, but with an expectation of quality.

Aside from the average creative boards, agendas, and delegation lists, what are ways that you can improve the quality of your meetings?

Memorable Progress = Fresh Creativity

So often looking back at meetings there’s a feeling that we made progress, but in an average way. Eventually this leads to a stale culture of average ideas. Average Progress = Average Creativity.

Memorable progress is one way to change the status quo. This year we’ve incorporated memorable discussion with a “track pant” themed meeting, new meeting locations, drawing on lego, sharing stories of real life change, and playing what I call “great idea but what if…?”. We’re trying to make progress in a memorable way because that keeps us fresh. Memorable Progress = Fresh Creativity.

Social Media = Progress

My old style of leading a meeting meant shutting down technology. At the end of these meetings everyone left with a giant “to-do-list” with instructions to report back. Now, if there’s a meeting where we’re really hammering something out, I want all channels of communication open and available. This has really allowed us to go further faster in our meetings. With all the social media tools available, everyone we need to talk to for a short portion of the meeting is right at our fingertips. This means much less reporting back on conversations and more live decisions at the table.

Working “on it” more than “in it” = Inspiration

When a team gets into a place where we spend more time working “in” the details of ministry versus working “on” the vision of the ministry in our meetings, I know our system is broken. Long-term, people are inspired by working “on it” and people will dread my meetings if we don’t get there. Where is our system leaking needless details into our meetings? Are we organized far enough in advance? Are we delegating well?

What about you? Do people know that they’re in for a good time, not a long time when they walk into your meetings? What have you been doing to improve the quality of your meetings?

As leaders we’re always looking at how we can be more efficient, more creative, more strategic, more effective, more organized…the list goes on and on. I’ve been in ministry for a while now, and this Fall I asked myself a hard question: as a leader, what if I’m as good as I’m ever going to be? What if I’ve hit my leadership lid?

Any leader can work on improving their leadership, but after years in ministry how much can anyone really grow significantly in their leadership skills? Isn’t there a ceiling on how efficient I can get? After all there are only 24hrs in a day, and I can only be so organized before I’m just a full time self-organizer. How much more creative can I be, if I’m wired the way God wired me and I’ve got the brain I was born with? At some point, I have to decide on a strategy for my ministry. I can’t change it after every conference just to make myself feel like I’m changing something. When it comes to the skills of leadership, generally, all of these things have limits.

This got me asking, “When it comes to leadership, what doesn’t have limits?” The phrase of a former mentor came to mind: There’s no ceiling on passion, and no bottom to humility. At the end of the day, the greatest leaders are the most passionate and the most humble, and there’s no limit on those things. When it comes to passion and humility, I can grow as far as God wants to take me. God is clear in Scripture that the heart of the leader is what matters most. God says it’s our heart that is the wellspring of our lives.

We all know people who are no longer in ministry who lost their passion, who were taken by pride, or just maxed out their growth in the hard skills of leadership.

What if I planned to develop my passion and my humility, instead of my organization and my efficiency? What if this year I was more passionate about my ministry than any year before? What if I felt convictions more deeply, cared for people with more love, and grew a servant heart that burst out of my chest? When it comes to developing passion and humility, there are no limits to what God might do.

There are 2 other ways that I’m challenged by this idea to “write a better story” besides as a dad. (uploaded to flickr by geishaboy500)

Over the past year I’ve heard Reggie Joiner speak a few times about the importance of “writing a better story”–a concept Donald Miller shares in “Blue Like Jazz”. This whole idea has really stuck with me, and the more I think about it, the more I’m challenged by its implications.

You’ve likely heard the statistics around the number of students walking away from their faith both during and after high school. More is being written everyday on the subject. The more I reflect on what I see in the lives of students, the more I’m convinced the issue often boils down to one major thing: Most of the adults students know who have chosen to follow Jesus live boring lives, so why would they feel compelled to do the same? The story of the lives of the average Christ follower they see are predictable, safe, and overall, boring.

This challenges me in 3 ways. I’ll share the first way today.

1) As a dad

When I look at my life, does it tell a story of an exciting journey with Christ that is so compelling that my sons couldn’t think of doing anything else with their lives? Is there adventure, risk, deep relationship, and real evidence of God at work?

Have you read or heard anything about this concept of “writing a better story” for the generation watching what we do even more than listening to what we say? What books, articles or thoughts around this idea have stuck with you? Check back Friday for more on how this plays out as a leader. (flickr photo by jm3)

For many leaders moving to an Orange approach means navigating change. Talking to Family Ministry leaders, I think that there are some simple, practical changes you can make that get you further faster in shifting to ORANGE. Over the summer, here are three practical steps you could take to catalyze a shift to a more Orange strategy in your family ministry by the Fall.

1. Combine Your Financial Resources

What does your budget say about the priority of an Orange strategy in your church? What would it do for the alignment of your ministry if your volunteer appreciation budget was shared across Family Ministry? What would it do for your working relationship with your Children’s Ministry Director and your passion for children’s ministry if you decided to share your student ministry video budget, event budget, or intern budget? What signal would it send to your lead pastor or your parents if you decided to propose an Orange approach with an Orange budget behind it? Nothing gets people sitting at the same table faster than money.

2. Synchronize your vocabulary

We often think of our family ministries as multiple departments or separate ministries, but parents experience these as a family. The use of common vocabulary for the common experiences across your family ministry helps parents understand the strategy. In what areas of your family ministry can you synchronize your vocabulary? Does your lack of synchronized vocabulary reflect a lack of sitting around the same table, working together?

