Youth Ministry Resources: Do you have a vision for your youth ministry? Do you know why your youth ministry exists, what you are trying to accomplish, where you want to be in say five or ten years?
Developing A Vision For Your Youth Ministry
Do you have a vision for your youth ministry? Do you know why your youth ministry exists, what you are trying to accomplish, where you want to be in say five or ten years?
A vision is a powerful tool. It’s the visionary leader who gets the most followers. Take Steve Jobs for example. By Biblical standards, he wasn’t all that good a leader (if mainly for the fact that he wasn’t a Christian). But people followed him everywhere because he had vision. The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad: all products inspired by a vision.
If you don’t have a vision for your youth ministry, invest time and energy in developing one. Ask yourself and the leaders and volunteers in your team questions and take the time to find the answers. Where do you want to go with your youth ministry? What will it take to get there? Visions don’t appear out of the blue sky, they grow and develop over time.
It often helps to feed your vision in different ways:
- Read mission and vision statements from other youth ministries, churches or Christian organizations: what appeals to you? What makes your heart beat faster or your energy level rise?
- Read books on casting a vision or biographies from known visionary leaders: what can you learn from these?
- Talk to different people: don’t just talk about your ideas with your own team, but seek input and inspiration from other people as well. Talk to the elders, the pastor, youth leaders from other churches, Christian leaders. And maybe even more important: talk with your young people. What do they think of your ideas?
- Inform yourself: what are the current ‘trends’ in youth ministry? Where do the ‘experts’ think the future of youth ministry is headed? What can you use or take from this for your own vision.
When you have built a vision, put it on paper. Remember: the most important task of a vision is to inspire people to act. So be bold in your vision, dare to dream big.
Then comes the hardest part: communicating your vision and keeping it alive. Sadly, many great visions have died a silent death stuck in a drawer somewhere. A vision doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t communicated, if it isn’t shouted from the rooftops at every opportunity.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking people will remember your vision if they have heard it once. You will need to remind them constantly. Preach and teach your vision every chance you get. Help people to make it practical for them, inspire them to do what they can do to make it come true.
And pray every step of the way. If your vision isn’t God-inspired and God-approved, nothing will come of it. But if you manage to put God’s vision for your youth ministry into words and communicate this effectively to your team, big things will happen for sure.
