5 Tips On Youth Worker/Minister Productivity

VISION = RIGHT IDEA = GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT = TIME MAPPING = CREATIVE TO DOS =PRODUCTIVITY

I seem to be in a constant battle with productivity and I just spend far too much time in-front of my computer mostly doing admin stuff (this is my day so its OK).  So I decided over the last week or so to really try to get on top of my time and productivity.   I therefore thought I’d share what I’m up to as it may help some other poor youth worker who spends too much time on the wrong stuff.

Where are we heading?

I first had to work out what I here to do.   So I have spent some time working on vision/strategy and direction for the overall youth ministry. This means that I can then start to work out where I should invest my time and energy.   More about vision here

What’s Good vs Right?

There are lots of lots of good ideas and no end of people will tell you their great idea that you should do!  But once you have a vision and strategy, you then have a measuring rod for all these good ideas.  You can then say ‘this is a great idea, but may not be the right idea for our ministry at this time’.  This can save you a lot of time and help you be more productive on the right stuff.

What’s really worth my time?

I got this idea from a post by Tim Schmoyer that asked ‘What is REALLY worth my time in student ministry?‘   This is a challenging list to make, everything that you do in your ministry, write it down  and ask is it really worth doing.  Tim asked ‘Is it life changing‘, I kept that question but also related by to the ministries vision so also asked is it ‘missional‘? ‘Does it help people to go DEEP (into God) and/or WIDE (into the world)? This has helped me to start to see what things I do that I can maybe drop or give to others. For example do I really need to do flyers? Do they help people to change there lives, go DEEP and/or WIDE or is it a missional activity….eeeeerrrrr…no! Some stuff is no but you still have to do it like money stuff…O well.  It also highlights stuff I need to do more of like meeting with young people one to one.

Time Map

OK so now we have looked at what we should do and what we do that we shouldn’t!  I now think I/we need to think through our overall time.  This was for me where a post off Lifehacker, one of  one of my fav blogs, come along.  It talks about mapping your week to examine what you spend your time on.  This is sort of timesheet high-bred.  I also read this post by REYouthPastor called ‘Youth Pastor Productivity’.  In the post he states that for him his time should map out:

• 15 hours a week youth programs (including before and after time)
• 8 hours a week preparing for talks / sessions/ programs
• 2 hours a week think about small church youth ministry strategies and future planning
• 4 hours a week meeting staff
• 4 hours a week doing 1-to-1 stuff
• hopefully 4-5 hours a week doing admin stuff, in reality probably a bit more.

Thats a good start to looking at how my week could pan out, so I’m not doing too much admin( worth my time?) and more face to face (worth my time).  So I put into my little time map that above list.

More Creativity with To Dos

Iv also started to use FreeMind to mind map my To Dos.  I use DEEP and WIDE are guides and try to keep my To Dos liked, so it always comes back to Where I am heading and is this a good To Do or a Right To Do?

I am also using FreeMind to be more creative with other parts of my ministry and to clear my head!

VISION = RIGHT IDEA = GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT = TIME MAPPING = CREATIVE TO DOS =PRODUCTIVITY

Our Youth Ministry Vision. What, Why, Who, How

This is the ‘vision’ I see panning out for the youth work/ministry at Malmesbury Abbey.  Its based on the our core values of youth work: voluntary participation, empowerment, equality of opportunity and informal education.  And a few ideas that I have stolen from other book etc.

WHAT

I really like DEEP & WIDE from Dare2Share , I came across it through Life in Student Ministry but I found that their strategy for implementing DEEP & WIDE would not translate well into my context so I ‘borrowed’ the terms but left the strategy!

DEEP & WIDE helps us know WHAT we are.

Abbey youth…a missional community striving to go DEEP into God’s love and WIDE into the world

WHY & WHO

I made us of some of the  Purpose Driven Youth Ministry first because it makes you ask WHY.  Then the ‘target audience’ part makes you ask WHO.  The TA I think is far to rigid and we live a much more fluid world then I think TA gives credit but I use TA for big brushstrokes.

