January 12, 2012 in Ministries by Ben

Find HIS Vision

One thing I’ve really been trying to figure out when it comes to Youth Ministry is focus. The programs that we run including those on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings and any other special events we do need to have a purpose and a clear focus. The youth team that I have the pleasure of working with have been looking at and evaluating what the purpose is for what we are doing. The idea is to define two main things:

1. Who are we trying to reach?
2. What are we trying to accomplish?

I’ve recently been reading “The Purpose Driven Youth Ministry” by Doug Fields and he writes that there are five things every ministry should be about: evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, worship, and ministry. In addition, there are five groups of kids that can have our focus: community, crowd, congregation, committed and core. After some reading the definitions of each and trying to identify those elements in our community and church, our team is drawing to the conclusion that our ministry isn’t being as effective as possible because we aren’t focused. We try to do too much in any one gathering and the things that we offer are just variations on a theme. We are spinning our wheels in the mud and that only results in deeper ruts.

We are on the right track. We’ve identified that there is a problem and are currently looking at what we can do to fix the problem. The next steps, however, are going to require patience and planning. We can’t make sweeping changes all at one, but rather they need to be gradual and baby steps towards our goals and ideas on what we can do to be more effective. Until then, we need to be in prayer asking God for direction, ideas, and vision. If we aren’t in line with God’s will for this youth community, we will do nothing but stand in the way. Please pray for our youth and the youth all over that don’t know the hope of Christ. We are called to be lights to the world and we’re working on how to make that light shine as bright as it can.