Owning It.

There are some recent buzz words, especially among Lutheran circles--"sharing your story," "telling your story," and the like.

I'm not a fan of buzz words or catch phrases that become their own insider lingo. But I do like the idea that these particular ones are trying to get across.

With "sharing your story," the idea seems to be that it is important for people to be able to tell about their lives, where God has shown up in their lives, how they see their lives connected to what Jesus is still doing in the world.

This is more than just "sharing" one's story, though. This is "owning it"--personally expressing how one's life has been drawn into the family of God, swept up by the Holy Spirit. Some evangelical circles used to (and still do) call it "giving your testimony." Lutheran and other circles for whom this is a new catchphrase are really just using different language to talk about the same thing that evangelicals have been doing for a long time.

What's Your Plan for Youth Ministry?

Doing youth ministry well requires time and planning. A youth minister can hang out with kids a lot. But it takes time and planning to go somewhere with the relationship. And it takes time and planning to turn "youth ministry" into ministry to youth and ministry with youth in a way that turns youth into agents of the gospel in the world and generates vibrant involvement from other in the church. Doing this in a way that keeps youth ministry from being nothing more than the thing the young gal or guy on church staff does takes time, planning, and vision.

The summer months are a great time to start this sort of thing as you look ahead to what you want to accomplish in the coming year.

Over at Churchleaders.com, they have a helpful little article that gives some steps to develop a strategic plan for youth ministry. I recommend it to you--youth leaders or just those invested in ministering to youth.

Here are the main points briefly:

1. Assemble a team. The more investment from those in the congregation, the better. 
2. Develop a specific purpose/vision. You may have an overall church vision/mission. What you do should fit into this. If the church mission/vision is too vague or needs work, then this might need to be another conversation. But even beyond this, you will want a specific vision and mission for what exactly you want to accomplish in the coming year. You can even have a mission/vision for smaller increments of time (a semester, Advent season, etc.)
3. Look at the landscape. You must always reassess the landscape, because it changes. What you did last year may well not work because this next year is different. You need to get a pulse on the youth and their families and listen--what's going on? What are the needs? What questions are they asking? Your plan for the year should fit on the landscape.
4. Develop a plan. How exactly will you get from point A to point B? What steps will you and your team take?
5. Set a date for review. Don't wait until the end of the year to do this. Set review times throughout the year to get a pulse on how things are going and to maybe tweak things as you go.

Go to their website to read the whole thing.

Happy planning!