In the beginning

Hey,
It's a little after midnight, I'm into the first quarter of this year's lock-in.
Just finished up two hours of laser tag, ice cream Sunday's in an hour.
Not much traffic on the bouncy jousting, feeling a little nervous about our messy games.
No one is close on the $50 scavenger hunt yet. Three hours to go till my wife tags me out.

So, about my first attempts at youth ministry and my first bits of training.

During my first year of youth pastoring my Senior pastor sent me to the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry conference at Saddleback.
Some people hate Saddleback and anything purpose driven.
I don't get it.
One local pastor said that purpose driven was just one of many models for doing ministry.
He's actually wrong.
Saddleback has a model, but being purpose driven is a philosophy.

BTW, the purposes isn't all there is to doing church.

We have four spiritual needs that coincide with four human needs.

Origin             Identity

Purpose          Significance

Destiny           Security

Salvation        Acceptance

However, I would argue that all of these needs are met though fulfilling God's purposes for your life.

btw, I don't work for Saddleback Church or Rick Warren. 
I don't agree with everything they do or even their expression of being purpose driven. 
I might have to repeat this a few times. 

THE BONES

By default every ministry or pastor has a purpose whether they are aware of it or not, whether they have chosen it or not. 

The purpose driven philosophy says that there are only 5 things the church does:

Worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism.

Everything that Jesus modeled or prescribed falls under one of these categories.

WHY I LIKE BEING PURPOSE DRIVEN 
PD is all about why you do things.

Some youth pastors may feel the pressure to do things to please parents, the kids, the boss, or other youth pastors - acceptance driven.
Some ministries are driven by the personality of the pastor, personality driven.
Ministries can be tradition driven, program driven, or institution driven.

I heard about an emergency meeting concerning my church's finances.  One deacon said, 'we just need to get more members in here and collect their tithes'.  An elder spoke up and said, 'Gentlemen, the lost do not exist to save this church, this church exists to save the lost.'

ministries, programs, traditions, churches, pastors

and even the Bible are just tools for acheiving God's purposes

One that is a little tricky is passion, being passion driven. 

Passion is great, you want passion, and you want to maintain it if it fizzles. 

But, passion has to be steered. 

There are lots of passionate youth pastors that have the best of intentions, but they may not actually produce disciples if they don't have clarity of purpose. 

The most dangerous non-purposeful drive is FEAR. 

It is very easy to have a fear driven ministry. 

Fear driven ministries are reactive and only treat symptoms of threats to your ministry, 

a purpose driven ministry is proactive and prevents the causes of threats to your ministry. 

Do we arrange our program because we are afraid of cliques?

Do we not do some ministries because we are afraid of the risks?

Do we do a lot of gimmicks because we are afraid that kids aren't going to want to come?

Do we not teach on some things because we are afraid of criticism or worse?

Being purpose driven will help you to say no to things that don't work or only used to work.
Or most importantly, you can identify things that may work great, but have nothing to do with the purpose of your ministry.
In our church, anything that is proposed will be followed by the question, 'what purpose does it serve?'

There are no guarantees, but being purpose driven will also help you not to confuse your means with your ends, your methodology and your goal.  For example 'fun' is a tool we use to achieve a goal,

but it is not our purpose.

BOOM, next blog entry: what do the 5 purposes really mean?
Is fellowship friendship?
Is discipleship Bible study?
Is worship singing?
Is ministry giving to a mission fund or washing cars at your church?
Is evangelism posting John 3:16 on your facebook status?


If you have any resources you'd like to share, books, sermon archives, conferences or even your own ministry philosophies... please feel free to comment. 

Here's a book that helped me a lot early on. 

Intro

Hey,


My name is Brian, I'm a part time youth pastor at church of about 150 with about 12 kids in our 7th to 12th grade student ministry.


I had a blog before this one, but it was just for my own personal entertainment.
http://metatribes.blogspot.com/


I wanted to start this in the hopes that my experiences in youth ministry might help another youth pastor.
There are a lot of resources for pastors, but not much for the ones at a church my size or a small youth ministry. I'm not going to bother too much with pictures or videos or links or even spelling, just want to get my story out there.


HOW I GOT IN
There's lots of drama that I can share about this process, but I'll just give you the Cliff's Notes.
I had just walked away from two unique and ambitious ministries when I returned to my home church.
I can't stand to sit on the sidelines so I quickly plugged in to volunteering.
I was young and committed to the church and ministry, so the youth group seemed like the right place.
As time when on the old youth pastor transitioned into the role of senior pastor.
Then I became the youth guy.


