This is a guest post by Ashley Engleford. If you’d like to submit a guest post for LISM, read this.

Being a youth leader is very time consuming. For many of us the more time and energy we give to the ministry, the more crazy our home life becomes. To be successful as a youth Leader and to keep from completely losing yourself, streamlining and organization go a long way. Below I have listed the top six steps you can take to keep from burning out, going crazy, or getting lost in the day to day tasks necessary of a youth leader.

The first tip is to become a list maker. We can’t rely on our fallible memory to remember every appointment, meeting, ballgame, and task. Now I am not talking about having post its on every inch of your desk. Purchase 3 notebooks or notepads and label each one with one of the following titles: Quick Notes, Appt’s/Meetings, and To-Do. If you think of another title then buy another notebook. You should always have a notepad and pen on you. Prioritize your to-do list and write a number beside each task. Stick to the order! Don’t do #5 first because you dread #2. Do first things first. Every morning and evening review your notebooks so it will be fresh in your mind. As you complete a task through out the day, mark it off.

The 2nd tip is Delegation. No one person can do everything. God has provided you with an amazing team of leaders who have a wide variety of interests and gifts that are to be used in your ministry. People do not volunteer in Youth Ministry to only be crowd control or to hand out snacks. They have ideas that need to be heard and potentially introduced into the ministry. Be willing to relinquish control and become a team. Ask what gifts they believe they have and together, decide how they can develop and deploy that gift(s) in the ministry. You will reach more students and the ministry will work much better.

The next tip goes right along with the previous tip. One of our responsibilities as a Youth Leader is to equip the next generation to serve God. Help your teens discover, develop, and deploy their spiritual gifts. Youth ministry should be the launching pad for the remainder of our kids lives.

Print and handout a spiritual gifts test from www.goingthedistance.org. The test is tailored to teens. Send it home with them and have them bring it back to the following service. Before moving forward, take them home with you and review them, making note of who would excel where. (If you have a large group, delegate this task to your youth leaders.) Find a way for every student to serve on a regular basis and be creative. If you have a large group, come up with a schedule where teens rotate serving, insuring that they each serve at least once a month. Reevaluate every few months, asking the teens what they like and don’t like about the position in which they have been serving and make changes as needed.

The fourth tip is to keep a file on each student. Each file should consist of all contact information, any permission slips, allergies, spiritual gifts, serving positions, problems, concerns, family life, and so forth. Every few months you and your youth leaders should do a little file housekeeping to make sure things stay in order. A student’s file can be invaluable.

Our fifth tip is to become a collector. A collector is someone who clips headlines and news stories, prints articles, visits the best tips and resources blogs/websites, writes down a clever illustration heard on the radio, and so forth. Develop a filing system and tuck the item away until you need it. If something fits into more than one category make the appropriate number of copies and put one in each file it fits under. When you use one of these items mark the date on the back so you don’t use the same item too close together.

Last but not least to set up a youth ministry email and cell phone/pager. Use the name of your ministry as your email address in some fashion so it is easily remembered. Check it every day, several times a day (morning, afternoon, and evening). Let teens know your “schedule” of checking the ministries email so they know how quickly to expect a reply. This is another task that can be delegated out, even having each person take a week at a time and rotate throughout the group.

Secondly, if finances (and your Sr. Pastor) allow, get a cell phone or pager (I know they are old school) teens can use for emergency situations or where talking is preferred. Allow your leaders to take turns as this is another hands on experience for them.

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Ashley Engleford is a youth leader, as well as a freelance speaker and writer. She lived the first 27 years of her life traveling down every sinful road possible, eventually hitting rock bottom as her addiction to pain pills took over. After accepting an invitation to services at a local church and attending for around 3 months, Ashley accepted Christ and He has dramatically changed her life since that fateful day. He has called her to share her journey to Christ with teens everywhere, encouraging them to follow Jesus.

I spent last weekend with 2,500 other youth workers at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. It’s really no secret that I’m a big fan of the conference and everything it stands for. They’re doing a lot of amazing things that no other conference is doing. For only being 4 years old, it is truly very impressive.

What’s good

Maybe the reason I think it’s so great is because Simply’s heart really vibes with mine. We’re both totally about conversations and relationships, hence the subtitle of this blog, “Conversations among those passionate for teenagers,” that fleshes out in the post comments, LIVE YM Talk, mentorships, MinistryQuestions.com, and more.

Most conferences are about the expert on stage sharing their wisdom with all the people in the crowd. While that certainly has it’s place, I look at the crowd and think, “There is infinitely more wisdom and experience in this crowd collectively than there is in the mind of just that one person on stage.” I want to find ways to harness all the crowd’s experience and pool it together so we can mutually learn from each other, not just follow the hierarchal “top down” kind of learning.

