Appendix A: Discussion Questions
Notes
Introduction: A Roll of the Dice
“a senior pastor who understands and loves teenagers”: Rick Lawrence, “The Cool Church,” Group Magazine, May 6, 2001, p. 37.
Chapter 1: Cracking the Code
“the size of a congregation’s youth group is the greatest predictor”: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p. 268.
“Youth go where the numbers are”: Jim Burns and Mike DeVries, The Youth Builder: Today’s Resource for Relational Youth Ministry (Ventura, Calif.: Gospel Light, 2001), chap. 1.
But when probed further about what was meant: John Maxwell, Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping-Stones for Success (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), p. 155.
Chapter 2: The Easy Button
most crippling myths about youth ministry: I first introduced the concept of the Easy Button in youth ministry in Mark DeVries, “The Easy Button,” Group Magazine, May-June 2006, p. 42.
“More than half of adolescents who attend church”: Kenda Creasy Dean, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 147.
In one longitudinal study, 48 percent of adults: Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson and Donald A. Luidens, Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Baby Boomers (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), p. 68.
“More than seven out of ten teens are engaged in some church-related”: Barna Research Group, Third Millennium Teens, quoted in Ben Burns, “Helping Seniors Finish Strong,” Network Magazine, March 2003, p. 3.
“In a typical week, just three out of 10 twentysomethings”: Kristen Campbell, “Youth Aren’t Finding What They Need in Church,” Jackson (Tennessee) Sun, December 27, 2003, p. 2C.
From high school graduation to age 25: “Barna, 2003,” quoted in Student Life Bible study advertisement, Group Magazine, July-August 2006.
“We’re debating about whether to have carpet”: Louie Giglio, general session #6 address, National Youth Workers Convention, Nashville, November 17-21, 2005.
at around 10 percent of the worshiping congregation: Len Kageler affirms this ratio in his How to Expand Your Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 14.
Chapter 3: Hoping, Wishing and Praying
“We delegate youth ministry to folks who are”: Ted Smith, plenary session, Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry, January 7-10, 2007.
the CEO was not a superstar savior: Jim Collins, Good to Great (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001).
“Of the various ministry positions, youth ministers”: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 34-35.
Chapter 5: Building Right
By allowing multiple groups to work on drafting: Patrick Lencioni, The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), p. 127.
More important than education, family background, intelligence: From Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City, quoted in Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007), p. 25.
“a sort of Christian ‘club’ that [exhausts] itself”: Robert Lewis, The Church of Irresistible Influence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 29.
“what got them big in the first place”: Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: HarperBusiness Essentials, 2004), p. 200, emphasis mine.
The National Science Foundation discovered: Doug Fields, Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry (El Cajon, Calif.: Youth Specialties, 2002), p. 227.
Chapter 6: Changing Culture
The laughing groups were consistently better at solving: Retold in Thom and Joani Schultz, The Dirt on Learning (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 1999), pp. 166-67.
Children—and churches—tend to live into the words: Jeanne Mayo, Thriving Youth Groups: Secrets for Growing Your Ministry (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2005), p. 78.
Chapter 7: Searching Right
The average youth minister serves: “The 18-Month Myth is now part of youth ministry lore. It’s been used over and over to describe youth ministers as easily scared gypsies who bolt at the first sign of trouble. And it’s all a bunch of bunk. We . . . asked our research staff to complete a scientific survey of North American churches using a representative sampling of denominations. We discovered that the average paid youth minister has been at the same church for almost four years (3.9 years, to be exact)” (Rick Lawrence, “3 Dirty, Rotten Youth Ministry Lies,” Group Magazine, September-October 2006, p. 77).
“I’ve heard too many horror stories”: Doug Fields, Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry (El Cajon, Calif.: Youth Specialties, 2002), p. 257.
“Get the right person in the right job”: Tom Paterson, Living the Life You Were Meant to Live (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 205.
By some estimates, a bad church hire: Mike Woodruff, Managing Youth Ministry Chaos (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2000), p. 43.
The research he shared shows: From a conversation with Dean Trulear in Seattle in January 2005.
He goes on to give a surprising description: Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (New York: HarperBusiness, 1995), p. 181.
When Doug Fields asked parents in his church: Fields, First Two Years, p. 261.
A decade or so ago, the average full-time youth worker’s: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p. 73.
Figure 6: Posted at http://www.payscale.com/ research/ US/ Job=Youth Pastor/ Salary/ by_Years_Experience. Accessed September 5, 2008.
In addition to salary, a church will want to consider: Strommen, Jones and Rahn, Youth Ministry, p. 74, offers 1999 statistics on how common such benefits are for youth workers.
Chapter 8: Aligning the Heart
“The overall health of any church or ministry”: Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p. 1.
On one list of concerns of professional youth ministers: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 20-21.
“The ‘dream’ is rarely realized”: Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (New York: HarperBusiness, 1995), p. 263.
She suggests that our wounds have a way: Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 155.
Center for Youth Ministry Training: Visit their website at www.cymt.org.
The research also discovered that “high aptitude in arts”: Erwin McManus, An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2001), pp. 128-29, including a quote from Robert Root-Bernstein, professor of physiology at Michigan State University, in an article called “Hobbled Arts Limit Our Future.”
Jim Collins suggests: Jerry Useem, “Jim Collins on Tough Calls,” Fortune, June 27, 2005.
“The person who hurts the most”: John Maxwell, Winning with People (Nashville: Nelson Business, 2004), audio book, disk 1.
