For instance, we just had a high school pool party tonight.  Some of my thoughts from this event:

• We had a good turnout – about 40% of our average Sunday student attendance.
• We had no new freshmen show up – that’s not good.
• In the future, I need to email our adult leaders encouraging them to come (none were there).
• We had a jr. high event that ended up the same weekend pulling some of the new freshmen guys.
• The big WIN of the night was seeing students connecting with each other.  We need to do more low-key relational events like this.

I’m hoping that tracking stuff like this immediately after the event will help me as I do planning and evaluation.  It’s tough to remember exactly how a event went a few months later.  And it’s also tough to see what the factors were that made the event what they were if they aren’t recorded immediately.

I’m taking a small group of students from our high school ministry to Doug Fields’ Student Leadership Conference this July 5-8 (which if you’re not….you should definitely think about it).  I’ve used several different ways to “recruit” students for this conference.  Hopefully these might be helpful for you as well.

Method 1 – The first year we went to this conference we used it to launch a student leadership team.  We hadn’t done any type of student leadership in our ministry for a couple years.  So, I looked around to see who were the students who were serving and had leadership potential.  Then we sent a letter to this small crew of students inviting them to take part in the conference.  A month or so after the conference we did a full-blown application process to kick off our student leadership “program.”

Method 2 – The next year we did the application process earlier.  We had students apply for leadership in late Spring to then serve the next school year.  We announced it and explained it in our large group settings.  We had students fill out applications and go through an interview process.  Then we basically enfolded the leadership conference as a part of that year’s leadership training.

Method 3 – This year is a little different, but pretty similar to Method 1.  We haven’t done student leadership in a while so we’re back to square one.  I’ve announced it a tiny bit to our ministry, put a blurb in the church bulletin, and did a blog post on our student website.  We’ve painted a picture of the type of student we’re looking for (either serving in ministry this year or interested in serving next year).  Then I’ve asked our adult leaders to suggest students who they think would be good leaders in our ministry and then I’ve sent them a personal invite on either Facebook or email.

We’ll probably again use the Student Leadership Conference as a launching point for next year’s student leaders.  Although my gut is that student leadership in our ministry next year will look much more organic than it will programmed.

How do you recruit student leaders?  Are you taking students to the Student Leadership Conference?

• They have a large group opening time on Sundays before they break into smaller Bible Study groups (our ministry does the same thing).  I loved they way they intentionally tied that time as an intro into what they were talking about that day.
• On that same note, a volunteer led most of that time.  He did a fantastic job with an object lesson to intro the day’s passage.
• On Wednesday night there were also a few things that were really cool.  I liked that the youth pastor wasn’t on stage the whole time.  A student led an opening game, students led worship, and a volunteer gave announcements.  When you hand stuff off like that, the quality may go down a little, but the engagement level goes way up which is worth it.
• After the Wednesday night program students hung around for quite awhile!  I’d say about 80% of the students stayed to hang out.  In my ministry 80% of the students are gone 5 minutes after we’re done.  A key for this in their ministry: free food.  They have a parent that coordinates different Sunday School classes bringing food each Wednesday night.

I had dinner afterwards with their youth pastor Rob Signs, as well as his fiancee Amy.  One of the cool things we talked about is a retreat they were doing a couple days later.  It’s called Coram Deo (Latin for “in the presence of God”).  And essentially it’s lots of guided quiet times and experiences in God’s Word.  They camp near the beach in San Diego and are able to pull the whole thing off for $50 a student.  I’m thinking about adapting something similar in our own high school ministry.  We could use a discipleship-oriented experience in the fall in our ministry, but I don’t want to add another HUGE high-priced item.
Next church to visit: Sandals Church

Immanuel Baptist Church

Sandals Church

The Grove

Saddleback Church

Harvest Christian Fellowship

The Well Community Church

Our Location: If you’re not familiar with Magnolia, we’re located directly across the street from CBU – a Christian college with nearly 5,000 students.  We are being bad stewards of our location if we don’t intentionally invest in this up-and-coming generation of leaders.

Our History: There are currently 4 of us on staff at the church who started out as interns.  I started at my church as a non-paid intern 12 years ago and now I’m on full-time staff.  Our internship won’t be designed to guarantee people jobs, but the reality is that it creates a pipeline of leadership for us for years to come.

Our Situation: We use interns, but it’s here and there, and not necessarily requiring the same thing of all interns.  My hope is to come out of February with a workable document and process to recruit, place, and develop interns.  At one point we had 4-5 paid interns, but our church (like many others) had to make budget cuts and those positions have all now been eliminated.  Our new approach is to develop a non-paid internship that provides value in itself because of the experience and opportunities it opens for interns.

I’d like to spend one-on-one time with 3 different people each week:
1) An ongoing time with a student I meet with every week.
2) Coffee or a meal with a different volunteer each week.
3) Coffee or a meal with a different student each week.  I realized a couple days ago that in just this school year with a little bit of planning, I could meet with every high school guy who’s regularly involved in our ministry.  I’m excited about this concept in particular.

Do you have a strategy for how you spend time with students and volunteers?

First Time Guests – On Thursday morning I send a hand-written postcard to the new students thanking them for coming.  I made a simple little postcard a few years ago with our logo on it and ordered a ton of them from Overnight Prints.  These are great to have as a youth pastor (for any occasion) and to provide for volunteers to use.

Prayer Requests – I take each request on Thursday morning, briefly pray for what the student has written, and then send them an email just letting them know I prayed for ___________.  So far, I’ve gotten responses from most of them.  I believe this proves that students do still check email (just not nearly as often as adults).

Both of these are no-brainer, easy things you can start doing tomorrow.  We don’t have a fantastic follow-up strategy going on, but we do have these two baby steps rolling that are more than we did before!

What do you use for follow-up in your ministry?

Former students “get” your ministry vision & strategy – Sometimes they may not be able to even verbalize it, but ultimately they know the culture and feel or your ministry.  So, if the culture and feel is the direction you’d like to be heading, they can be a huge asset to continuing that in your ministry.

Former students “get” you – It can take time to feel comfortable with a new volunteer sometimes and for them to feel comfortable with you.  The former students who are drawn to your ministry are typically going to be ones you’ve had a good rapport with.  From Day One of serving they will probably more comfortable quicker than the average volunteer.

Former students help you stay in it for the long haul – Youth ministry is tough!  We don’t get a ton of encouragement from students and it can be hard to stay focused long-term.  But when you see former students now serving alongside you, you know that you have made an impact.  You know that God has used you.  And that means…..that the punk 9th grade boy who you can’t stand right now…..might be one of your best volunteers in 5 years.

I’ve been reading Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I’m loving it as it’s a huge reminder of God’s grace in our lives – that grace that is completely undeserved and completely lavished upon us. I’m still sorting through a lot of this. I have a tendency to be very self-critical and one of the things I think I’m slowly realizing is that somewhere deep inside I believe that I’ve earned God’s favor. There, I typed it. I say that I must believe this because if I fully believed that grace and a relationship with God were completely dependent on God, then there wouldn’t be a need to be so self-critical. When I accept God’s grace, how can I be critical? Constant self-criticism implies that it all depends on me, not that it all depends on God. I don’t think I’m alone here. I think many of us, to some degree, are in this same boat. We profess with our lips that it’s all completely dependent on God’s grace, but then we live lives that declare otherwise by the way we focus on Christian performance.