Taking the Long View
Epilogue
Seizing the Unfair Advantage
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
Paulo Coelho
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
I often think my most valuable credential is my vast repertoire of stupid mistakes through the years, mistakes that can’t help but teach their perpetrator something the hard way.
Brian McLaren
I learned about unfair advantages during Adam’s senior year, at his regional cross-country meet.
The regional meet is the one that determines which runners qualify for state. For a high-school senior, this is undoubtedly the most important meet of his or her high-school career. Run well, you run again with even higher stakes the next week. Run poorly, and your cross-country career is over.
As always, the team’s mood just before the race was intense—not a lot of talking or joking, clearly a team with its game face on. The mood was so pervasive, it even subdued us fans. But once the race began, all our reserve flew out the window. We screamed and shouted encouragement to any one of our runners within earshot, running back and forth across the course, strategically placing ourselves so we could cheer our boy and his team five or six times before they crossed the finish line.
Adam’s team did well, winning the regional meet, as I recall. We pushed our way through the crowd of runners to meet up with Adam at the end of the race, handed him a Gatorade and hugged our stinky, sweaty runner. For the next twenty or thirty minutes, we celebrated him and his team. As we wandered the course with him, he introduced us to friends from other schools, one of whom gave me a picture of youth ministry I’ll never forget.
After Adam introduced us to an attractive young woman, a senior he’d met at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp, he asked her, “So how did you do?” She smiled, raised her eyebrows and said, “Well, my time qualified me for state.”
Adam responded immediately, “That’s incredible! Congratulations!” But while the words were still in his mouth, she completed her sentence:
“But . . . I was disqualified.”
We were dumbfounded. How in the world, we asked, was she disqualified?
She explained that in the last few hundred yards of the race, one of her teammates, an enthusiastic young man, was cheering her on from the sidelines, running alongside her and screaming words of encouragement as she pushed her way up the final hill to the finish line.
Adam and I responded in unison, “So?”
“It turns out,” she said, “that having a pacer running alongside you gives you an unfair advantage. They had to disqualify me.”
The referees were right. It’s true in running, and it’s true in youth ministry. Having a pace runner gives an undeniable advantage. So, if you’re finishing this book and asking, “Now what?” one of the first steps is to seize the unfair advantage of finding a youth ministry pacer.
Whether you’re a senior pastor, a youth pastor or a volunteer stakeholder in your church’s youth ministry, your church will periodically need pacers who can play at least three roles for you: referee, coach and commissioner.
Sometimes a church can find pacers close at hand, either inside or outside the church. At other times, particularly when a youth ministry is at a critical juncture, the church may choose to “outsource” these responsibilities to those with expertise in playing these roles. A church’s first step is to recognize that these three roles will, at times, be absolutely necessary for sustaining a thriving youth ministry.
The Referee (for the System)
Everyone at St. Paul’s Church was well intentioned. The pastor talked to the associate pastor who talked to the youth director who talked to the interns. Everyone talked to the volunteers, who were left confused by the mixed messages they received. Every now and then the pastor would parachute in, rifle off advice from his own experience in youth ministry (twenty years prior), scowl a bit and retreat to the relative safety of an elders meeting.
Everyone in this system wanted to do the right thing. But they were mired in anxiousness, with competing visions and patterns of management that were counterproductive at best. We knew we had to get all the players around the same table. But revising the organizational chart for the ministry and having a meeting or two would simply not be enough.
This ministry needed someone who could bring the group back together when (not if) someone on the team was “playing” in a way contrary to the agreed-upon strategic plan. Having a referee didn’t mean that the rules couldn’t change. It simply meant that a change in direction was agreed on and communicated with clarity to the entire team.
Over a period of months, clarity slowly began to emerge. Confusion and mixed messages disappeared almost entirely, and the team began to reengage together in a clear, strategic work to which they had all been called.
Every now and then, Youth Ministry Architects invites a “systems referee” into our organization to raise questions and diagnose our weak spots. I remember one of those meetings with painful clarity. Our referee asked us seemingly simple questions about our organization, questions like “What is it that you do?” For an hour, he pummeled our team with enough questions to narrow our focus from a vague blur to a laser-point focus on what we were called to do together.
First, it is reasonable to expect the insiders of any bureaucratic system will defend that institution and its past actions. Second, it is unreasonable to expect those same insiders to be able and willing to conduct a comprehensive and critical analysis of any systems failure in the institution. Third, it is rarely possible to “fix the current system” without challenging and changing the institutional culture.
LYLE SCHALLER
Because he was positioned outside the system, he could see things and raise questions that were simply outside the imagination of those of us doing the work.
With all-too-common shortsightedness, most churches want their youth ministries to grow, but few have a system in place to ensure that, as their ministry grows, its foundation expands to hold the additional weight. Making sure this essential expansion happens in the appropriate sequence is part of the work of a systems referee.
The Coach (for the Youth Staff)
In the first months of ministry, it’s far too easy for a new youth worker to breathe in the numbing gas of congratulations (“You are the Pied Piper!”) and the quiet whispers of validation (“You’re so much better than that last person who was here”). Unaware of how often these effusive affirmations are coming from people who desperately want to believe they’ve hired the right person, the inexperienced youth worker settles into an easy complacency, as if he or she has little left to learn.