“I’ve known many ‘cool’ youth leaders”: Jeanne Mayo, Thriving Youth Groups: Secrets for Growing Your Ministry (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2005), p. 102.
The wick begins to burn only when the oil: Adapted from Richard R. Dunn, Shaping the Spiritual Life of Students (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), pp. 227-28.
Chapter 9: Monkeys, Frogs and Balconies
“No church in America has sustained a large youth ministry”: Ron King, “Super Glue,” NNYM Magazine, December 2002, p. 7.
In addition, both the level of satisfaction: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p. 235.
“Persevere. The longer you minister with youth”: Strommen, Jones and Rahn, Youth Ministry, p. 238.
“My daughter—an active member of the youth group”: “Ask & Receive,” Group Magazine, July-August 2006, p. 30.
And conflict turns out to be, far and away, the number-one reason: King, “Super Glue,” p. 7.
It’s About Time: Some of the ideas in this section of chapter nine first appeared in Mark DeVries, “The Hunt for Buried Treasure: Time Management for A.D.D. Youth Workers,” Group Magazine.
Balcony Time: Some of the ideas about balcony time were first introduced in the following article: Mark DeVries, “The Need for Balcony Time: Why Most Youth Ministries Never Get Off the Dime,” Group Magazine, May-June 2004.
A Sabbath is a day off from work: Paraphrase from Doug Fields, Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry (El Cajon, Calif.: Youth Specialties, 2002), p. 57.
Where Have All Your Monkeys Gone?: The monkey management principles first appeared in a series of articles in Group Magazine, inspired by Ken Blanchard, William Oncken Jr. and Hal Burrows’s The One-Minute Manager Meets the Monkey (New York: Morrow, 1989).
Chapter 10: Architecting the Constellation
“This was the first year that I ever felt included”: Jeanne Mayo, Thriving Youth Groups: Secrets for Growing Your Ministry (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2005), p. 93.
The study behind the book Youth Ministry That Transforms: Merton Strommen, Karen E. Jones and Dave Rahn, Youth Ministry That Transforms: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Hopes, Frustrations, and Effectiveness of Today’s Youth Workers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p. 206.
He calls us “stewards of a community of dreamers”: Erwin McManus, An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2001), p. 196.
But less than 25 percent of that same group: Strommen, Jones and Rahn, Youth Ministry, p. 220. An interesting sidebar for my own denomination: we Presbyterians came in dead last in developing volunteers, with our cousins the Lutherans and the Episcopalians only a few steps ahead of us.
But that number jumps significantly for the seniors: Mike Nappa, What I Wish My Youth Leader Knew About Youth Ministry: A National Survey (Cincinnati: Standard, 1999), p. 183.
Calvin revises his statement, “I thrive on making”: John Maxwell, Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping-Stones for Success (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), p. 160.
“the losing companies are twice as likely”: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (New York: Crown Business, 2004), p. 99.
Chapter 11: The Magnet Effect
Interestingly, the third-highest response: Rick Lawrence, “The Cool Church,” Group Magazine, May 6, 2001, p. 37.
In Practicing Passion, Kenda Dean identifies: Kenda Creasy Dean, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 73-144.
Some experts suggest that unless a newcomer: Len Kageler, How to Expand Your Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 41.
“When I was a sophomore in high school”: Jeanne Mayo, Thriving Youth Groups: Secrets for Growing Your Ministry (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2005), p. 69.
“So why did I ask you to show up tonight?”: Mayo, Thriving, p. 28.
One church asks their friendship-epidemic students: “Most Wanted List” idea borrowed from Kageler, How to Expand, p. 25.
“We all come from different backgrounds”: Mayo, Thriving, p. 76.
“student movements led by students below the college”: Mark Senter, The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry (Wheaton Ill.: Victor, 1992), p. 52.
Chapter 12: Dancing with Alligators
“Most careers involve other people”: Quoted in John Maxwell, Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping-Stones for Success (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), p. 155.
In a study of 185 youth pastors who’d been fired: Len Kageler, How to Expand Your Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 21.
The porcupine party: Concept borrowed from John Maxwell, Winning with People (Nashville: Nelson Business, 2004), audio book, disk 1.
“Confrontational notes and e-mails are akin to manure bombs”: Thom and Joani Schultz, Friendship First (Loveland, Colo.: Group, 2005), p. 71.
Peter Scazzero identifies five unhealthy ways of dealing: From Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p. 103.
Doug Fields gives new youth workers some of the best advice: The following statements are from Doug Fields, Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry (El Cajon, Calif.: Youth Specialties, 2002), pp. 157, 158, 161.
The study revealed that “40% of the study parents”: Statistics from this paragraph are quoted in Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 94-95.
As far back as 1996, 1,300 ministers: Frank Harrington, quoting the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a sermon at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, October 20, 1996.
Chapter 13: Rabbit Trails and Brick Walls
“Spontaneity” is often mistaken for “fresh”: Doug Fields, “Fresh-Smelling Youth Ministry,” Group Magazine, November-December 2006, p. 34.
three consistent components in winning organizations: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (New York: Crown Business, 2004), p. 48.
Epilogue: Seizing the Unfair Advantage
“New life comes slowly, awkwardly, on wobbly wings”: Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 177.
“everything can look like a failure in the middle”: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (New York: Crown Business, 2004), p. 67.
Appendix A: Discussion Questions
Og Mandino argued that “the only certain means of success”: Quoted in Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007), p. 51.