Todd Henry just posted his TEDx talkon his blog outlining the five areas we need to monitor in order to remain prolific, brilliant and healthy as creatives. Great talk. Check it out.
How do we create a compelling environment for older elementary in a preschool space? (We use a daycare center for Childrens space.) How do we do this portably? (We also load in and out each Sunday.)
How do we engage 5th graders when our groups are too small to divide them from the younger kids?
How do we create consistent relationships with a rotation of small group leaders?
Leaders are in the business of solving problems. In fact, if there werent any problems there probably wouldnt be a need for any leaders. But as a leader, ever feel like there are more problems than solutions? Or that your reservoir of solutions is pretty much depleted?
According to Todd Henry (author of Accidental Creative)our ability to solve problems are tied to managing five things:
Focus: Identifying whats critical and eliminating distractions
Relationships: Working with others who understand the problem and committed to finding solutions. We are truly better together.
Energy: Managing the things that deplete our energy
Stimuli: Exposing ourselves to a variety of sources of information. You never know where a solution could come from, but it helps to have a plan.
Hours: Scheduling time to focus on solutions. Placing yourself in the path of a solution, rather than just waiting for a solution to drive by.
Your ability to create new solutions to existing problems is largely influenced by your depth and breadth of knowledge in diverse domains of expertise. (Todd Henry, Accidental Creative).
Our problems often demand taking the various things we have and combining them in new ways. Some call this creativity, I like to call it resourcefulness. Its using what you have to get the job done. We do that by bringing all of the relevant information that we have at the moment to bear on whatever issue we are dealing with at the time.
A great way of ensuring that you get the job done is to constantly be adding to what you have to get the job done. Todd Henry recommends keeping a stimulus queue. Part of that is a reading plan. Heres mine.
What do you do to ensure you have what you need to get the job done?
Ministry Best Practice from Troy Fountain, Lead Pastor of Wiregrass Church, Dothan Alabama. I promised Troy I would blog about this. So here goes.
Have you ever noticed that anytime you throw something away, a week doesnt go by before you need what you just threw away?
Best Practice: if you throw something away, dont empty the trashcan for a week. That way if you need it, you can pull it out of the trashcan. If a week goes by and you dont need it—empty your trashcan.
This could revolutionize your ministry. I foresee that some tech savvy person could figure out how to apply this to digital files as well.
This is the best part of about conferences—nuggets of truth in the hallways. This is why I go to Orange Conference.
All leaders are learners, but not all leaders plan their learning.
Whats in your queue? Some of us know more about whats in our Netflix queue than whats in our reading queue.
Call me old fashioned but I still believe that much of what we need is in a book out there somewhere. But, Im still shocked how many leaders dont do much reading. We like to ridicule those with only book knowledge, but what about those with only experience knowledgei.e. their own uninformed experience. As leaders we are asked to make decisions on a moments notice. Evaluate a situation and give direction. Our ability to come up with a creative solution often has to do with the repertoire of answers we have available to us. We can glean those answers from our own experience, but we should also be looking for ways to broaden that experience. Maybe even utilize the experience of others. Lets face it our own experience only gives us a small list of options. What if you could access the experience of others? Great books do that.
Just recently, while readingAccidental Creative by Todd Henry, I found three great questions to help you populate your reading queue. Here are Henrys questions:
Where are you lacking information that you will need over the next three months?
What are you curious about right now?
What would be good for you?
For a long time Ive kept a queue of books that I plan to read. Anytime I run across a good book, usually the recommendation of a friend or a reference in a book Im already reading, I add it to a running note in my iphone.
I’ve had several people ask about getting information on the breakout I did at San Diego called Why Children Are the Most Important People in the Church–Everything you wish your senior pastor knew about Children’s Ministry.
I’m attending the Children’s Pastors’ Conference in Orlando and promised people attending my breakouts that I would put some resources online. So here you go.
Breakout: I’m Not Creative: Leading people who don’t think they are creative.
Most people decide to follow Jesus between the ages of 4-14. This has been called the 4-14 Window. And if you are in church ministry being mindful of this window could be the most important thing you do. It is certainly why I believe that kidmin is the most important ministry of the church.
Kidmin is the most important ministry of the church.
I think that the 14-24 Window may be the next most important. While many decide to follow Jesus between 4-14, what their lives will look like, whether they will be fully devoted followers of Christ or just church attenders, whether they will be spiritual champions or spiritual second-handers is largely shaped by the decisions they make between ages 14-24. This is a monumental time in a persons life that we cannot afford to neglect.
