Hey student pastor...this is what your senior pastor needs!

Head to any conference, listen to conversations around you, and you will soon discover that tons of senior pastors and student pastors have chaotic relationships. Sure they love each other and need each other but they often find themselves butting heads. Yes...I'm a student pastor. Yes...I have had my share of bad days with my senior pastors. I now work with 2 of the best senior leaders in the country (love ya Ron and Chad) and there are days I drive them crazy and they drive me up a wall. It's very simple and every student pastor needs to here this...THAT'S NORMAL. Leaders who work as a team are going to rub each other wrong occasionally because they are leaders. Leaders always think their way works. That's why we lead. With that said, there are some thing your senior pastor needs from you. If you want a healthy relationship with your senior pastor you are going to have to work at it just like any other healthy relationship. Your senior pastor needs...

• Public Loyalty // Your pastor needs to know you can be trusted. Andy Stanley says that maintaining loyalty in public leads to greater leverage in private. Your senior pastor needs to know that when things are not going well you have their back!
• Commitment to the Church // Your senior pastor needs to know you are for the church not just the ministry you lead. As we fight for the health of the church our senior pastor can fight to advance the student ministry we lead. This is a partnership!
• Vision and Passion // Our senior pastors need us to lead and lead strong. When our senior leaders see us succeed they have the freedom to empower us and let us do our jobs. Our senior leaders have enough on their minds without having to worry about the direction of the student ministry. Lead, reach teens, partner with parents, and make disciples and your senior pastor will have tons to celebrate.
• Information // This is critical. Keep your senior pastor in the loop. Let them know where you are headed. Share your victories and your struggles. I have never met a senior pastor who enjoys being surprised with info they did not know. Keep them in the loop.

Breaking free from failure

This week I had the chance to speak at Grace Community as we started our series called Free. Sunday we checked out how we can break free from failure and looked at how Jesus helped Peter move forward after failure in John 21:15-19. Jesus stepped into an awkward moment with Peter and helped him understand that his failure couldn't be allowed to define his future. The same is true in our own lives...failure can never be allowed to define our future. Here is the video from Sunday...

Breaking free from failure from Gcomchurch Sermons on Vimeo.

Check out the Orange Tour this year

One of my favorite weeks of the year is the Orange Conference in April. This fall a one day version of the Orange Conference is coming to a city near you and it is called the Orange Tour. The tour is a great way to set aside time for your team (staff and volunteers) to get away and think orange for a day while staying close to home. In our busy schedules we have to make time to think and dream. This is a great way to set aside some time to look forward and process what is next for your ministry. Some of our family ministry team will be at the Nashville stop and we hope to see many of you there. Now is the time to get registered...now is the time to make plans...if you are hesitant check out this video and see what the Orange Tour experience is all about!

Loss

In life we all face loss. On Sunday night we found out that 2 teenagers (a senior and a college freshman) connected with our church and student ministry died in a car wreck. Watching our students deal with loss has been difficult. Our volunteer team has even struggled as we wrestled with how to help our teens through the process. Loss hurts in any situation but when it comes to loss of life there is a deeper pain. When we lose those we love, we are confronted with the reality that this life is short...is not permanent...is a gift. We are now in the the middle of grieving and hurting with these families but as we mourn together we grow stronger. As I have reflected about this time of loss here are some things we are striving to remind teens...

• Life is short // We say this all the time but in times of loss we are faced with the reality of our own mortality. Over and over we have heard teens and adults reflect on the brevity of life. Our team is just trying to help teens learn from this loss. Life is short and the reality of that truth is in our face this week.
• God is present // It's during times of loss we long for the presence of God more than ever. God is not just present when things are going well. God is present in the hurricane of pain that death forces on us. This week our message is simple..God is with us.
• Relationships matter // Times of loss remind us that we need each other. Teens simply want to be together. For our team, the importance of the small group leader is elevated in times of loss. The consistent relationship a small group leader has with students really matters when teens face the hurt of losing a friend.

We have been reminded this week that we don't have all the answers. We are not in control. We also know we can't explain why. What we can do is simply be present as students face loss head on. We will point people to Jesus who saves and hope that sustains.

getting an outside perspective

This fall our Family Ministry Team at Grace Community partnered with the guys at Orange and hired in Joy Bowen to do some coaching with our team. We needed an outside perspective to help us process a staff realignment we were about to make. We called the guys at the Orange Coaching team and got some help and the experience was priceless for our team. We decided to handle two needs in one weekend. Friday night our staff gathered for a session with Joy and then the next day we held a training event for our volunteers. Because we brought someone from the outside in...

• Our volunteers heard a fresh voice // We can't take all our volunteers to the Orange Conference so this gave us the chance to bring a little bit of Orange home! Volunteers need fresh voices when it comes to training. Sometimes it helps to have another leader say the same things we have been saying.
• Our staff was encouraged and challenged // We were encouraged with what we were doing well and pushed to rethink some other plans we had for the future. That is what we needed. I loved that we walked away knowing we were doing some things right and still had some things to work on!
• We discovered some insight into what is NEXT // Our team knows now what we need to focus on in the coming year. That was the best part of partnering with Joy and the Orange Team this fall. From the outside Joy was able to see clearly what was next and pointed that out for us.