Simply wants to do the same thing. In fact, when they contract their speakers, they don’t contract them just for a speaking gig, they contract them to be available for ministry throughout the entire weekend. They want everyone to be accessible to each other for the duration of the conference. I love that!

The environment they create really lends itself to those connections and relationships with sack chairs laying all over the place for easy conversation. In fact, I wasn’t able to attend any seminars because, when I wasn’t speaking, I was watching my little daughter so my wife could attend seminars. But yet I left having learned just as much as I would’ve from seminars because I spent all that time meeting and talking with youth workers out in the hallways. In fact, Mark Riddle basically gave me a one-on-one personalized seminar for a couple hours himself. I took notes and everything! (Thanks, Mark!)

I also appreciate that I’m not inundated with marking, vendors, and organizations who are all making bids my limited budget dollars. Note to pushy venders out there, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you. I know how to use Google and the telephone.” Thankfully, at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference most of that noise is limited so I can focus on people. The marketing that is there doesn’t feel obtrusive at all.

What could use improvement

There really is a lot to like about the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, but there’s definitely room to improve, as well.

Conversations
The biggest improvement I’d like to see is that, while the conference is very conversational, especially compared to other conferences, it’s probably only 40% of the way to a truly relational conference. Seminars with circle tables and discussion questions are good, but listening to a speaker, turning to your table to talk through some pre-determined discussion questions for 5 minutes, and then turning back to the speaker isn’t very relational. When the seminar is over, the chances are pretty low that the people at the table will stay in touch or continue the discussion later. It’s more of a conference with conversation than it is a conference of conversation.

This is also reflective in the affinity groups, the conference’s small groups that gather once or twice a day to talk about issues surrounding an area of youth ministry. If everyone at the conference committed to an affinity group, the discussions would be amazing. But instead, I heard that only about 30% of the participants attend an affinity group and, based on my own observation, most of those people were not consistant in attending the group at the same time. Each time an affinity group met, there was a different group of people in it. The discussions were very engaging and I learned a lot from the people there, but did we build relationships and form a connection? Is that really happening? I’m not so sure.

The conference is going in the right direction with the connections, networking, and mutual edification, and it’s doing it better than any other conference out there, but it still has a lot of room for improvement.

Content
A couple quick thoughts here.

First, I feel like we’ve been saying the same thing in youth ministry for the past couple years [ POLL ]. Last year’s schedule and speaker lineup looked very similar to this year’s schedule. We’re hearing the updated versions of the same content that speakers and authors have been sharing for years. The seminars I attended back in the late 90s as a college student are still the same seminars being offered now. Fortunately, a lot of that information is very important and foundational for youth ministry, but still… I’m not saying there hasn’t been anything new, just overall, generally speaking, it feels like it’s a lot of revised and updated material of what I’ve basically been hearing for a long time.

Second, let’s be careful with the sr. pastor jokes. I understand that a lot of youth workers have horrible experiences with their pastors and many of the stereotypes are true, but let’s not reinforce the stereotypes. Instead, let’s respect the pastors who are probably doing their best to serve the Lord but have just as many personal and ministry issues as the rest of us.

Last, the Simply Youth Ministry Conference has something incredible on their hands. Several participants told me that they wonder how long the conference can continue to improve like this until it plateaus and starts to dip. I’ve thought the same thing. At their current pace, I’ll give them a couple more years before it starts to plateau. The only way to avoid this is if they continue to do what they’re doing now — always try new things, risk failure, continually reinvent themselves, and never come to a place where they feel like they’ve “arrived” or have the conference thing figured out.

As Seth Godin talks about so much, the Simply Youth Ministry Conference must continue to be remarkable. So far, they are and I’m looking forward to even more remarkable things from them in the future.

Keep up the good work Kami, Matty, Andy, Chris, Doug, Rick, Sherri and everyone else at Group/Simply Youth Ministry! Thanks for a great weekend of connections, learning, and personal growth.

Last month I shared that the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program is taking its conversations to the next level by partnering with the Simply Youth Ministry Conference to bring mentoring face-to-face instead of just over the phone. Past mentees have mentioned how valuable the mentoring has been for themselves personally and their ministries and asked if there could be a way they could actually meet their mentor and talk face-to-face. While this has indeed happened in the past, it can happen for everyone now at the Simply Conference.

If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and will be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference from February 26 to March 1, 2010, there are still some available slots! In fact, if you’re accepted into the mentorship program, than Doug Field’s pre-conference seminar, “Your First Two Years In Youth Ministry,” is FREE for you, complements of Simply Youth Ministry!

