This week I find myself neck deep in the middle of fundraising. I admit it’s not the most favorite part of my job, but sometimes you have to do what you don’t want to do in order to do what you love. We’re raising money to some high school students to Belize, which is something I love. Part of that process involves raising funds. I wanted to share with you a quick tip you can use help raise money.

Have you ever been driving on the street when you see a group of students holding up signs for carwashes? I always think to myself,” You’re doing it all wrong.”  I can’t imagine those kinds of car washes make much money, now it is possible to raise quite a bit of money washing cars, but having students hold up signs on the corner seems like an exercise in futility. So here’s a secret, if you want to raise money by having a car wash, you should have your students pre-sell the tickets. Charge whatever you like, and ask students to sell a specific amount. It’s actually quite easy to sell tickets to a car wash, and once you have sold the tickets you already have your profit. Your car wash will then not be dependent upon the weather, or sympathetic drivers who see your students holding signs.  If you want to maximize your bang for the buck have a pancake breakfast or something similar at the same time as the car wash. You can have people eating breakfast while they get their car washed, and you have created another revenue stream. I would also recommend being clear on how long your carwash is. When we do a car wash, our tickets clearly state that we will wash any car in line by 11:30 am. This keeps our carwash dragging on and on.

With 40 students participating in our carwash, we have raised over $7000 in about 3 1/2 to 4 hours, which is a pretty good return.  Of course, this would not be possible if we don’t pre-sell tickets for our car wash and pancake breakfast. So if you’re looking to do a carwash as a fundraiser, I would recommend you have your students pre-sell tickets.

I want to spend a few posts sharing with you some of the things I have learned along the way that allowed me to stay when many others have not.

As a starter, I’m coming from a place that believes ministry to students is important. I don’t see it as junior ministry or starter ministry or even ministry that is becoming outdated. I believe it is still an important calling, while perhaps changing, which is still very necessary. As I think about my time in ministry, and I think about why I have been able to continue, there seems to be a few things that continually bubble to the surface. Probably the most important one is one that I have learned only within the last nine or 10 years that is the all-important word of call.

Being called to youth ministry is just that a calling. I first began ministry with a passionate desire to help students know Christ. I didn’t think about what was next, I didn’t think about moving on or even moving up. I just knew that I was called to youth ministry. When I first began ministry I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. As I grew and matured in ministry, I learned more about what it meant to be called. In Scripture God calls and we respond. If you think about Abram and how God called him, you don’t see Abram deciding to do something, you see him responding to a God who called him. I imagine Abram didn’t wake up one day wanting to move his entire family to a land that was unknown to him, yet out of obedience to this God he was just beginning to know, he obeyed. When it comes to ministry, I think if there are other things you would rather do or other things you can see yourself doing, then you should go do them.  I say that because churches are weird places, they’re difficult to work in. They don’t pay well (usually). They each have their own set of politics, their own folk history which can be difficult to navigate. You really have to have a good understanding of your call to be able to stick around. When you begin to realize just how weird churches can be, and how difficult and often thankless ministry can be…it can be very difficult to continue.  It is easy to think that the next church will be different, so perhaps we move on, and after a few churches in a few years, it can easily become just too much. Getting out of ministry seems like a viable option.  I often joke around that I’m still a youth pastor because I’m too dumb to do anything else but the truth of the matter is I’m still called and until that changes I will continue to be one.

Ministry is difficult. There are times when it is thankless. There are times when you can do no right. There are times when everything you say is wrong. There will be times when you will be blamed instead of praised. There will be times when people question whether you are cut out for ministry. There will be times when…

In those times, call is all you have.

Full-Disclosure: I am terrible at flossing my teeth.  I really want to do it on the regular, but I don’t.  In fact I rarely think about flossing until I know I am going to see the dentist, then in a mad dash I floss every day for about 5-7 days before my appointment.  My hygienist  always tells me the same thing…”You need to floss more.”   They live in the world of teeth.  They are around teeth all the time.  I’m sure it is easy for them to remember to floss (perhaps not, but it is easy for them to tell me to).  They spend time thinking about teeth.  It is just part of their everyday world.  Teeth are not part of mine.  I also know that my teeth would be better served if I spent a bit of time thinking of them and just flossing.