But it’s at this point that the new youth worker is most in danger—in danger of creating a ministry in which he or she is the center, in danger of building on a foundation of sand, in danger of settling into a lone-ranger mentality that’s almost the opposite of what’s needed for sustainability.
In one of the classic I Love Lucy episodes, Ricky finds Lucy on all fours in the living room, obviously searching for something. When he asks what she’s doing, she explains that she’s looking for her lost earrings.
He asks, “You lost your earrings in the living room?”
“No, I lost them in the bedroom—but the light is so much better out here.”
It’s natural for youth workers to look for solutions in the easy spots, the spots where “the light is so much better.” But if youth workers are going to leverage their efforts to move their youth ministry forward, they’ll need the encouragement and accountability to look for answers in places that may, at times, be outside their own comfort zones.
In an average month, I’ll spend a few hours picking the brains of experts—experts in ministry, in business, in leadership, in parenting, in marriage, even those I perceive as “experts” at following Christ. For me, the words of Woodrow Wilson make sense: “I not only use all the brains I have, but all the brains I can borrow.”
Without a coach, a youth ministry is reduced to the size of the leader’s comfort zone. We all need people who are honest enough to help us move from making excuses to making progress.
This is not to say that many youth directors don’t produce immediate results. But too many “thriving” youth groups keep growing faster and faster until they self-destruct of their own momentum. With everyone infatuated with immediate growth, it’s easy to ignore the need to lay a sustainable foundation—until the exhausted youth worker spins out of control and resigns.
A Commissioner (for the Transitions)
Most churches need—and need desperately—the one thing they don’t think they can afford: someone with years of experience, someone who isn’t going anywhere, someone who can provide continuity through the inevitable chaos of youth leaders and volunteers coming and going, someone who can come alongside the church to help hold the wheel through the turbulent waters of transition, someone old enough and connected enough to provide the weight to keep the ship righted when winds are wild and the waves are high.
I’m not talking about a permanent superstar youth director (that mythical kind that never dies and never ages). I’m talking about a permanent relationship with a commissioner, an ongoing connection with an organization that understands both the church and the “sustainability game” in youth ministry, who can assist with an annual audit to ensure that all the foundational systems are in place and well maintained. Some churches may find this kind of support in their denominational office, while others may choose to contact an independent consulting group. (For options related to finding a commissioner organization, visit www.ymarchitects.com.)
Just Ask Wain
Wain was under fire when I first got his call. His youth leaders were rebelling, reacting, doing anything but following his lead. Anxiousness, perhaps the most contagious of all ecclesial diseases, had drawn Wain into reacting to the negativity and defensiveness around him. And it wasn’t working.
In many ways, the criticism leveled at Wain was far from fair. When he invited Youth Ministry Architects into the process, though, we determined together to focus less on the content of the criticism and more on doing the kinds of things we’ve outlined in the last thirteen chapters.
Wain was a quick learner, taking initiative and following through consistently on the recommendations he received. And slowly, over the next year and a half, the youth ministry made the shift. As it moved to more solid footing, Wain did as well, moving from anxiousness and defensiveness (“It’s not in my job description”) to being a catalytic leader (“Let’s figure it out together!”).
No longer a victim of unrealistic expectations, Wain soon found the margin to take on increasing responsibility in his church, often becoming the go-to guy on staff when a new initiative was being launched. No longer crushed by the pyramid of expectations on top of him, he was now on top of that pyramid—leading his teams, managing the infrastructure, bringing new and creative programs to the table. As he began hitting the benchmarks agreed on by the church leadership, the unfair criticism and submarine attacks dropped almost completely out of sight.
What is your only hope in life and death?
That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
HEIDELBERG CATECHISM, QUESTION 1
If you ask Wain’s wife, she’ll tell you that the shift in her husband’s ministry had a collateral effect on the climate of their home. Wain’s family time became more predictable, providing enough margin to yield a relaxed response from his bride when a ministerial emergency or unexpected late-night meeting came up.
Though some see asking for support as a sign of weakness, our experience has been that the exact opposite is true. Those bold enough to ask for support early enough in the process dramatically increase their chances of persevering through the demands of long-term youth ministry. Sustained youth ministers almost always produce sustainable youth ministries (and vice versa).
Taking the Long View
Sue Monk Kidd’s words about the transformation of the heart are equally true about the transformation of an organization: “New life comes slowly, awkwardly, on wobbly wings.” I’ve watched it happen in our own ministry, where I’ve been a poster child for Winston Churchill’s curious definition of success: “One failure after another . . . with enthusiasm!”
Whether you’re starting from scratch, renovating an established youth ministry or hoping to breathe new life into a place that has been stuck for years, remember as you begin that “everything can look like a failure in the middle.” And whether you’re a “lifer” who plans to work with teenagers until your dying breath or someone who plans to provide support from a distance, I invite you to join in the chorus calling the church back to investing in a generation of young disciples who can transform their homes, their schools, their churches, their workplaces and their world for Christ.
Youth ministry is a high and holy calling. But we must never be confused: youth ministry is not the hope of the world. The next generation of disciples is not the hope of the world. Our faith tells us clearly that Jesus Christ alone is the hope of the world.
Sustainable youth ministries seek to steward the true Treasure in faithful jars of clay, knowing full well that these vessels of structure and strategy, of leadership and leverage, are only temporary, though necessary, means of bearing the gospel to the next generation.
Carry on.