However, if you’d like to be considered for the mentorship but are not planning to be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, we are now accepting your applications, as well! If you’ve been in youth ministry as a volunteer, part-time, or full-time worker, you can now read more about the Youth Ministry Mentorship and apply here.

VIDEO: This video explains a bit more about the mentorship, including a story from one of the past mentees who has gone through the program.

Whether you’ll be at the Simply Conference or not, check out the Youth Ministry Mentoring site, look through the expectations, goals, and other parts of the mentorship and decide if this is for you or not. If you’re up for the 10-week journey with a personal youth ministry mentor, fill out the application and if you’re selected by a mentor, I will be in touch with you via email.

[ Youth Ministry Mentorship ]

Last Monday we talked about the need for theological questioning in youth ministry. Our featured guest was Jake Bouma, a youth pastor who even named his cat after a theologian!

The discussion we had was one that every youth worker needs to recognize and consider because the implications can run very deep for the teens in our ministries.

Some of the things we talked about:

• Why it’s important to help kids wrestle through their theological questions
• Common questions our youth group kids are asking
• How to help teenagers process through the questions
• The balance between spewing answers and encouraging the self-discovery process
• And a whole lot more…

You can listen to the whole conversation below or grab it in iTunes.

Play this episode

Subscribe to LIVE YM Conversations in iTunes

Next Monday’s discussion

February 8: Join us for LIVE YM Talk again this Monday! The “Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti” members discuss their upcoming missions work. We will have several guests, including Adam McLane, Jeremy Zach, Anne Jackson, Jeff Goins, and others. We’d love to have you join us! The live conversation starts at 2:00 PM eastern time! See our LIVE YM Talk page for details.

Join our next LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation!

Earlier this week Marko launched his Youth Ministry Coaching Program, a 1-year 360 coaching cohort, focused on whole-life development and youth ministry issues.

While some have compared it to the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program here at Life In Student Ministry, there really are some clear distinctions that allow the two programs to complement each other quite nicely.

I had the opportunity to talk with Marko about his program.

You can listen to us talk about the coaching and mentoring programs in iTunes, or use the link below to listen to it directly in your browser.

Play: Interview with Marko about his new YM Coaching Program

Last weekend I received this Facebook message from a girl I haven’t been in touch with for about a decade. For the sake of her privacy, I edited out some of the details and have permission to share it with you.

I share this to encourage you as you work with teenagers. Some of you feel like your investment into teens is worthless — you’re seeing absolutely no growth. Some of you are frustrated, tired, struggling, and wondering, “Is all this time, energy and emotion worth it?”

Not every teenager will come back and thank you. In fact, just like the 10 lepers, most won’t, but the ones who do will make it all worth it. You may never know the influence you have on a student just by being present in their life.

Be encouraged — it’s worth it!

Tim, you knew me 10 years ago by my maiden name. I’m not sure if you remember me. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being my friend! Most of all, thank you for striving to truly live your faith and not being ashamed to do so. You lived your life in a distinctly different manner from all my other friends, and it made an impression on me. Adolescence was a rough season of my life. There were a couple of people in my life during that time who were “Jesus with skin on,” and you were one of them. I’m sure you’ve continued to be a blessing to teens through your ministry and life. Now I’m a pastor’s wife (whoa!); my husband was ordained last year and we are blessed with two little boys, ages 2 years and 4 months. Anyhow, when I stumbled upon your website a few months ago while helping my husband look up info on youth groups, I realized how God had blessed me through you, and I wanted you to know.

Despite knowing otherwise in my head, the way I actually lead my church’s youth ministry is mostly from the mentality that our youth ministry is a program or service we provide to families. It’s almost like I’m unintentionally feeding the consumeristic perspective by sometimes using language like, “We offer small groups…” and, “We provide connection points for your teens…” Since when was ministry ever supposed to be about what a paid staff member and a couple adult volunteers are expected to spiritually provide for teens and families?

Youth ministry should not be about how the church can serve the youth or even how we can provide programs that help them grow spiritually. That’s the parents’ responsibility. In fact, I don’t think youth ministry should even accidentally enable parents to outsource their God-given responsibility to us, something I know my ministry is all too guilty of. Support parents, yes, but enable them to outsource? No.

The Greek word for “church” is literally “ekklesia,” a community of believers who are “called out” to serve and edify each other and the people around them.

Instead of fueling the consumerism mentality of what a church “offers” or “provides” and which church in town does it best, youth ministry should probably be about helping teens use their God-given gifts to serve the body. It should teach families that youth ministry isn’t just about what the church does for them, but that they are “called out” to think beyond themselves with a servant’s heart. I bet teen church drop-outs would decrease if they actually served as a valuable and essential part of the local body of Christ.

