About a month ago, we had our first ever Youth Worker Sabbath Retreat.  First off, I cannot tell you how amazing it was to get away from everything: work, teens, life, and simply being together with God.  There were a lot of things that I observed.

The first thing I observed was even before the retreat started.  We all understand that there is a deep need for us to get away and tend to our own souls, not only some each day, but also through periodic retreats.  But it seems like it is always the last thing on my list of priorities.  Even when we were talking to fellow youth workers about this retreat, there was one excuse after another as to why time could not be made for personal soul care.  I totally understand that it is easy to find other things that need to be done, but we must at times choose to take care our our own souls, otherwise we will not be able to assist others to do the same.

While on the retreat, we did not have a main speaker, a worship band, or even really a schedule other than meals.  Each person attending was asked to bring what they needed to refill themselves.  What was interesting was what resulted from this on the retreat… what resulted was Holy Play, Holy Pause, Holy Conversation.

HOLY PLAY:  Remember being a kid and just playing outside all day?  You were able to be creative and free.  Well, this happened a lot during our retreat. Since we were all about to get away from it all, we didn’t have to worry about what the next things happening was.  We could be in the moment and just play.  This happened through sports, nature walks, canoeing, one accidental swimmer (they fell in the lake), and through rec games.  Each of us were able, for a time, to let go of everything on our minds and just be in the moment and play.

HOLY PAUSE: I don’t know about you but taking time to rest and stop is not what I am good at.  There is and always be something that needs to get done in ministry, and it is very easy to just keep going.  But we all need time to stop and rest.  Those who chose to go on this retreat made rest a priority.  Not only that, but while on the retreat we all had times where we just paused.  We took naps, crashed on a couch, sat in rocking chairs, chilled in a canoe on the lake.  Holy Pause is a spiritual act of submission.  It is our way of showing we believe that God is God and we don’t have to be. 

HOLY CONVERSATION: Finally, throughout the retreat, there were all sorts of great conversations being had.  Conversations about faith, youth ministry, programming, soul care, confession, group therapy, etc.  In each of these conversations, God was present with us and through us, healing all involved.

It feels weird to say, but I believe that we all need permission to get away from what has become the “right way to be a Christian.”  In other words, a daily devotional, scripture study, prayer, and then go about you day.  While none of these things are bad, we can become so focused on the acts that we miss out on the why, God.

What if true Sabbath was each of us living out the things that give us life and refills our souls?

A while back I discovered something that is truly starting to transform my life…Hobbies.  While, this is not a ground breaking new idea, it has become a necessary one in my life.  For a while I realized my life was going to church, working on programming for church, studying for church, and a little family time.  What a hobby does is gives your life and mind a different focus.  It allows us, even for a little bit, to get away from it all and do something that fills us.

This can look like a lot of things.  For me, it has become wood working with pallets, a form of redeeming others trash into beautiful things.  For my wife it is being creative through art, writing, and also running.  For my intern, it is dancing in an empty room.  So what fills you up and gives you life?  Something that while you are doing it, and even before and after it, you find yourself alive.  Because I believe it is in these things that the life we find is God.

So what is yours?  How will you be filled?

YOU HAVE PERMISSION to break form the norm and be free to play, pause, and have Holy conversations so that you might be filled and healed to continue the work God calls you to. Now go and do it!

One of the biggest things I have ever learned on youth ministry, a totally game changer, is that I AM NOT ALONE.

It think that it is one of the biggest issues in ministry in general, but it is huge in youth ministry the the idea that the minister is on their own. It feels like you are on an island, and yeah there are resources out there to help you, but in the end, you, your soul as a person…you feel alone.

Have you ever felt that way? Do you right now?

Now, I know that God is our source of life and often we feel drained because we forget to continue our relationship with God in the midst of helping everyone else do that; but I also feel that isolation is a silent killer too.

It is time that you hear, I mean really hear that YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

When you spend time planning a lesson an know one shows us, literarily or figuratively.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
When you have a parent, pastor, member of the church, or other staff take something out on you, when it is really because of something else in their life.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
When it seems like everyone needs something from you and all you want to do is curl up in a corner and cry.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
When someone says or does something that deeply hurts you,but no one seems to care.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
When you feel like you can’t have your own doubts in faith because others will think you aren’t a Christian.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
When all you want to do is say NO, but you fear people will take it the wrong way.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

Now act on it. I have found that those who relate the most to this are those on the same island, other minsters. Find a group of other minsters who are on the same island and start a support group. We all need it, it just takes someone to say it out loud.

