The Proverbs 14:4 Challenge
4
The Dance Floor
A Systems Approach to Youth Ministry
It is unrealistic to expect to be able to design and implement an effective turnaround strategy without removing some of the systemic barriers to change.
Lyle Schaller
Leaders are responsible for both the big structures that serve as cornerstones of confidence, and for the human touches that shape a positive emotional climate to inspire and motivate people.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Years of preparation had made her movements effortless, her turns seamless, her leaps weightless. A dancer of unparalleled talent, she mesmerized the crowd with her skill, but even more with her passion. Her countenance proclaimed in no uncertain terms that she was made for this moment.
But she would finish much sooner than anyone expected. Coming down from an arching leap, she landed with a jolting crack, her foot driving its way through the rotting wood of the floor, her body twisted in pain, her leg bent in places it was not made to bend. She was pulled from the stage, wondering if she would ever dance again.
The master of ceremonies dismissively apologized, “Inexperience does this to a dancer.”
But no one repaired the floor.
Simple church leaders are designers. . . . Complex church leaders are programmers. . . . Church leaders who are programmers focus on one program at a time. Their goal, though never stated, is to make each program the best. Church leaders who are designers are focused on the end result, the overall picture. They are as concerned with what happens between the programs as they are with the programs themselves.
THOM RAINER AND ERIC GEIGER
And then, as if nothing had happened, the next performer was introduced. The crowd responded with a smattering of applause. But with no one attending to the dance floor, the audience knew that the new dancer would also find her performance ending prematurely with a disappointing, perhaps tragic, conclusion.
“Attending to the dance floor” may be the most neglected task in youth ministry. When the dance floor is in bad repair, talent is not enough. Right preparation is not enough. Not even passion and enthusiasm can prevent the inevitable dissatisfaction and disaster.
Failure to attend to the dance floor ensures that a toxic environment will infect the entire system, a system in which most, if not all, youth workers are likely to fail. The world of youth ministry today is filled with dancers of unparalleled talent who crash and burn, not because they can’t dance, but because they and their churches know nothing about building and tending to dance floors.
What far too many churches and youth workers are missing is the ability to give their first attention to ensuring that the right systems, priorities and infrastructure are in place before beginning the dance.
Taking the Systems Approach
In this chapter and the three that follow, I invite you into seeing (and doing) youth ministry with a systems perspective. More and more, we are discovering that sustainable youth ministries are led by systems leaders. The day of the camp counselor youth minister who focuses only on students is over. Sustainable youth ministries make the leap from a short-term, patchwork ministry to ones based on established systems that last long after the current leadership team has moved on.
Every church can build a sustainable youth ministry by attending first to the two key components of systems thinking in youth ministry:
I’ll take the next two chapters to spell out how these components play out in a sustainable youth ministry. But first, I want to bring a little more clarity to this whole notion of a uniquely systems approach to youth ministry.
Content Thinking Versus Systems Thinking
As I have tried to get my head around the power of a systems approach to initiating strategic change, family systems theory has been immensely helpful, particularly in its distinction between “content issues” and “system issues.”
A content issue involves a specific topic, usually a topic of conflict. In youth ministry, typical content issues can be anything from a problem with cliques to a problem with the seventh-grade curriculum.
System issues, on the other hand, are those processes that take place beneath, around and within the particular topics of concern, things like trust among the leadership, clarity of expectations for staff and volunteers, or ownership of the ministry beyond the staff.
Trying to initiate change while staying solely focused on content issues is like sprinting up and down the aisle of a speeding jet, believing that the sheer force of effort will speed up the plane. Too many youth workers are wearing themselves out, completely unaware of the fact that they are a part of a system that is carrying them (and their ministries) in a direction that may be completely independent of their exhausting labor.
When one part of [an] organism is treated in isolation from its interconnections with another, as though the problem were solely its own, fundamental change is not likely. The symptom is apt to recycle, in the same or different form, in the same or different member. Trying to cure a person in isolation from his or her family . . . is as misdirected, and ultimately ineffective, as transplanting a healthy organ into a body whose imbalanced chemistry will destroy the new one as it did the old. It is easy to forget that the same family of organs that rejects a transplant contributed to the originally diseased part becoming foreign.
EDWIN FRIEDMAN
The hired youth staff person often becomes the content issue of choice when it’s time for launching criticism at a youth ministry. “Simple” solutions to a youth ministry’s problems almost always start with a focus on the youth director: he just needs to get organized; she just needs to get out of the office and spend more time with kids; he just needs a little more training; or (the more permanent solution) she just needs to go.
But dramatic, sustainable change happens in youth ministries only when we take our focus off the “presenting issues”—the obvious concerns that seem to be creating so much anxiousness—and put our focus on the system patterns that keep us locked into unproductive ways of doing things.
Paul: The Systems Thinker
Most of us who have grown up in the church know Paul’s famous words to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). We may have sung these words at camp or memorized them in Sunday school, but I’ll bet few could describe the context in which these words were written.
They come right in the middle of Paul addressing two women in the church who just can’t seem to get along. He writes, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel” (Phil 4:2-3).
Instead of addressing the topic of the conflict (which Paul seems to purposely ignore), he takes a systems approach. He refuses to get sucked into a debate over the content issue plaguing this young church. Instead he makes a beeline to the process, the system surrounding that issue. His clear assumption is that only in the context of intentional, chosen joy will the Philippian church effectively move beyond the debilitating power of petty conflicts.
Youth ministry is not an event but a process.
BARRY ST. CLAIR
Ron was a new youth pastor with great ideas (ideas are almost always content focused). When he stepped into a youth ministry with less than 5 percent of the teenagers of the church participating regularly, he took the Field of Dreams approach: “If I build it, they will come.” Well, Ron built it. He planned engaging events; he planned Bible studies; he planned opportunities for student leadership.
He built it. But they didn’t come. He envisioned a gym full of students playing together, worshiping together, hearing an engaging message from Scripture together.
Great idea. But there were a few things missing: students, leaders and, most important, a system in place designed to deliver the results Ron longed to see. He needed more than hard work and a fragmented collection of great ideas. He needed the kind of systemic change that must be built deliberately over a course of years.
The Proverbs 14:4 Challenge
As we embark on making the shift to a systems way of doing youth ministry, I invite you to take the Proverbs 14:4 Challenge. This obscure proverb has the power to reframe our understanding of the kind of hassle involved in building a sustainable ministry.
Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty,
but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. (Prov 14:4)
I know—it’s not exactly a passage that will start a revival. But these words offer a clear challenge to any church still looking for the Easy Button. Let me put it in other words:
If you want a manger free of ox poop, don’t buy an ox.
But if you want to multiply your harvest, an ox sure will come in handy.
The challenge of sustainable youth ministry is as straightforward as the proverb: Want to build a ministry that lasts, a ministry that deeply impacts students, families and the wider world? Then be prepared for the mess.