Youth ministry should be less about us doing youth ministry and more about youth doing ministry.

I said that two years ago, but it’s just now starting to really sink in for me. It demands a pretty radical shift, one that I’m not sure I have the vision nor the guts to really carry out yet.

Our programs program people to consume from the church, and I’m programmed to just run programs.

Please note, I’m not necessarily anti-program — I just think that too often we end up serving the programs instead of using them as very dispensable tools to equip teen believers to serve the body of Christ.

What do you think? Should youth ministry be more about providing a service or creating servants? What if focusing on the latter causes all those with the consumeristic mentality of the former to leave the group? Is it okay for your youth group to shrink numerically if it’s for the right reasons?

Almost two years ago I started doing some one-on-one youth ministry mentoring through this site and since then it’s grown into a full-blown team of mentors who have served over 100 brand new youth workers. We’ve taken a wholistic approach to mentoring by focusing on three main areas that all intertwine with each other: a mentee’s personal life, spiritual life, and ministry life. The response by new youth workers who have gone through the program has been extremely positive, so we’re glad we’re on the right track with this. We tend to do two 10-week one-on-one rounds each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and this year will be no different.

However, this spring round of mentoring will be especially unique because we have the tremendous opportunity to partner with the Simply Youth Ministry Conference and start it face-to-face with you. Most of the mentors will be at the conference, myself included, and are pumped to take mentoring to the next level with a couple one-on-one lunch conversations. It’s advice and wisdom for your youth ministry, your personal walk with Christ, and your personal life that starts face-to-face and continues to weekly telephone conversations from there!

If you’ve been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and will be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference from February 26 to March 1, 2010, then this youth ministry mentorship is for you! The video below explains a bit more about it, including a story from one of the past mentees who has gone through the program.

Traditionally the mentorship has been absolutely free, but because we want to start investing more into the mentors and into the program, the 10-week mentorship now costs $99 (books included). We realize that some youth workers who really need this mentoring can’t afford that, though, so there are some scholarship funds available.

If you have been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer and you’re planning to be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference next month, this is simply an opportunity I promise you cannot miss! Seriously. I don’t say that about many things. Check out the Youth Ministry Mentoring part of this site, look through the expectations, goals, and other parts of the mentorship and decide for yourself. If you’re up for the 10-week journey with a personal youth ministry mentor, fill out the application and if you’re selected by a mentor, I will be in touch with you via email to give you payment information and put you in touch with the mentor.

For those of you who want to be mentored but will not be at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, you may also fill out the application to be considered for the mentorship. The mentors who are unable to attend the conference will be considering your applications.

I’m so pumped about this partnership! Seriously people, you new youth workers out there cannot believe how blessed you will be by both the conference and this mentorship, especially when they’re combined together like this. Check it out!

[ Youth Ministry Mentorship ]

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Since I’m on a roll with the whole “technology in ministry thing” after this week’s post on how new technology develops into a ministry tool and how we used Google Wave at youth group, I figured I might as well continue the trend with a game we did at our jr. high youth meeting tonight using Google Voice.

It’s actually based on the game, Sound Effects, from TheSource4YM.com that calls for a blank tape and tape recorder for every team. You give them 15 minutes to record all the sound effects on a list and then come back together and have judges determine a winner for each effect category.

Since I don’t think I know anyone that still has a tape recorder, nor did I want to go out and buy recorders for each team, here’s what I did:

I split our jr. high large group into teams based on their existing small groups. They sat in a circle and placed one of their cell phones in the middle of the group. Then I had each team punch in my Google Voice phone number and call my voicemail, which was set with a pre-recorded message of me saying, “Hey guys, record your sound effect after the beep. Have fun!” (Set your Google Voice account to “Do Not Disturb” so all calls are sent straight to voicemail.) Teams then recorded their sound effects on my Google Voice voicemail, which allowed me to immediately and easily play back their recordings from my laptop (logged in to Google Voice) through our sound system almost as soon as they hung up. I simply identified teams by the phone number that left the voicemail and we played back each team’s effect for everyone to hear (and laugh at!).

Here’s a list of some of the sound effects I asked for:

• Herd of mooing cows
• Cat in a dog kennel
• TV Show theme song
• Lovesick Coyotes on a moonlit night
• Sing a Christmas carol
• Room full of babies
• Traffic

We had a high school student leader act as the judge who awarded points to the jr. high teams with the best sound effect for each category. The team with the most points won a bag of candy for their small group that night.