HOW

I inherited a lot of great youth ministry.  And at one level I had to think how it could fit into the above.  Fortunately I didn’t have too much trouble.  This is how I think it all fits together…

WHO are we trying to reach? Main Group	WHAT is our aim? Main Aim	HOW will we try to do this? Programmes
Community (no contact)	WIDE (Evangelism)	Detached (not yet in place)
Congregation (Some contact)	WIDE (Evangelism)	Friday Night Thing (open aimed at non-churched)
Committed (Regular contact)	DEEP (Discipleship)	Pipeline/Trax
Core (Leader)	DEEP (Discipleship)	Pipeline +

THOUGHTS

• Is shaped a great deal from inherited youth work
• Has to work in mid-sized church
• I need to expand on missional
• A lot of the current youth ministry focuses on DEEP need more WIDE
• It quite modernistic

How much should we do?

I had a group of young people ask me to do a sleep over during holy week (they have had one the last few years). I said sure- sounds like a good plan….i’ll help you sort it out if you want! There was a slight puzzled look and one of the young people said that it was my job to sort it out not theirs. I responded by saying ‘is that really my job’?

And there is the question. How much do we really need or should do for young people. Empowerment is the key word here, if we continue to do everything for young people then eventually we get burned out, young people learn nothing and we became little more than providers of spiritual entertainment

On the other hand, how much do we do ourselves? Because if we never do anything…well, what do we get paid for! Maybe our ministry should always be working with young people to enable them to be empowered to run the youth ministry themselves…. brilliant! Scary!

– Should we plan, or always plan with young people?
– Should we run bible studies or help young people run them?
– How about ‘evangelism’, street work, schools work?

Interesting, the young people, with the help of a volunteer leader, got together last week and worked out loads of the sleep over…without my help!

Church/Youth Ministry 1.0, 2.0, 3.0

This is one of my first blog posts a long time ago.  I was re-looking at it and thought it was quite interesting inlight of how the emerging church, mission has developed, also since I have done a degree in youth work.  Moreover, with Mark Oestreicher’s Youth Ministry 3.0.

Mark Driscoll the pastor of Mars Hill Church Seattle, USA, has a really interesting post here on Church 3.0. I have put the post into a grid to see the different ‘grades’ of church side by side:

CHURCH 1.0	CHURCH 2.0	CHURCH 3.0
In this version, the church is traditional and institutional…	Today’s dominant church form is contemporary and seeker-sensitive…	This incarnation of the church emerging and missional…
The cultural context is modern.	The cultural context is somewhere between modern and postmodern.	The cultural context is postmodern and pluralistic.
The church expects to have a privileged place in the larger culture.	A culture war is being fought to regain a lost position of privilege.	The church accepts that it’s marginalized in culture.
Pastors are servants and teachers.	Pastors are CEOs.	Pastors are local missionaries. The whole church are local missionaries.
Church services are marked by traditions most comforting to Christians, such as choirs, robes, hymnals, and organs.	Church services recycle 1980s and 1990s pop culture, such as acoustic guitars and drama, in an effort to attract non-Christian seekers.	Church services blend ancient forms and current local styles. Do we have to have ‘Church services’?
Missions involves sending Americans and dollars overseas through denominations and missions agencies.	Missions is a church department that organizes overseas trips and funding.	Missions is “glocal” (global and local).
		Along with the emergence of Church 3.0, an escalating debate is being raised over such cultural issues as sexuality and gender, as well as theological issues such as the atonement and hell. In the coming months this column will further explore the emerging controversies and trends of Church 3.0.

I have found this a really interesting post and has got me thinking about Youth Ministry 3.0:

• What would that look like?
• How would Youth Ministry 3.0 fit into Church 3.0?
• How can church/Youth ministry 2.0 move to 3.0?

I think that Youth Ministry if often the first area to upgrade in a church and so often is already 3.0, but the rest of the church is still 1.0/2.0…

Newsround celebrates 35 years of broadcasting with survey on lives of children

1 in 4 don’t count their fathers as immediate family

Almost all would prefer to talk to their friends face-to-face rather than online.

Newsround, the BBC’s children’s news programme, celebrates 35 years of broadcasting with a survey on lives of children. They surveyed 1,000 boys and girls aged 6-12 years around Britain face to face in their homes. This gives a snapshot of the young people that youth workers and the church are going to start and are already working with over the next few years.

Survey

Brand Spanking – Short animation

The idea stemmed from the concept of bad education, how children tend to be vocationally trained rather than imbued with the wonder of learning.

This is a really interesting short animation about education, my friend who is a bit of a film buff set up a short film night at the Chagford Art Festival this summer, it was projected on the side of a van outside Blacks cafe…very cool. Brand Spanking was one of the shorts that he showed and it really made an impact on me.