The evidence seems to bear outthat the church at large is not doing a very good job at this. In fact it was suggested in a recent article that we shouldnt really be concerned with this age group at all. Instead, we should just chalk it up to stage of life and wait until they come back to the church in their mid-thirties. The short sightedness of this article made my toes curl. Most of the people I know who are in ministry today made decisions to commit their lives to service between 14-24. We are seriously impacting the future leaders of the Kingdom of God by neglecting this age group.
The most important aim we can have for 14-24 year olds is helping them find their place in Gods Storyhelping them commit their lives to meaningful service in the Kingdom of God.
Here are just a few foundational things churches can do to leverage this spiritual window.
1. Connect youth with mature Christian adults. The more the better. Check out Family Based Youth Ministry by Mark Devries.
2. Get 14-24 year olds in circles. Real small groups where a mature Christian adult is investing in a small group of students every week. Better yet, have this person travel with them through high school and college. Yes, even through college.
3. Dont let ministry end at graduation. The average 18 year old will be making most of their most life altering decisions in the first few years of college. Most youth are virtually abandoned on graduation day.
4. Incorporate 20somethings into a total ministry strategy from birth through 25. So much is wasted because Childrens Ministry, Youth Ministry and College Ministry leaders dont play well together. The bodies left in the gaps between these silos is staggering. We must come together and develop a unified strategy.
5. Think beyond your curriculum. The destination of a series of classes or a curriculum is more knowledge. More knowledge and more classes cannot be a substitute for people doing life together.
6. Youth and 20somethings must have a sense of belonging in the church not just the youth ministry. Check out this interview with Chuck Bomar.
7. Help youth find their place in Gods Story.
8. Connect the Church and home.What happens at home always trumps what happens at church.
Just in the last year there have been several books written on the topic of youth leaving the church. Among them You Lost Me by David Kinnamen at the Barna Group; Slow Fade by Reggie Joiner, Chuck Bomar and Abbie Smith; Sticky Faith by Kara Powell. The topic of youth leaving the church is perennialthat is it seems to be a topic that pops up in cycles. (Check out my post on an article called Why Do Teenagers Drop Out? From Teach Magazine Summer of 1963.) While it draws a lot of statistical studies the truth is, for those of us in youth ministry its personal. We know the kids who walked away from church and faith. They are more than numbers they are faces.
This last week I had the opportunity to corner Chuck Bomar and ask him some questions about why youth drop out and what the church can do about it.
The article cites three reasons for teens dropping out of church:
1. Not enough activity I.e. most environments were sit and soak environmentsyouth wanted to be involved, they wanted relational environments. They wanted to connect with their peers in meaningful ways.
2. Adult hypocrisyleaders/teachers were not prepared, not invested, or more invested in transferring information than transforming a life.
3. Boredom and lack of challengeyouth were looking for real life connections between their life and the Bible
Do any of these things resonate with you?
Check out the final summary:
Two overall impressions gained from tabulating survey results were that dropouts were saying in effect: 1) Im here, but unused. Give me something to do; 2) Im here, but you arent hitting me with Gods Word. Your shots are off target. Churches today need dedicated spiritually strong leaders who know how to reach young people with Gods Word and use them to His glory (and their satisfaction). It is one of the greatest needs of the hour.
There are over 4 million children living in the non-urban villages of Cameroonan African country the size of California. They speak over 270 different languages. In their churches, childrens programs are rare, childrens teachers are rarer and tools and resources are rarer still.
With the help of Wycliffe the Bible is being translated into several of the indigenous languages. However, Chris Johnson saw that most churches in Cameroon dont have teachers and they dont have tools. Wycliffe in partnership with 1 for 50 has a goal of training at least one teacher for every 50 kids. He also saw the need for childrens materials to teach kids the Bible in their own language in an age appropriate way. So he is working on a project to create 52 lessons based upon the Gospel of Luke. These will be the first childrens Bible lessons ever written in their mother tongue.
Few teachers! No tools! The first Bible lessons! This floored me.
From here I could go several directions. The easiest would be to talk about how crazy spoiled we are. Seriouslyhow many curriculum choices do I have to choose from? There are enough free resources online that I can create several years worth of curriculum. Its all at my fingertips, and I can put my lesson together on Saturday night and print it out for Sunday morning on my own desktop printer. But this is not the direction I want to go.
We have everything we need to do the best we can.
When I see how little they have, and I see how much we have—yes, we should give; we should do whatever we can to help—but, heres something just as big: Out of respect for the little they have and the much we have, mediocrity on our part is inexcusable. We have people who can be teachers. We have excellent resources. We have everything we need to do the best we can. We have what many people around the world will never have. Out of respect for them we should be creating the best environments, training the best teachers, creating the best curriculums, the best resources and the best programs. Anything less is inexcusable.