I know for lots of people their spiritual life is a lot like flossing.  We know we need to tend to our our souls, that we should take our discipleship more seriously, that our faith should have a more prominent role in our daily life, but often it doesn’t.  We can go through days and perhaps weeks at a time without much interaction with God.  We know this shouldn’t be the case, but for lots of us, it just seems to be that way.

My dentist and hygienist are always trying to find ways to help me remember my teeth.

I am always trying to find ways to help people remember what God has done for them.

It is a difficult task.

Isn’t one of the goals in student ministry to help create disciples?

One thing I really want is for my students to own their faith, and to start or continue down a journey that will last throughout their lives.  What real good is it to have a bunch of students who when they leave the ministry leave the faith too?

If we really are interested in making disciples we need to look at a model for how that is done effectively.  I’m not talking about attending a conference, or looking at how Saddleback or Willow or Newspring does things, but rather I want to look at how Jesus made disciples.  Of all the models that exist, seems to me, this is the one we should think about emulating.  How did Jesus make disciples?  Lets consider the following (I will make no commentary right now…that will come in the next post.):

• Jesus calls 12 relatively young men to follow him, to leave everything they have and become his talmidin.
• The goal of a talmid was not simply to learn what the rabbi knew, but to do what the rabbi did.  The discipleship process was not simply a transfer of knowledge, it was a transfer of life, and it required total commitment.
• Jesus spent considerable time with his talmidin.  It wasn’t simply one night a week.  They shared his life with him.  They followed him and learned from him.  (If you believe Rob Bell, the goal was to follow your rabbi so closely as you moved about that you would be literally covered in his dust.)
• Jesus taught his talmidin the scriptures (his yoke), they wrestled with its meaning and implications.
• Jesus expected his talmidin to put into practice what they were learning, thus becoming like the Rabbi.
• When they failed, he picked them up, taught them, corrected them and had them go again.
• This process took time, even in Jesus day, the process of becoming a disciple took years.

In my next post, I will lay out some of the challenges of making disciples today, and give some strategies for meeting these challenges.

Here is mine: Dave Roberts: Pro Youth Worker

What is more important? Orthodoxy or orthopraxy?

There are videos like this one popping up all over:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgg2KYdMpqc

Don’t get me wrong, I think that this type of thinking has value and is something we should wrestle with.

I just don’t get the whole concept that gathering is somehow wrong, or that othropraxy trumps orthodoxy.

Maybe we should look at what we do when we gather, or perhaps we need some bolstering in our understanding of  what worship is and isn’t.

I do think that the days of over-programming need to come to an end, but I don’t think that the pendulum needs to swing so far that we say gathering for worship and teaching is not a valid expression of our faith.

In my mind, orthodoxy and orthopraxy are intertwined.  They complement each other.  If you have one without you only have part.

So is it this or that?  My answer is yes.

(writer’s caveat: I have purposely left out what I think we should do when we gather…that is for another day my faithful 4 readers.)

I say no…

but I also say that perhaps our historical (as short as that history may be) roles need to die, so something new can be birthed.

I think that the days of youth pastors being program directors a.k.a. Julie McCoy need to die, but that doesn’t mean that the youth pastor needs to die with it.  We are partly to blame for where we find ourselves.  As youth pastors, we believed that we could entertain students into a faith in Jesus.  We thought it was necessary to offer alternative events and activities to keep students from engaging in the 3D’s (drinking, drugs & doing it). While this is what most parents wanted, and probably still do, it often left us as glorified babysitters.

As they say, the times they are a changing.  As cultural shifts happen at a rapid pace, and as we gain new insights into faith development, as we learn the numbers of students who leave faith after high school, we are left with the feeling that the way we have been doing ministry isn’t effective and not working anymore.