I hope this site can even be a place for you to be reminded that you are not alone, but deep relationships are going to be much more helpful in the long run.

May you go now, and remember that YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

At our last YPA gathering in Nashville, our topic was STUDENT LEADERSHIP.  The idea being how do we stop doing youth ministry TO students and start doing youth ministry WITH students?

While this is by no means a knew idea, it is obvious that it does not seem that anyone has figured out a perfect method.  After talking for over an hour about our struggles, frustrations, and some joys with student leadership, there were a couple things that stood out to me.

1. WE ALL WANT TO TRAIN STUDENTS TO BE LEADERS

While there were differing views on how to train, everyone felt that it was important to train student leaders.  It is important, not to make our youth ministries look great, or even to have youth sit in on church committees and feel good about it, but it is important because we are walking along side teens and having them start to learn and be the church; not only for the future, but now.

2. WE ALL HAVE FRUSTRATIONS ABOUT PAST EXPERIENCES

It seems like everyone in our group has tried at least one if not 5-6 different leadership models.  Most often, we as leaders revert back to what we experienced in when we were teens.  The problem was that for many, these frustrations were leading to a lack of desire to train student leaders.  It was even said that it is just easier if “I” do it; and I couldn’t agree more, but it is not better.

One of the biggest frustrations was how do we train leaders and hold them accountable to step up and be different and committed, while not running them off.  I know for me this has been a struggle.  I set up training times, give them tasks and leadership roles, and when they fail (and at some point they always will because they are learning) I struggle with how do I approach them about this.

I think that it is because we have gotten to a point where we don’t want church to be a burden on people because we think that they will just leave, because let’s face it they can.  But I think that the bigger problem, is that when we don’t hold them accountable, and we don’t make faith something that takes a life change commitment, then we haven’t really taught they how to be the church at all.

I wonder what would happen if you set up student leadership in such a way, that you ask teens who want to lead what they are going to sacrifice to be a leader?  I wonder what would happen if you let them know you would hold them to a higher standard, and you did? I wonder if we are going about if wrong with the fear that we might make it too hard, and instead we are just making it cheap and worthless?

I believe that if we challenge students beyond what they expect of themselves, and walk along side them to help guide them along the way, we will start to realize how much leadership they can have in the whole church!

So, how do we do this?, what model do we use?, what training do they need?

I think that the answer might just be DOJO.

I know, WHAT?! But hear me out.

DOJO is Japanese for “THE PLACE OF THE WAY.”

The idea being that students come to learn from adult leaders “THE WAY” of arts.  Did you know that the first thing Christians in the Bible were called in the book of Acts, before Christian, they were called followers of “THE WAY.” The idea that this Jesus movement was not just a new religion, but an entirely new WAY of life, or maybe way to life.

What would happen if we saw our churches and specifically our youth ministry spaces as DOJOs? A training ground for THE WAY, where we ask leaders in our churches to walk along side teens, and mentor them in faith and leadership.

Maybe that is our problem, we are so worried about making the perfect program, that we are missing out on the most obvious answer: find adult leaders to mentor new leaders.

Youth Pastors Anonymous – MORE THAN A VOLUNTEER Training Day 2012 from Chris Cummings on Vimeo.

The funny thing was, that while we put a lot of work into planning it, I didn’t have that feeling of “oh no, I have to figure out something to do to train my volunteers.”  In fact, the whole process filled me with energy, and after the event, my spirits we lifted so high, even though I was tired; it didn’t feel like I was exhausted and drained.

It all started at a normal YPA meeting when we were talking about volunteers.  We were sharing about how it can be hard to train our volunteer team well.  And then it came to us, what if we all trained our volunteers together?! From there, we all were excited to implement ideas we have had that we didn’t have the resources to pull off separately.  Every part of it was amazing!

Working together with other youth ministers for the same goal, each using our strengths, was such an amazing gift!  I wonder why we don’t do this more?  Why is it that we too often try to go it alone in ministry?

What if did other things together too? What if you partnered with several other youth ministers to write curriculum together for your groups, wouldn’t it be better than if you did it on your own?  What if we planned mission trips together?  What if we took retreats together?