EARLY FORMATIONS
I was still in college when I took the job and had recently given up religion as a major in favor of social work, at the recommendation of the previous senior pastor.
His argument was that he never had anyone walk into his office asking about Thomas Aquanas, but he had plenty of people with a personal or family crisis.
I've heard many pastors joke about writing a book called, 'Everything I needed to know that Seminary Didn't Teach Me'.
He told me that seminary did not prepare him for families dealing with substance abuse, mental illness, unemployment, affairs, at-risk kids, building management or the political science of church members.


THE TRAINING I DIDN'T GET
I've looked at a few program descriptions and I was really turned off by Greek, Hebrew, Church History, and Systematic Theology.  I've met a few youth pastors that really geek out of that stuff, that's not me. I'm more excited by learning about Sumerian/Akkadian culture,  ancient near-east mythology/religion, Hittite technology, and the origins of the Phoenicians. I'll even go as far as Antiochus Epiphanies, but once we hit the Egyptian or Roman Empires I'm bored.


I've heard that studying church history is good because there are no new problems and we can learn from how our predecessors handled things.  I've also heard that knowing Greek and Hebrew can help resolve some theological problems.  In each case I don't know that the time and money would be proportionately greater than a Google/Wiki search (or refereed sites).  It would probably be a little bit greater.


SO, I'm actually not against Seminary, if you have an experience of how seminary helped you to be a better youth pastor please share in the comments below.


EARLY EXPERIENCES WITH CHURCH LEADERSHIP
Prior to volunteering I was a part of a generation-x church plant called The Cross.
Our point of contact for our denominational association also advised me not to go to seminary.
He said that our seminaries have failed to produce the kind of leaders necessary to reach my generation. Seminaries would only teach me how to do church in a way that my parents did church,
which was no longer working for the rising generations.


In preparation for this church start I was sent to several conferences and read many books on the paradigm shift from modern to post-modern generations (starting with Generation X).
The idea is that in the old days kids raised in churches would go to college and enjoy single life away from the church,
but as they got married and had kids they would return.
In the old days one generation was not so different from the rest, the generations of modernity.
But now hyper culture is changing everything and the prodigals are not coming back,
they are the first of the post-modern generations.


HOW IT STARTED
My first pastor sent me to a conference on generation x ministry by Leadership network.
It was exciting but overwhelming. There were so many pastors doing so many different ministries.
Although it was intended to help me as I entered a generation x church start, I took a lot of the ideas I found and carried them into youth ministry.
The biggest idea was that the generational distinctions of your target audience play a huge role in the feel of your ministry. And there are factors beyond 'teens are this way, college students are this way, young adults are that way'. 

Today's teens have some similarities and some differences from generation x teens. 

So I can only draw on my experiences as a teen to a point. 

Around this time I was riding the metro and working night security. I used that time to read through the Bible and read other spiritual books.  I listened to a lot of sermons on the radio and had a lot of cassettes by Ravi Zacharias.  He would reference other books that I would later read by guys like Geisler, Bruce, and Moreland. Really boring stuff.


GENERATION X CHURCH PLANT: THE CROSS
The Cross was fun. I learned a lot about what not to do.
I was young and naive.  I thought that because I was young and full of zeal that I everything I did was going to be blessed. HA! I was also arrogant, I thought the church was filled with irrelevant old fogies that didn't have my zeal. It might have been true to a small degree, but I really could have used some wisdom of some of those old timers.  No matter what kind of church, X'r, Boomer, Old-Fogy, things like communication, giving away ownership, humility and purpose are universal issues in the church.
Maybe I would have learned about that stuff in Seminary.


GRASSROOTS SUB-CULTURE MINISTRY: FOUND
Another early experience I had was with a group of young Christians that were starting an online Church called Found.
It was a lot like The Cross, we were excited about Jesus, fearlessly pursing lost ravers and punks, and lacked mature leadership.
It was my first experience with a ministry with sub-culture/counter-culture Christians and target groups.
It's too bad it didn't work out, it had the potential to be great. Again, I learned the value of mentorship and accountability.
I only kept in touch with two of the people from that community. I hope the others are still alive.


THE REST
As of this post I've been married for 11 years, I have a 4 year old girl and a two year old boy.
I love writing, drawing, cooking, dancing, comic books and synthesizers. My mom is Japanese, my dad is an ex-defense contractor and my brother is a vegitarian.  I was a punk rocker at the age of 13 and have been rebelling against the mainstream ever since. I'm an inductive and critical thinker. If I'm not working on something to impact eternity then I usually in a miserable mood.


Have a fun story about how you got into youth ministry? Interested in ancient near-east studies?
Please comment below. 


Don't judge a book by it's cover. 
Here's a book that helped me get a grip on generational distinctives and how they apply to the church.
Saw the author speak at a conference on doing church in the 21st century. 


Next up, my first attempts at youth ministry and the first formal training I received.