While culture has shifted and is still shifting, the role of youth pastor has been slow to catch up.  It’s time to stop thinking like program directors and start thinking like missionaries.  While I believe wholeheartedly that youth ministry is the churches responsibility, I don’t think that most churches are equipped for this task.  I believe that one of the crucial tasks for youth pastors in the next few years will be to train church members to reach and disciple emerging generations.  I’m not just talking about a few leaders, but many.  It will be incumbent upon the youth pastor to be the bridge between students and the church.  It will be important that churches have a vision and are equipped to raise up the next generations, and it will be important for students to be able to find their ways into those relationships that will be formative for them.  It is the youth pastors job to make that happen.

I think that the youth pastor will actually become more important as the stakes get higher, and I hope that churches are able to make the shift.

It’s time to stop being program driven and become missionally driven.

This is the final installment of this series, I wanted to get this all out of the way before I begin blogging about different topics.  I hope that you have found this to be interesting.  I obviously have left lots out, and often after writing a post I think “I should have said this.” but I have resisted the urge to make my posts any longer.  I have the tendency to rattle on as it is.

It with great excitement that we moved across the state to begin our life and ministry as the student ministry director of John Knox Presbyterian.  Before we said yes to the call, we really needed to discern whether we wanted to be on staff with Tobin again, if that was just a comfort place for me or really God’s call.  We also had to deal with whether we wanted to make a church called John Knox our home.  I am thankful  that the staff of John Knox was honest about where they were, what their struggles were and most importantly where they were headed.  After much prayer and council, we discerned that God was indeed calling us to be part of JK.

We arrived at John Knox, with a great sense of hope.  I had learned a lot about ministry and was going to need all of it.  Looking back, it is pretty funny how things didn’t exactly work like I thought they were going to.  JK’s youth ministry had a history of being a nice ministry for church kids.  This is not where my heart was.  I was brought in to help change the culture of the ministry.  It was pretty inwardly focused.  I wanted it to be more missional, more outward focused.  I thought that was going to be my first task.  I thought it would take a while…here is what happened:

1. I arrive June 1, on June 14 or so, I lead a mission trip with students I barely know.  It was all set up for me, and was hands down the worst mission trip I had ever been on.  I meet students and learn their stories.  I learn that students distrust me right off the bat.  There was a few years with lots of turn over.  I recognize it is an uphill battle
2. I spend the summer getting to know students, recruiting leaders, praying and trying to implement the plan, which was to focus on the core students, cast a vision for them reaching their friends.  We were going to go deep and spread out from there.  We would worship, teach and have small groups.  I figured it would take some time, we would have to be strategic.
3. The first night of ministry in the fall, I had no idea what to expect.  about 50-60 students show up, and we are set up for investing in our core.  I made the decision to go with it as planned.  I thought this will be the last I see most of these students.
4. To my surprise, they come back and keep coming back.  We don’t change our plan.  We still go deep, we still worship, we still have small groups.
5. Ministry happens, and students meet Christ and we rejoice
6. Students don’t meet Christ, and we feel sorrow, but love them always.

There has been so much that has happened in the past nine years here.  I have struggled with program models of ministry.  I have struggled with how to make disciples in this age.  I have learned that that is so much value in sticking with one place and seeing it through ups and downs.  I have learned the value of having students serve, go on mission trips to the same place each year.  I have learned that my leaders are great, some of them have been with me since the beginning.  I have learned that we face big challenges ahead, and we have to hold loosely to everything but Jesus, that everything is on the table.  You would think that after 18 years of ministry, I would have more answers than questions.   I guess the old adage is true, “the more you know, the less you know.”

This post doesn’t really do my time here justice.  I am just afraid if I start, this series will go on and on.  Suffice it to say, I am astounded by God’s goodness and grace in this ministry and in my life.