I think we would be more energized, the ministries we work for would become better, and I think it might be more like what the Kingdom of God is like. That is why we ended the event with Communion to remember that we are all in this as one.

“Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.”
-Ephesians 4:1-5

It felt like it had been forever since we gathered, and we had a lot to catch up on.  I couldn’t wait to see everyone, I knew we each had a long summer filled with ministry and would each have amazing stories to share.

When it came time, many who are always there weren’t, and others had many other things that needed to be done that day and had to leave early or arrive late.

Something felt off, I am not sure what it was but I think that Sam Tidball felt it too, and here is a great thought for us all to think about as ministers. 

WHY DOES IT SEEM LIKE OUR YOKE IS HEAVY?

Here is her post:

Today I met with a wonderful group of youth ministers called Youth Pastor’s Anonymous.  A small group of us met and we tried to answer the question “How is your soul?”. I was not surprised at how many of the minister’s answered stressed, exhausted, worried, and drained. Most of the worries and the stress revolved around similar issues… money, church drama, bad leadership, too much programming, business, and personal life issues.  I feel this way most of my days as a minister. I walked away from the meeting reflecting on how insanely hard ministry is. Then I read in the Bible… from Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  What the heck was Jesus talking about?!!! Seems to me Jesus’ yoke is very hard… or at least in the context of ministry. Didn’t you hear us Lord? We are tired. Burned out. Stressed. Our hearts are heavy!

Well, maybe there is a reason for that. Maybe we feel this way because we don’t understand what Jesus’ yoke was. In ministry we tend to think taking Jesus’ yoke means to do God’s job. We try to help people get saved, get them to church, heal them, make them happy, fix their brokenness, etc. When did Jesus ever ask us to do these things and why do we fee it is our responsibility? No wonder people in ministry or leadership positions get so burned out.

If we did ministry like Jesus we would invite others along side us as we all did ministry together. We would serve those in need, pray for healing, and basically just live life and spend time reflecting and sharing stories about it. Isn’t that what Jesus did in a group of 12? He didn’t overwhelm Himself by trying to plan out every detail of a service or stress about which curriculum to choose for the year. He lived life with others and let them watch and participate in how He lived. It’s certainly not wrong to spend time planning. However, I wish we would spend more time praying and serving WITH those who are in our flock instead of freaking out about what to do FOR them.  

Maybe we are so burned out because we don’t practice what Jesus preached. In my experience, many minister’s are some of the WORST followers of their own preaching and teaching, just like doctors or nurses can be the worst patients. I say this because I can honestly tell you I don’t read my Bible daily like I encourage others to do. I read it when I feel like it which doesn’t seem that healthy compared to what I teach. I don’t have scheduled devos or any sense of an organized personal faith life. I don’t really have a planned sabbath and my life is pretty chaotic. So why is it so hard? 

We don’t spend much time alone with God listening to the Father. We try to fix everyone else and we forget to assess our own personal health. We assume we are in God’s will trying to fix others who desperately need help. Truth is… if we are healthy ourselves people will follow. Perhaps we should spend less time planning and more time LIVING so that others can learn best by watching how we live. Truth is… if we practiced forgiveness instead of gossiping to others when we are mad then there might be less church drama. Truth is… if we tell others NO more often it just might set an example for others to sabbath. Truth is.. if we did ministry more like Jesus we would spend less time being stressed and more time at the foot of the cross finding true rest and peace. All we need to do is throw seeds and bring others to His life giving water. We are not responsible for salvation or fixing anyone. We simply must strive to love like Christ and invite others to walk with us. I think that is what Jesus meant when He said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” at least in the context of ministry.

Check out more of Sam’s posts at: http://samtidball.blogspot.com/

We bought old school decoder glasses for each person, and then we coded our worship songs lyrics on the screen so you had to see through different lenses in order to join in.  It was a fun and pretty simple way of doing something different.  I have been asked some about how to do this, so here you go.

It is pretty simple, you have a back ground text or simple image in a light blue (if it is too detailed it won’t work well), and then overlay the red squiggly image over top.  Then this works on your phone, screen, tv, print outs, almost anything.  The way it works is the red is canceled out by the red lenses in the glasses, while also darkening the light blue background.

The only trick is that you will need to make sure that the white between the red squiggles is deleted, otherwise you cannot see your background text image.  I used a photo editing software for this, but you can now use Microsoft Word for this!  Insert the overlay image, and click on it and go to the Picture Tools tab, then Color, and then “Set Transparent Color”, then click on the white part of the image and it will delete all the white.