If you are interested in getting an outside perspective for what is going in with your ministry give Mark Miller an email or visit the orange website. I promise, it's worth the investment.

when crisis strikes

If you work with teens or kids crisis moments are things you work hard to avoid. We have policies, guidelines, safeguards, and checklists but still if you are reaching people then crisis will knock on your door from time to time. An accident, a volunteer mistake, a natural disaster, or a student that makes a terrible choice can all place our team right in the middle of a crisis. Crisis will come but the most important question is how we respond and lead in the middle of the situation. When crisis strikes here are a few guiding thoughts that our team tries to embrace.

• confront // In crisis situations your team needs a leader and needs wise decisions made. The quicker the issue is confronted the better control you will have in influencing the rest of the process.
• console // So many times in a crisis situation people simply need another person to listen and be fully present. People impacted by crisis have to know we care and we will make things right. We can't take away what went down but we can make sure people impacted feel loved and cared for.
• connect with parents // For those of us who lead children's or teen ministries we always have to keep the role of the parent in mind when crisis strikes. If something goes wrong make sure you are connecting with parents ASAP. With text messaging, tweeting, and Facebook nothing can be kept quiet. We never need to keep parents out of the loop. Connect with parents fast and make sure they hear the true story.
• clean up // With crisis you always get to clean up what went wrong. This is the stage where we have to process what happened and how to make sure it does not happen again. Clean up also involves making sure your church leadership is in the loop about what went wrong and what the correction was. Always make sure your supervisors are in the loop and involved with every aspect of cleaning up the mess. Never try to "clean up" alone.
• correct // Always make sure you allow crisis to make your ministry stronger by making the right corrections. We learn then we work to make things better and more efficient.

Ministry and My Kids

Balancing family and ministry is a constant struggle for parents in ministry. Chelsea and I both have leadership roles at Grace Community Church and the demand for us to balance home and church has become even more important. There are times both of us have responsibilities that take us away from home and from our kids and we signed up for the challenge. God has called us to serve His church and serve our kids and He is passionate about both. If God is for both then as parents we can be passionate about both and be effective at both. The other day my youngest told me that she loves church. My oldest is already volunteering at the age of 8. Both our kids believe in, enjoy, and are thriving in their growth as followers of Jesus because of the partnership our family has with our church. As a pastor (especially a student pastor) here are some things we are doing to make sure we have balance with church and home.

• We involve our kids in the ministry we lead  >> our kids understand and are involved in much of the ministry we lead...what a great advantage. They know the volunteers we lead with. They care our events go well. They even give us feedback (on ministry ideas for kids). when our last group of seniors graduated my 8 year old cried. Why? Because she loved those teens. That is a kid who is involved and connected!
• We make sure our kids are plugged in to their weekly small groups >> This is a big deal. Our kids are a part of our church. We make sure they are growing just like we are trying to hep other teens and kids grow.
• We make sure our kids are serving with us >> Our girls know there are things we do for "work" and things we do just to serve. We involve our kids in our effort to serve our community.
• We protect our days off and take vacation >> Yep, we take days off and we use our vacation time. Days off and vacation just help our family find health. We find we need it in order to function!
• We protect 4 nights of the week to be home >> being home and being in a routine is a big deal. We have community group night, a night of the week our kids are involved in outside activities, and a night where we are doing student ministry...the other 4  are nights we try to be home. Kids need to know they matter as much or more than anything going on at church. They see where we spend our time. 
• We leave work at work >> Home is home and work is work. When we leave the office we are trying to leave our problems at the office. This is hard with technology but it has to be an effort we make every week.

life and death...

Life comes with no guarantee. Life is a gift with given with a beginning and an end. What is most significant about life is what we do in the the process of living, the writing of our story, the choices we make. I watched this video today and was simply inspired. I hope you will take just a few minutes and hear Ed tell his story. This was a great reminder of the blessing and power of one life.

Great ideas, bad communication

A few weeks ago I went with a few of my friends to Atlanta to spend a day at the PGA Championship and play a round of golf together. We went to an older course in the Buckhead area. The course was in great shape and had a fun layout but it was lacking one thing...signs! At least 5 times during the day we were confused about where to go for the next hole, or what direction the upcoming hole was supposed to go because...THERE WERE NO SIGNS! There were times we simply felt lost and it messed with our experience for the day.

In the ministries we lead we can have great ideas, great environments, a great mission, great staff, a great strategy but if we do not communicate effectively with volunteers and attenders we can sabotage our effort. For those of us who lead family ministries we also have the tension of communicating well with parents. Communication and your communication strategy need as much attention as the time you put info shaping your message each week. Announcements, signage, volunteer info emails, social media posts are either helping people know the direction you are heading or confusing them. More than ever people are bombarded by messages that want their attention. When we cut through the clutter and hone our communication process we help advance our mission. I promise, effective communication will pay off in the end. Make sure your great ideas and followed by clear communication.

Revolution Conference 2011...coming Saturday!

Every August our Family Ministry Team at Grace Community hosts a conference for our volunteers who work with kids called the Revolution Conference. There is never a perfect time for a training event. We never get "all" our volunteers there, but we believe that training and renewal are a big deal. We also enjoy giving our volunteers a few surprise gifts for coming to our training events and we have a cool gift for this year! We are so excited that we have Joy Bowen from the Rethink Group as our guest speaker. Joy is one of our favorite leaders and she has so much wisdom from her time serving in several churches. We feel this day is important because it allows our volunteers to hear the "why" behind what we do each week and learn more about how we call all improve! Why and how are both so important ideas we need to communicate to our volunteer team. We can't wait to see how God works this year at the conference. To see our plan for the day just check out www.revolutionconference.tv.