It has been a long time practice of mine to schedule, organize, and publish a yearly student ministry calendar. This planning takes place in the late spring early summer of the year and launches at the start of the new school year. Typically, I plan for September through the end of July. This past year, I did what I've done for years. But for the first time (maybe the very first time) I am facing significant calendar changes.

Good planning is crucial to your student ministry. Even more crucial is communicating your plans so that you can maximize people, budgets, time, and dates. Early in my career I made it a habit to plan out the entire student ministry calendar and have it ready for parents at the start of the new school year. This advanced planning allowed me to lay out the year, compare it with the church calendar, lay claim to some important dates and church space, and provided parents the heads up time to schedule vacations, trips, and activities around what I was hoping to do with the student ministry.

While not fool-proof, having the calendar ready in advance helped to navigate a number of would be calendar conflicts and set us up for a good year of ministry. Sure there were the eventual conflicts, cancelations, postponements, and rescheduling. That's going to happen. Ministry is alive and breathing and there will be conflicts. But if you can reduce those conflicts, well, ministry becomes a little easier.

There were cheers and applause, congratulations and thank you's as the parents expressed their appreciation for such a well thought out calendar. Everyone seem delighted by the effort, and I, well, I loved knowing that my year was set. That is until we crossed into the new calendar year.
​
At a staff meeting in early January, we pulled out the church calendar and looked at January through April. Within a matter of minutes, I saw my well thought out calendar go from a work of art to a mess of conflicts and potential cancelations. While it could have been worse, I have at least one full month of student meeting that were going to need to be completely rescheduled. Completely rescheduled!!

My first thought...this wasn't fair! I spent hours, days, WEEKS working on my calendar, why should I have to be the one who has to change everything? Hey, I'm human. But fortunately, my years of experience spoke up, and I began to see not the conflict, but an opportunity.

There will always be times in our ministries where our plans will collide with the rest of the church. Since most of us work in smaller churched where space and people are shared, we will always run into conflicts over dates, times, rooms, and even people. But here are three quick reminders to help us as we work through the pitfalls of calendar planning.

Whether you plan out your student ministry calendar 3 months, 6 months or even 12 months in advance, you need to be planning in advance. Long range planning is what many business and organizations do. It helps them to see where they are going, what's coming up next, and allows you to forecast and plan your budget and resources.The further out you are able to plan, the better you  are.

I like to look at the entire year. It helps me think about activities, themes, teaching series, and the types of trips we will take. I find that I have the time to make sure what we're looking to do aligns with our purpose and direction. I am able to ask questions, bring in ideas from other church leaders, parents and students. I can set aside budget money, or look for new sources of support to cover costs. (This proved super helpful this past year in that I was able to go before our Stewardship Team and share some plans we were making for the new year, while identifying some new costs and expenses. That meeting led to a significant increase in funds to help cover those new costs. I'll share more in an upcoming blog post.)

Your plans don't have to be concrete. They can be flexible and tentative, but do your best to be as accurate and complete as possible. And that leads us to our next thought.

No one will ever be able to create a ministry calendar and not have any changes. It's impossible! There will always be conflict. People are creatures of change, thus our plans change all the time. In student ministry, we're dealing with a lot of different people and a lot of different calendars. From families within the church and community, to the church calendar, to school calendars, to athletic calendars, to even your own, personal calendar (which you need to keep track of, by the way) there are a lot of potential conflicts. So learn to be flexible!

Yes, it is super helpful to give parents a yearly ministry calendar, but the reality is, that calendar is going to change! So make it a tentative calendar, subject to change as the year moves on. Let people know that there will be changes, cancelations, postponements, and reschedules. And ask that they be as flexible as you will be when this conflicts arise.

This is probably one of the more important thoughts, communicate the change! It's easy for us to sit in our offices look at the calendar and reschedule your events. What's harder is communicating the change so that everyone is on the same page!

When conflicts arise, remember to communicate the changes. Notify parents and students of the conflict, give a short reason for the change and update them with the necessary information. The trick, however, is in HOW you communicate. Hopefully you have a communication plan in place that helps you disseminate information. So whether it's through email, a newsletter, a text message, or by making 50 phones calls, make sure you are communicating the change.

It would be great if we never ran into a calendar conflict. But the reality is, conflict and change is inevitable. So go with the change. Be as organized and on top of things as possible, but when conflict and change come, just go with it.

For me, I am replacing most of my March and April. And instead of complaining about the conflicts, I'm looking for ways that the conflict might bless or add to our overall ministry strategy. In some cases, the conflicts are because of congregational activities that the students might not otherwise participate in. So instead of separating our student ministry out of the event, we're looking to become part of the event with the hopes of building a stronger bond between the student ministry and the congregation! And that, I believe, is a great thing!