Here is where I found the glasses I ordered.

Click on the images and then save image as, and you are set!

If you want to test it out, find some red cellophane paper, it works ok, but the glasses are much more clear.

Comment if you have any questions!  Happy coding!

About a year ago, I studied what it means to be the church with our youth group.  We spent an entire semester on it, looking at Acts, the Gospels, and many of the letters; most notably 1 and 2 Corinthians.  Corinth was a very busy and important port city, because it was the little sliver dividing two major water ways.  Because of this, Corinth was a mesh of all different types of people, from different backgrounds, and different classes.  It is what was beautiful and difficult about the church at Corinth.

When we studied these passages, we decided
The Body of Christ is about ONENESS and UNIQUENESS.

ONENESS
I think ONENESS has become forgotten in our culture today, especially in the US.  Too often, the church down the street is seen as the competitor, not the teammate. I think that this is because of the “I” complex.  We, I mean, I am the only thing that matters, and even when I read scripture it is about what I can get out of it for me.  So when we read passages that call us to ONENESS, we think that means we need to be one within our local church, and sometimes not even that.  What we are called to as the Church is ONENESS as a whole.  This means not just our church, not just our denomination, but the Church universal. You know “one, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic Church.”  Or maybe “They will know we are Christians by our love,” but we can’t even love each other?

As I dream about the future of youth ministry and the Church, it greatly involves the uniting of the Church universal again.  Churches working together, seeking where God is at work already in their community and joining in, together.

UNIQUENESS
But I think that the Church and youth ministry future needs to have an increased UNIQUENESS.  When we stop worrying about what it happening down the street and trying to copy that.  Or trying to read the newest book on “How to build the best youth ministry (or church) ever.”  We open our eyes to our own context, our congregation and community, and we discover our UNIQUENESS.  We discover the special and specific needs of our community, and using the specific and unique gifts of our community, partner with God to speak hope into them.

What we will find when we do this is that there is never going to be a one size fits all church, but there can be a church for everyone, if we are willing to find our UNIQUENESS and work together as ONE.

FUTURE
I am very excited about what the future holds for the Church, Youth Ministry, Children’s Ministry, Adult Ministry, all ministries.  Because in fact these division have hurt our churches too.  What if we were just the Church? 

I call all of us to rethink, to dream, and to vision the future.  What does it look like if we embrace our UNIQUENESS and join together in ONENESS and go out, partner with God, and bring the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven?

In Sunday School last week, we talked about the Exodus story, God freeing God’s people from slavery and bondage.  Sharing about how we each in one way or another understand what it means to be in bondage, mostly from our own lives and guilt….I think that the best word used was SHAME.  We talked about how we knew that the Church should be the one place that we can be free from all of that and move beyond the shame and be vulnerable with each other.  And the very next statement, which we all said at almost the same time is the the Church is not this place. In fact, we felt that it might be one of the last places for many people to be vulnerable.

We as ministers understand that this is very true in the Church.  People put up walls and try to pretend that everything is great and ok, and I think that this is because there is this understanding, especially in the US that we have to be perfect to be Christian.  So, when we aren’t, we hide.

As we continued to discuss how we could move beyond the shame to vulnerability, we decided it had to be with a group of people that you really trusted, but that it also had to be molded for them.  People would be more willing to be vulnerable if they saw others be vulnerable.

This idea smacked me in the face.  I AM NOT VULNERABLE.

I realized that I can relate and listen to people, I can help minister to them and guide them in faith, but I don’t open up and share with them and become vulnerable myself.  I fear that this might be true in a lot of churches, and not just with youth pastors but all leaders in the church.

We must learn to be vulnerable with those we lead, or they will never move beyond shame to freedom.

So the question that keeps coming up in my head is: WHAT KEEPS ME FROM BEING VULNERABLE?

I know that this is because I think that my churches expects me to have it all together and set the perfect example, but even if that is what they expect from me, it is not what they need.  They need me to be real, broken, and messed up. The need to know that I have faith and I do not have it all figured out, they need to know I don’t have a perfect life, they need to know that even though I am a minister I hurt.  They need me to be vulnerable.

It is making me rethink how I approach teaching, discipleship, counseling, my faith…everything.

WHAT KEEPS YOU FROM BEING VULNERABLE?