Every Tuesday morning at 9:00 AM I meet with a couple other youth pastors from different churches in my community. There’s a lot to like about the group — the fun, the teasing, the transparency, the support, and neutral party to bounce ideas and struggles — but the thing I value most about the group is that we all share a Kingdom mindset approach to ministry. In fact, there was a point about a year ago when we tossed around the idea of eliminating each of our individual church’s youth ministries and linking arms to create a single, community-wide youth ministry with each of us serving as full-time staff together that are paid by our different churches in the area.

Here’s how the Kingdom mindset works itself out in our youth ministries together:

• Instead of each church doing their own individual training, together we pool resources and fly someone in once a year to do an all-day training for all our youth leaders combined.
• Sometimes I send my youth group kids to the other churches for their events. They sometimes do the same for our events. If someone else’s ministry is doing something solid, why not join it? In fact, this Thursday some kids from my youth group and myself are doing just that.
• Friendly competition between youth groups is always fun, like our up-coming multi-youth group dodgeball tournament.
• We support each other’s ministries by spreading the word about each other’s events and meetings. In January the other churches are sending all their parents to my church for a Real World Parents seminar and helping with childcare for the event.
• We hear each other’s struggles, offer support, encouragement, and pray for each other. It’s great to have a neutral place to talk about those kinds of things every week.
• We learn together by reading and discussing various books, like Youth Ministry 3.0 and 7 Practices of an Effective Ministry.
• We used to have combined monthly youth meetings, but after a couple years it started to dwindle and the vision for it faded, so we canned it last winter.
• We share resources with each other. One church has a bus that we have all borrowed; another church lets us use their way-cool sanctuary for sr. high small group baptisms; we even share extra food with each other’s ministries so it doesn’t go to waste.
• Some of the youth groups have been known to cancel their youth meeting and go crash someone else’s youth group meeting instead.
• There’s open communication about “problem teens” and families who flip-flop churches.
• Later this year some of the other youth pastors are coming to my sr. high youth group as special guest teachers.

It’s really all about Kingdom work, not church-kingdom work. It’s not about growing each of our individual ministries or competing to be the “best.” It’s about seeing teenager’s lives impacted for Christ regardless of whose church that happens in. The teamwork makes us so much more effective than any of us could be on our own.

P.S. Since I’m sure it will be a question in the comments, just thought I’d clarify that the churches who are actively involved in our youth worker network hold very similar theological beliefs. All of us are extremely comfortable sending students to each other’s ministries, partnering together for events and meetings, and even teaching for each other’s youth groups.

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Last week Simply Youth Ministry released only 400 units of the Spooky Awesome Bundle. It’s a $69 bundle with $280 worth of resources included, plus some free gifts. There’s only 50 left, so get the value while you still can.

Every year each ministry in our church writes an overview of the past year. A couple of us (including myself) also give an oral report at our annual meeting. Here’s a brief (believe it or not) excerpt from my written annual report about where the youth ministry has come this past year.

A Focused Vision

This year our philosophy of ministry was greatly simplified. No more mission statement, purpose statement, vision statements, core values, strategies, etc. It was confusing for most people and very difficult to communicate. It left the vision for the ministry’s forward spiritual movement very fuzzy and unfocused for students, adult leaders and even me!

Now all those statements are boiled down together. The purpose is the mission, which is also the vision, which is also our core values and strategy all wrapped up into one, easy-to-remember vision: “Deep and Wide Youth Ministry.” We want to take teenagers deep into the Word so they become spiritually passionate believers who take the gospel wide to the lost people around them.

Beginning to Implement the Vision

The implementation of Deep & Wide is starting to work itself out in a variety of ways.