Synopsis

The first day of a new term and the local school reopens with a flourish of ribbons and some swanky new equipment all paid for by three generous companies. Everything seems wonderful, swanky new equipment for the pupils, even the teachers can take it easy with their lesson plans all taken care of. But do these companies have the best interests of the schoolchildren deep within their hearts? One boy suspects this is not all philanthropic gesture.

This would be a great short to watch with a young people to talk about education, advertising etc.

Mount Hawke Skate/Ride park Trip

This is a film that I (would have liked the young people to have done it ) put together . It was a trip that On the Edge did to Mount Hawke Skate/Ride park just outside Newquey in Cornwall (UK).

Our next trip will hopefully be to Bristol to have a look at the skate/ride parks there.

View Larger Map

Wild Tigers I Have Known

This looks an amazing film for youth workers/ministers and just to watch for itself. I will be interested to read the chatter in blogland when it come out. here is the blurb for the movie.

Logan, soft spoken, lonely, and 13 years old, is a boy with a crush. Unlike his equally lonely friend Joey, who obsesses over the sexual exploits of the slightly older, post pubescent boys, Logan is fixated on the boys themselves, particularly Rodeo Walker. Rodeo is the only one of the group of cool kids who shows any friendliness toward Logan, meaning he doesn’t go out of his way to make Logan’s life miserable. As Logan and Rodeo strike up a mismatched friendship, the kind that only works on walks deep into the forest when no one else is around, Logan’s infatuation with Rodeo inspires him to create a new persona named Leah. Leah and Rodeo grow close through whispered late-night phone calls, and when Leah agrees to meet Rodeo face to face, it is Logan who must finally prove that he can ask for what he so achingly wants. Wild Tigers I Have Known is an ethereal exploration of adolescent longing. Cam Archer’s storytelling is unconventional, fresh, and overflowing with the kind of heart that is touching and familiar to anyone who remembers junior high as a time of painful desire, confusion, and questioning. The well-crafted story, beautifully photographed, draws us back into this moody world of teenage isolation and eventual hope–a world that, perhaps mistakenly, we think we moved past long ago.

–© Sundance Film Festival

Low Cost Easy Servant Evangelism 1

Hot Chocolate Giveaway:

The UK is getting cold! So giving Hot Chocolate away is a great way to make contact with folks who are out in this weather. Here are a few groups of people that you may find:
– Shoppers,
– Marker store worker
– Road sweepers
– Police
– Traffic Wardens
– (my personal favourite) Groups off Teenagers who hang around the streets even though its freezing.

USE FAIR TRADE HOT CHOCOLATE

Church 3.0

Mark Driscoll the pastor of Mars Hill Church Seattle, USA, has a really interesting post here on Church 3.0. I have put the post into a grid to see the different ‘grades’ of church side by side:

CHURCH 1.0	CHURCH 2.0	CHURCH 3.0
In this version, the church is traditional and institutional…	Today’s dominant church form is contemporary and seeker-sensitive…	This incarnation of the church emerging and missional…
The cultural context is modern.	The cultural context is somewhere between modern and postmodern.	The cultural context is postmodern and pluralistic.
The church expects to have a privileged place in the larger culture.	A culture war is being fought to regain a lost position of privilege.	The church accepts that it’s marginalized in culture.
Pastors are servants and teachers.	Pastors are CEOs.	Pastors are local missionaries.
Church services are marked by traditions most comforting to Christians, such as choirs, robes, hymnals, and organs.	Church services recycle 1980s and 1990s pop culture, such as acoustic guitars and drama, in an effort to attract non-Christian seekers.	Church services blend ancient forms and current local styles.
Missions involves sending Americans and dollars overseas through denominations and missions agencies.	Missions is a church department that organizes overseas trips and funding.	Missions is “glocal” (global and local).
		Along with the emergence of Church 3.0, an escalating debate is being raised over such cultural issues as sexuality and gender, as well as theological issues such as the atonement and hell. In the coming months this column will further explore the emerging controversies and trends of Church 3.0.

I have found this a really interesting post and has got me thinking about Youth Ministry 3.0:

• What would that look like?
• How would Youth Ministry 3.0 fit into Church 3.0?
• How about churcuh plants?

I think that Youth Ministry if often the first area to upgrade in a church and so often is already 3.0, but the rest of the church is still 1.0/2.0…