How much older should a youth leader be?

May 13, 2013 — 4 Comments

Can a 20-year old lead a small group of 17-year olds? How big an age difference should there be between youth leader and the students? It’s an interesting question I got this week from a youth pastor.

Here’s what he wrote: “We have stated that a leader needs to be at least 5 years older, but we are currently having trouble finding older leaders after our main leader stepped down. There have been leaders in training (16-18 year olds) in the group who help to plan events, etc. The question was asked, “Now that these younger leaders have gotten a taste of working with youth as leaders in training, do they really have wait until they are 23 to be an actual leader? What are they supposed to do in the meantime?”

I’ve encountered this same dilemma in my previous youth ministry, where we had a ‘teen group’ for 12-16 year olds and a ‘youth group’ for 16-22 year olds. We’ve had ‘youth’ serve as assistant leaders in the teen ministry and we had young adults as young as 23 serve in the youth ministry, meaning there was quite a small age difference. It worked for us, because we kept their responsibilities fairly limited and provided good training and supervision.

How big an age difference should there be between youth leader and students?

How big an age difference should there be between youth leader and students?

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Is your life your message?

May 8, 2013 — 6 Comments

My life is my message.

I love this quote from Ghandi. It’s the more poetic form of the well know saying that actions speak louder than words. Don’t get me wrong: we need words, absolutely. I’m not a big fan of the quote that’s often attributed to Fransiscus of Assisi that we should preach the Gospel at all times and use words when necessary. We always need words, because you cannot explain the Gospel without words. You cannot teach the Bible without words. Jesus Himself used words to explain the Kingdom of God.

But words alone are not enough.

Our lives are our message, more than any words we speak. If we preach love, but don’t love people ourselves, our words are useless. If we teach forgiveness, but are bitter ourselves, our teaching is dead. If we say Jesus is our number one, but are slaves to our particular brand of sin, what we say doesn’t matter.

People will look to our lives first, before listening to our words.

Is your life the same message you preach?

Ghandi

In Leadership, You and God
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Visualize your priorities with red, yellow and green

May 7, 2013 — 3 Comments

Prioritizing is of crucial importance, especially when your to do list is overflowing, as most of ours are. We’ve discussed several methods of prioritizing in your youth ministry on this blog:

No matter which method you choose, it’s important to come up with a way to visualize your priorities, so you can see at once which tasks have priorities and which don’t. Again, there are several ways to do this:

  • Put the high priority tasks at the top of your list
  • Categorize by A (high priority), B (medium priority) or C (low priority)
  • Use an app like Evernote to separate high, medium and low priority tasks

But there’s another method that’s highly effective, very simple and doesn’t cost any extra time or money: use colors to visualize your priorities. Red, yellow and green are colors we know well and we instinctively grasp their meaning:

Red: high priority

Yellow/orange: medium priority

Green: low priority

Visualize Priorities

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Book Review: Harry Potter series

May 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

harry-potterWhen I decided to review all books in the top 100 of best Teen Fiction, most of the books were new to me. But obviously there are also a few on this list that I have read and the Harry Potter series is one of them. It’s kind of weird to review this series after everyone who wants to read them has done so already and everyone who hasn’t, has no intention of ever doing so. But The Harry Potter series is actually number 1 on that list, making it the best teen fiction ever, and that is not without reason.

The biggest issue for Christians with Harry Potter Series is of course the magic. There have been so many discussions on this, that it seems of little use to restart all these. Let me just say that I can completely understand why people have an issue with books like these (though in order to be consistent, they would also have to have an issue with for example The Lord of the Rings then), but for me it’s not a problem.

Personally, I loved these books. I though the plot (which I’m not going to describe here, I assume everyone is familiar with it by now) was brilliant and well executed, I love it when small things in the first book turn out to have great importance in the end. Harry, Hermione and Ron are great characters that you love to read about, even in their struggles. The secondary characters are colorful and quirky, like the whole Weasel family, Luna Lovegood and Professor Snape.

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Conquering ourselves

May 2, 2013 — 5 Comments

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re usually right.”

Henry Ford said those words and I have to agree with them. I am often my own worst enemy in all honesty. My ‘inner dialogue’ is not very helpful a lot of the times as I struggle with low self esteem.

“It’s not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves.”

It’s why Sir Edmund Hillary’s quote rings so true to me. I don’t know if you recognize his name, but he was the first man to climb Mount Everest together with Tenzing Norgay and Hillary climbed many mountains after that. Now I’m not into mountain climbing (I’m Dutch, we don’t even have mountains!), but I think he’s right. No matter how hard the task before us, it’s not the task that we have to conquer, it’s ourselves.

If we keep telling ourselves we can’t do something, that we’re just not good enough, not holy enough, not old enough or wise enough or whatever enough…then we’ll never do it.

In what area do you have to conquer yourself?