3. Clarify the Win with Parents

This one sounds easy at first, but it takes some real soul searching. As a family ministry, if you had one thing you could say to parents what would it be? From toddlers to students, what is the win for parents? How are you doing on communicating that win to families?

Do you have other things you’ve done to shift to a more Orange approach that you want to share with other leaders?

If you’re a student ministry leader, you’ll want to check out a special networking night at the Orange Conference this year.

As we continue to work at partnering with parents in student ministry, we’ve made them 3 promises:

1) We won’t ask you to listen unless we have something to say
We recognize our parents are busy people. If it’s straight information, we try to keep it to paper and email, and we keep it short. We only send an update when we feel we have something that would be important for parents to know. If it’s strategy, or vision casting, we ask our parents to get in a room only for as long as it takes to communicate—even 20 minutes after a service. We’re learning that if parents see we won’t waste their time, they’re more likely to listen.

2) We will be organized
Stereotypically student ministry leaders are not organized. There are lots of different reasons why our ministries tend to struggle to be organized, but we need to overcome them. If parents are willing to trust us with their son or daughter’s heart in a small group setting, or let us transport their “precious cargo” on retreats and trips, we need to prove that we are “on the ball”. The #1 way to do this is to have a track record of being organized. To a certain degree, organization builds trust.

3) We will do our best to provide your student with:

- An adult leader invested in the life of your child saying the same thing a good parent would say
- A group of spiritually challenging peers running in the same direction

Small groups are at the heart of our church from ages 0-99, so we do our best to provide a safe, consistent small group experience for every student who wants one.

What are some of the promises you’ve made to the parents of your students? How have those promises helped your ministry?

When it comes to parenting teenagers, I think “awkward” is one of the best descriptors. In fact, I think many parents give up on trying to engage spiritually with their teenager because of this exact feeling—it just feels weird. As parents, it can feel weird to pray with their teenager, unnatural to ask them what they think God thinks, awkward to tell them how they see God working in them and how proud they are.

When it comes to partnering with parents, I think a big part of our job in student ministry is to give parents the courage to do the awkward things.

Somewhere between grade 6 and grade 9, as students begin to process a personal faith, parents move from CEOs to advisors, from directors to influencers, and initiating spiritual interaction or experiences doesn’t feel right—it feels “weird”. However, I feel it’s the stage when their child needs them to open up spiritually more than ever. I’ve rarely heard an adult say, “I wish my parent never prayed with me as a teenager” or “I hated it when my dad told me how he saw God working in me” or “It really turned me off when my mom was authentic and transparent about her faith journey”.

I think that awkward moments are often the most spiritual moments of all.

A few days ago I gathered a bunch of students and their parents for a final night prior to a student compassion trip. I asked the students to sit with their parents and share a visual exercise we’d done that explained their fears about the trip, and their hopes and dreams of what God might do in their life. The students thought it might be awkward, but did it. Then I asked the parents to say whatever they wanted to say to their teenager and then pray for them. For some it was the first time they’d prayed with their teenager in years, for others the first time in months they’d sat eye to eye and encouraged their teenager’s spiritual steps—awkward. The result, parents blessed their children and prayed for them through tears of joy, students prayed for their parents—many for the first time. What was awkward became a powerful moment. God was up to something, and there was nothing awkward about that.

What are some ideas you might have of how to help parents engage in the “awkward” spiritual experiences with their child? When do you think this spiritually awkward stage begins and how can we prepare parents and students for it?

When it comes to partnering with parents, as student ministries there are a number of ways we can end up wasting our time. We can waste our time in
1. how we communicate and
2. what we say to our parents.

One of the things we’re learning is that information often gets tuned out, but strategy gets tuned in.

When it comes to their kids, parents are constantly bombarded with information. School newsletters, basketball team schedules, band trip instructions, report cards, permission forms etc. The mountain of information is overwhelming. There is nothing compelling or inspiring about the information parents get and so generally, overwhelmed parents tend to tune out as much of the information as they can unless they have to pay attention.

So why in an attempt to partner with parents, do student ministries waste time by just adding to the mountain of information parents receive? More and more I’m talking to student ministry leaders who, in addition to a schedule, have created series outlines, podcasts, videos, and discussion questions on the current series,  a newsletter, or a daily updated blog. The frustration we feel: the vast majority of parents never access this information. What we’re realizing is that this information often is not utilized and, quite frankly, just gets tuned out (no matter how cool my new series is!).

Strategy, however, tends to get tuned in.

• Talk to a parent about who their child could “be” and how you want to get them there and they’ll listen.
• Talk to a parent about how your church is dreaming about ways that parents can make a difference in the life of their child in easy ways and they will want to know more.

Too much information often discourages today’s parent because it is all about what they should know that they don’t, and what their child should be doing that they aren’t. Chances are they already feel like a bad parent. Now they feel worse. No matter what information you shared, it’s the feelings that stick.

• Strategy, however, encourages people to dream about who their child could be and how they could get there with your help.
• Strategy is about a plan and a vision for their family.
• Strategy is about what we’re doing together and a clear plan to get us there.

Once the strategy is made clear and repeated often, the information becomes much more compelling. Do you relate to anything said here? What ideas do you have around communicating a compelling strategy? Are you resonating with parents or getting tuned out?