Two quick tips: Require that teams record sound effects that are shorter than 10 seconds but no longer than 15, especially if you have a lot of teams you have to listen to; and require that every person on the team must contribute to the sound effect.

Since Google Voice allows me to embed my voicemail messages into websites, here’s a couple of my favorite sound effects from tonight.

[ NOTE: If you're reading this in an RSS reader or email, you may have to visit the original post to hear the following recordings. ]

I know there’s a lot things we could add to this list, like needing everyone’s approval, neglecting the role of the Holy Spirit, pretending to act like someone you’re not, siding with teens against their parents, etc. But there’s one problem that often goes overlooked that will undeniably create very unhealthy relationships with students possibly worse than anything else, and that’s this:

Every adult youth leader needs healthy adult relationships, or their relationships with students will quickly become very unhealthy.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen this story play out too many times. An adult youth leader may not connect well with other adults for any number of reasons: their maturity level isn’t up to par; they felt rejected in high school and now try to find that security in youth group teens; they think being an adult is “uncool”; they look to teens for self-worth; and a host of many other reasons that are related to emotional baggage. The end result is they become a peer for students, not a leader. And students don’t need more peers.

Signs that a youth leader is lacking maturity and healthy adult relationships

• Whenever an issue arises in a student’s life, they rush to “save the day” and often make a bigger deal out of the situation than the student does.
• When there’s a disagreement between a student and another adult youth leader, the adult will side with the teen and even unintentionally pit the students against the other leaders, even in scenarios where no sides needed to be taken in the first place.
• The leader will confide in students about issues in their personal life that should only be shared with a spouse, a pastor, or a close Christian adult friend.
• Whenever the adult has free time, they spend most of it hanging out with the same group teens (as a peer group) and rarely with other adult friends.
• The leader will entertain gossip and complaints (sometimes even start it) with students about other youth leaders, the church, and even other authority figures, like parents and teachers.
• When a student confides in them, they promise to keep it a secret and never to share it with anyone else. The unintentional result is that some students, who need professional help, never get it. By the time you find out about it, it’s too late.
• The other extreme is when the leader goes out of their way to fish out “juicy” private information from students because it strokes their ego and feeds an insecure self-worth when they know a teen’s personal secrets.
• They are really involved with a friend-group/clique of teens and generally don’t reach out much to other students.
• Other adult leaders and parents, whom you know and trust, express concern to you about the leader (in a non-gossipy way) and their input aligns with your unspoken observations.
• When you try to express concern about any of this to the leader, they become defensive and make excuses, often causing them to separate from the team of adult leaders even more than they already were.

Because their maturity is lacking, they will unintentionally create division and will ultimately hinder the maturing process for students. Often their hearts are in the right place and they mean well, but they are blinded by their immaturity and fail to see the damage they’re actually causing.

So, how should you handle it? Every situation is unique, but here are some general principles.

How to address the situation

• First, it’s important that you spend a decent amount of time in prayer. It’s an obvious first step that too often goes overlooked.
• Talk with your sr. pastor (and other church leadership, if necessary) about the situation and get their input and advice. These conversations always work best with the godly advice and guidance.
• Sit down one-on-one with the leader and have an honest, open conversation. Do your best to speak the truth in love. Express your concern and pray they are receptive.
• If they humbly see truth in your observations, then work together to connect them with other maturing adults who will help them grow spiritually, relationally, and emotionally. Establish some sort of regular, on-going mentoring relationship, either from yourself or someone else.

If they make excuses, get defensive and refuse to listen to your concerns, then discuss the next steps with your sr. pastor. The process from here will be pretty sticky. Depending on the severity of their immaturity, there’s a good chance that the leader may need to be asked to step down from the youth leadership team. Sometimes they can be dismissed with the intention of restoration after certain expectations have been met, like establishing accountability, working through some personal issues, mentoring, and adult relationships. Other times they will have to be dismissed permanently. Either way, the confrontation is often the most helpful component because how they respond to confrontation will show their true character.

But be forewarned: dismissing this kind of a leader will be a very ugly process. The teens who love him/her will definitely look at you like you’re the bad guy. Even though you’re doing it for their benefit, you can’t tell them that because then you’d have to explain why you’re doing it, and you would never talk poorly about someone else just to make yourself look better (even though the other party may not play by the same rules). But you still have to do what’s in the best interest of the teens and the ministry whether they understand it or not. The Lord knows. Sometimes being a leader is like being a parent: you have to make the tough decisions for their own sake even if the kids don’t like it nor understand it.

Have you ever worked with a youth leader like this? How did you handle it? What advice do you have for others who are experiencing it? Comment below.

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