Mountains

In Personal growth , ,
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Helping youth thrive

April 30, 2013 — 3 Comments

It’s not often that you see people talk about youth with the passion of Peter Benson. His whole TED Talk titles ‘How youth thrive’ shows his love for young people and it really encouraged me.

Peter Benson is not a youth pastor however, he’s a psychologist who does research amongst young people on their ‘spark’. By ‘spark’ he means a skill, a cause or a quality that makes people thrive, that makes them happy and whole.

In his talk, he shares some interesting statistics. Right now, there are 80 million young people aged 8-18 in the US. But only 25% of these 80 million are on a pathway to human thriving (meaning being happy, connected, kind, contributing, etc.) and the rest has fallen behind. They are lost, confused, medicated and alone.

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Setting priorities with the INO System

April 29, 2013 — Leave a comment

You can’t do it all. You know that deep down, but still you try. We all do. As youth workers, our to do list is often unending and things we cross off at the top, are being replaced just as quickly at the bottom.

That means we have to make choices in what we do and what we won’t do. We have to set priorities and work according to these. We’ve talked about two ways of defining priorities before: the 80/20 rule and Covey’s time management matrix. But on the Harvard Business Review Blog, I came across another method that you can use to decide how much time to invest in something: the INO system.

The INO System

The INO System means that you ask yourself of each item on your to do list if it’s an Investment, Neutral or Optimize activity:

  • Investment: these are the kind of activities where extra time and effort will pay off exponentially, meaning more than the time and effort you put in. In your youth ministry this will often be strategy related activities, such as developing a clear vision or mission statement. In you personal life, this is about taking the time to fill up your ‘tank’ again and friends or keeping the Sabbath.
  • Neutral: these are activities where more time and effort don’t actually mean extra results. They need to be done adequately, but you don’t need to strive for perfection here. In your youth ministry these may be meetings you have to attend, Powerpoint presentations you have to make for the worship or cleaning up after a youth event. In your personal life this may be washing your car or mowing the lawn.
  • Optimize: these are the activities you need to spend as little time on as possible, because they’re not adding any value. Not only that, but spending more time on these means you spend less time on more important activities. Think about youth ministry related tasks like handling your email, doing routine admin, or buying food and drinks for youth events. In your personal life you can think of any kind of errands.
Spending time with your family is a classic example of an Investment Activity: it will exponentially pay off in the future.

Spending time with your family is a classic example of an Investment Activity: it will exponentially pay off in the future.

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Book Review: 13 little blue Envelopes

April 27, 2013 — Leave a comment

13-Little-Blue-Envelopes1Unlike many other books in the Top 100 of Best Young Adult Fiction, I actually read 13 Little Blue Envelopes a while ago. It was a free Kindle deal once and I took advantage of that. I’d never heard of Maureen Johnston, who is a reasonably well-known young adult author by the way and the book didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

That’s not to say it was a bad book, I just didn’t connect with it emotionally. 13 Little Blue Envelopes is the story of Virginia (‘Ginny’) Blackstock who goes on an adventure journey more or less ordered by her aunt, who has passed away. Her aunt left her 13 blue envelopes with instructions for the journey and Ginny, who is 17, decides to take her aunt up on this adventure.

Ginny ends up traveling through Europe, for instance London, Scotland, Amsterdam, Paris, and Greece. The fact that a 17-year old would be allowed to do that and would actually do that was already a big stretch for me. Being European, the locations weren’t that special to me, but I guess that would be different for American young adults for instance. The various ‘exotic’ places Ginny visits do make for an original setting, even if they are described in clichés.

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Topics for youth sermons: Home with God

April 26, 2013 — 2 Comments

[Looking for more ideas? Check our page with great topics for youth sermons!] Psalm 84 is best known for the famous worship song Matt Redman has written: Better is one day. It’s a Psalm with a great message for teens that will help them find a place of belonging, a home with God.

Bible passage: Psalm 84

Key message: Home is with God

Synopsis: The question of where our home is, is an interesting one for many people. Is home the place where you were born, the place where you live, the place you long for or something else? One thing is certain, as Christians our real home is not here. As Larry Norman once put it, we’re ‘only visiting this planet’. Our real home is with God.

home-sweet-home

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How to stop worrying

April 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

Worrying always overwhelms you just when you don’t need it. You want to go to sleep, but worrying keeps you awake. You need to prepare your youth sermon, but worrying keeps distracting you. You want to really ‘be’ in the conversation and listen, but worrying keeps drawing your thoughts elsewhere.

Worries about your youth ministry.

Worries about your financial situation.

Worries about your marriage, your family, your friends.

Worries about students, your small group members.

Worries about the future.

While we all have our worry moments every now and then, there can be times in your life when your worries really seem to take over. If you feel your life is being dominated by worries, here’s what to do.

worry

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In Personal growth, You and God , ,
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