• Sr. High C3 renamed to Impact: “We come to be spiritually impacted so we can go out there and make a spiritual impact.”
• At Impact, we’re going through 30 core questions of Christianity, essentially summarizing 30 key areas of systematic theology.
• C-Groups continued to be a place where high school students can build relationships with other believers in a small group setting and be challenged to go deep in the Word.
• All teenagers were trained to share their faith using Pray, Pursue, Persuade: pray for 5 unsaved friends, pursue a relationship with them where you bring God up in conversation, and lovingly persuade them into a relationship with Christ.
• All teenagers also were taken through the G.O.S.P.E.L. Journey, where we traced the Lord’s plan of salvation through the entire Bible.
• Jr. High went through an in-depth study of the entire New Testament in The Journey small groups. This year they will go through the entire Old Testament.
• The Belize missions trip was geared to take kids deep into the Word by spending an hour alone in the Lord every morning, teaching times, and through debriefing/reflection together on what God was doing through us. They were also challenged to go wide with the gospel as we shared our faith with adults, children and teenagers alike. Many came to faith in Christ as a result!
• M.U.U.U.C.E. served as a good kick-start for getting into the Word this school year and introducing new 7th graders to each other as they got ready to go through the New Testament together in The Journey.
• Wake ‘n Ski did not meet its “go wide” focus. It is being evaluated for next year.
• 30 Hour Famine was organized and let by high school student, Sara Wadi. She did an outstanding job of coordinating the event to raise funds for providing food, education, clothing, medical attention, and the gospel message to starving children in other countries. The money we raised literally “went wide.”
• Since our vision for Deep & Wide Youth Ministry was still taking shape, our winter ski trip to Big Sky in Montana did not really fall into it any specific way. That will obviously have to be evaluated if we do the ski trip again.
• M.O.V.E. 2008 was a great opportunity to serve the community of Minneapolis by cleaning a facility that provides furniture to individuals and families entering society (immigrants, ex-convicts, etc.). We also assembled a lot of donated furniture for them, as the hands and feet of Jesus.

As we launch into the upcoming year, we intend to make Deep & Wide much more pointed and integrated. The transition began last year and it will continue throughout next year, too, as we evaluate everything and seek the Lord’s direction for our ministry. Hopefully by 2010 Deep & Wide will be be the driving force behind everything that happens in the youth ministry. The life-change and growth we’ve experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg of how God wants to bless His work here.

Where the Vision is Going

Our goal is to become more Christlike, as scripture commands (Rom. 8:29; 12:2; etc.). This does not mean that we only strive to become more perfect with less sin, as many Christians think. It actually means that our heart for lost people must continually grow because, ultimately, that’s the very reason why Christ came to earth in the first place – out of a love and burden for lost people. To become more like Christ means that our hearts share His desire to see sinners come to faith in Him. This evangelism aspect of discipleship should be a part of the spiritual journey every believer takes. We want to see teenagers become more Christlike, in both spiritual maturity (Luke 2:52) and in a heart for lost people (Matthew 28:18).

We believe that evangelism and discipleship are not intended to be separate. Traditionally, small groups and Bible studies are seen as discipleship opportunities and evangelism is usually reduced to a special event or a project where students outsource the gospel message to someone on a stage. Matthew 28 says to “Go and make disciples.” Evangelism is a vital part of discipleship and personal spiritual growth.

• This next year I will intentionally to share the gospel clearly at every youth meeting so our kids hear it, know it and share it. And also for any unbelievers who might be present because nothing else we talk about in youth group means a thing if someone present doesn’t know Christ.
• This next year I will take teenagers deep into the Word by teaching theology and pushing them to be obedient to the application of the Word to their lives as they go wide with the gospel message. That means internalizing these principles myself first and modeling it for them.

Here in Alexandria, Minnesota, I’m part of a network of community youth workers called Allies. Together we planned to pool all our resources and bring all of our adult youth leaders together for a time of intense youth ministry training that none of us could otherwise do on our own. But then we figured if we’re going to put all the time into planning the event anyway, we might as well open it up to any other youth ministry organization that would like to join us. We know there are a lot of churches here in Minnesota and the surrounding states with youth groups that are led strictly by volunteers who have never received any training, nor do they have the time or financial resources for training like the NYWC or the NYMC. That’s why Allies decided to fund the entire training conference ourself and make it available for only $10 a person! If you’re in the area, we’d love to have you!

Jeremy Hughey from Dare 2 Share Ministries will be our featured speaker as he helps us understand how to feed teenagers who have no spiritual appetite. Other local youth workers, including myself, will teach workshop sessions:

• Moving students from spiritual apathy to spiritual passion.
• Dealing with the difficult and disruptive student.
• Answering the tough questions.
• Youth ministry for the right reasons.
• How to lead a small group.
• Using music in ministry.

Plus, there will be breakout discussion sessions to process the information with other youth workers and a panel of Christian counselors to publicly answer your questions on teen issues like depression, cutting, abuse, and more. Oh, and lunch is provided!

The Allies Conference is on Saturday, August 23, 2008, at my church from about 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. For more information and to register, visit our website at AlliesForYouth.com. If you can’t make it, but know of someone else in our area who could benefit from this training, please pass the information along to them. Thanks!