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.
No comments:
Post a Comment