​- jay

I saw this video in my Facebook feed this morning. Because the title had millennials in it, I had to watch it. Being a GenX'er, and a pastor who has worked with and continues to work with students who now fall into the millennial age bracket, and the next generation, I am always interested in what's being said about the generational breakdowns.

Simon Sinek is an author, speaker, and consultant who writes on leadership and management. (Wikipedia bio) His websites, SimonSinek.com and StartwithWhy.com, are chalked full of tips, how-tos, tools, and resources for leadership and management, including his books, Start With Why, and New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t..

What struck me about the video was his assessment of the Millennials. Simon suggests four characteristics that millennials deal with; "failed" parenting, technology, impatience, and environment. Please take a few minutes to watch the video below.

So, is this true of all Millennials? Or is this a glimpse of a larger problem that has infected society with a deeper cultural issue?
​
As I watched Simon describe his four characteristics of parenting, technology, impatience, and environment, I found myself agreeing with his assement. The realities are "failed" parenting, increasing use of and addiction to technology, lack of patience, and the lack of conifidence in social and corporate settings are trends that we have seen in our student ministries and community families for a number of years now. But is it just the Millennials?

I think Simon is on point with his assessments, but I believe it's more than just a millennial issue. For instance, as a parent to parents, I would strongly suggest that we consider our roles as parents. I believe that there has been some break down in fulfilling our responsibility to parent our kids. I think it's time that we stop coddling our kids and instead begin preparing them for the realities of life; relationships, careers, success, failure, and soforth. To continue to deprive them of these realities is only going to prolong the problems we see already developing in our society.

Let's rethink our decisions when it comes to the availability of technology. Yes, I am one that deeply believes in the value of technology, but as a tool for life and not as a way of life. Having 3 teens with smart phones and tablets, I am all to aware of the dangers of unlimited access. To enhanse the problem even more, 3 of our 5 have been given laptops from the school for their studies. That would be great if the district had a more comprehensive plan for the technology, but the reality is, they now have a new device to watch videos, check social media, and surf the web with. And let's be honest, not only are they doing it at home, but their doing it at school as well.

But it's not just parenting and technology.

As a youth worker to youth workers, if you served students between 2000 and 2015, we are just as quilty as the parents. Because for many of us, we have created a student ministry bubble within our churches that has supported the same kind of harmful thinking. We have catered to our students in creating attractional, entertaining, and consumer driven ministry models that have separated an entire generation from the the large body of the church.

Over the last 20 years, we have become super influencial with our students. Students listen to what we say. They watch what we do. And they make life changing decisions based on the influence we've had on their beliefs, principals, practices, life styles, and purposes. I'll talk more about this in an upcoming blog series I am researching and preparing for about student ministry and the church. Look of it starting in 2017.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we have created the problem. And now we have to make a few changes. We need to step back and ask some hard questions, both in parenting and in ministry. It's something that we all deal with. In some way, if we are honest, we would have to say that we too are impacted by these same issues. Even as a GenX'er, I found some of what Simon describes to be true of me and my generation. So to limit this to just the millennials would be narrowing our blame and denying that there might be something greater at the root of all this.

I see Simon's first two charactistics as the problems that have produced the issues of impatience and inability to deal with the social and work environments. But I believe that we can, and we should begin the discussion of how we can start to resolve the problem. Relying on corporate American to deal with our failures as parents or youth workers, or teachers, or community leaders, or coaches, or whoever else has helped to raise this or any generation, is foolish and expensive. Instead, let's own the fact that we have helped to create a big problem, and take the time to begin to make it right.

What does that look like?

​That's the question. And while one blanket solution might be the most desired response, I don't think there is one. But I do think there are solutions, and these solutions are going to be unique to the problems and challenges each of us face.

To parents, we are going to have to ask ourselves some tough questions. To youth workers, we will have to recognize our part in this. And together, we might have to make some significant changes in order to right the ship.

But what do you think? In Simon Sinek's assessment on the Millennial accurate?

Do you think that it should fall on corporations to adjust their practices in order to accomidate this generation?

Do you think the problem reaches beyond the millennials, and reveals a deeper heart issue within people?

I'd like to hear from you. Please leave your comments below.

​- jay

It's Monday morning. Amy and I are home from our 2016 National Youth Workers Convention (NYWC) experience. NYWC is our annual pilgrimage to join with thousands of youth workers for training, encouragement, resourcing, connecting, and rest! This being my 14th NYWC, I can honestly say, it's still my most favorite ministry week of the year!

This morning I wanted to simply share the 2 highlight videos from the weekend. My hope is to give you just a little snapshot of the weekend, and how important it is that youth workers attend NYWC! I'm sure I'll share more about the convention later in the weeks to come, but for now, enjoy the 2 videos.

It really was an amazing weekend, and I am so honored to be able to be a part of the YS/NYWC staff.

​- jay