Eight months after buying our first home, we sold it for a huge profit of about $83.00.  We packed everything we owned and we moved to Spokane.  Looking back, there were good things about the move and somethings that were not so great.  I really didn’t want to leave Hope.  I just couldn’t work for the new guy any longer.  I loved the ministry I was a part of.  I had a small group of guys I had been with since 7th grade, they were now juniors, and I really felt like I was walking out on them.  I was also excited.  My new boss was great, it seemed like we were gong to be in lock step with one another, this turned out to be completely true.  I was excited to be living away from the Midwest, something I had never done.  It was time to put on my big boy pants and show that I could lead a ministry a part from Tobin.  It was a bit strange to be seen as a guy who had led successfully and was expected to do the same in Spokane.

I arrived at First Presbyterian Church of Spokane in February of 1998.  My boss Randy and I clicked almost instantly.  I knew I would learn a lot from him.  I inherited an out-of-control junior high group.  I mean they were berserk.  It honestly took a while for me to love them, and even longer to like them.  They say that you shouldn’t change much when you walk in the door of a new ministry situation.  You should learn the lay of the land, get to know people, see what is working and what isn’t, and then begin to make a plan.  This just wasn’t going to happen here, and the very first thing I needed to do was establish that I was the leader.  We struggled for a few months, but eventually we got there.  I definitely changed the way I programmed ministry in Spokane: gone were the elaborate themes, gone were reoccurring characters,  we were much more stripped down.  We still did small groups, large groups, games and had fun, but things were subtly different.  We were teaching students how to reach out to their friends, we created a place where everyone could be part of, we didn’t give students a “bait and switch” gospel.  We had them serving, we started a mission trip for junior high students, we started a junior high worship band.  These things were all coming on the heels as I was struggling with my own understanding of the church and the gospel.  I became enamored with this new thing called the emerging church.  I was reading Len Sweet and just eating it up.  It was like a breath of much needed fresh air.  I realized that I was in an institutional church and I was far from institutional, and it caused tension in my soul.  I loved working with Randy, I would have worked with him forever if I could have.  The youth ministry department was my salvation during my time at FPC, cause it certainly wasn’t the church, it’s direction, worship or leadership.  I tried, but just wasn’t able to respect the pastoral leadership of the church.  I even put a fart machine under the senior pastors chair during staff meeting (he asked me about it at lunch 4 months later).  The church was experiencing an exodus…a mass exodus, yet the student ministries department was thriving.  We were doing amazing ministry, but unfortunately the farting chair pastor decided to make us the villains.  I enjoyed the fight for a while, it felt a bit like being in a gang.  I eventually got tired of all the crap (I’m using the term lightly here) and began to look elsewhere.  I was turning 30, and decided that no matter how great the ministry I was doing, it only mattered if the church had life and was going somewhere too.  I applied at a few churches and almost ended up in Oceanside, CA.  I am so thankful God gave me the the foresight to pull my name after a 5 day visit, cause I almost got seduced by the waves and palm trees and…well lets just say it turned out for the best.  After my visit I decided I would try and stick it out in Spokane, which lasted a few months when I saw a job posting for John Knox Presbyterian Church near Seattle.  This was the church that Tobin was now an associate pastor for.  I emailed him to let him know the posting was up (computers have never really been his thing…).  He responded that I should apply to help give his committee some practice.  I talked it over with Rachel and I sent in my stuff, never expecting to actually end up there…

In June of 2002 (we spent our 10 year anniversary packing), we headed across the state to a suburb of Seattle to begin the next phase in my youth ministry life as the director of student and family ministries at a crazy little place called John Knox.

In spite of everything, I am grateful for my time in Spokane.  I learned what it meant to be missional, and that God really wants to use us for His Kingdom.  I learned to ask hard questions, and not to hold anything too tightly except Jesus.  I learned that the Midwest is really, really flat.  I learned that numbers only matter cause people matter, and numbers do not equate success.  I learned a lot that I would take with me to Seattle.