Management and logistics are two of the most dreaded concepts for many youth workers; but without them, all our brilliant ideas for ministry are useless. Unless we manage what we do, our implementation will be lacking.
I have to admit, I love big ideas. I also admit I’m not wired to take care of the all the details. I continually need to learn from others how to make sure ideas turn into reality. For this roundtable, I asked four of the best youth ministry thinkers I know for their management advice.
Dr. Kara Powell is the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. As a 20-year youth ministry veteran, she speaks regularly at youth ministry conferences and is author and co-author of a number of books including Sticky Faith (releasing in 2011).
Scott Rubin is the director of Elevate, Willow Creek Community Church’s junior high ministry. Scott is also an author and speaker and brings a ton of experience in a church with a lot of moving parts.
Nancy Ortberg serves as leadership guru on the staff of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the San Francisco Bay area. She is an author and speaker who consults with many churches and corporations regarding healthy teamwork and focus.
Steve Argue is the life development director at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has been involved in youth ministry for the past 16 years as a youth pastor, instructor, speaker and writer. In addition to his role at Mars Hill, he teaches adjunct seminary courses on youth ministry and is a doctoral student at Michigan State University studying emerging adulthood, teaching/learning and spirituality.
YouthWorker Journal: Describe a management challenge you currently are facing and how you are approaching it.
Kara Powell: Our team is stretched to capacity and then some. We have more ideas and opportunities than resources or energy. We’re always asking, “Is this the best way to spend our time?”
Scott Rubin: We’re in the exciting process of shifting the space where our ministry meets for our weekend services. We need to be in temporary housing—for an entire school year! My challenge is how to communicate this most effectively to students, leaders, parents and staff.
Nancy Ortberg: I love to work with teams; but the way my position is set up right now, I’m not leading a team. It’s been really hard. Without a team to lead, I end up feeling like a consultant and not someone who is leading people daily.
Steve Argue: There are always challenges. Challenges mean you’re living. We want to help our kids, students and emerging adults make healthy transitions into new stages of development and spiritual meaning making. This has challenged us to think carefully about how to communicate and train our staff, volunteer leaders and parents.
YWJ: Who influenced you the most in your management skills and how?
Steve: I’ve learned through the years to adopt what I consider healthy qualities and avoid unhealthy qualities from many who have led me. Process is just as important as the end result. Managers who are insecure with who they are typically sabotage even the most holy of ideas, leaving a wake of hurting people.
Kara: My first boss was my own youth pastor, Mike DeVito. He and his wife shaped me in more ways than I have space to list. They saw something in me and called it out in me. They had high expectations for what God could do in and through me. I try to see that same potential in others.
Scott: My biggest influence is my senior pastor, Bill Hybels. I’ve grown a ton from watching him as his management responsibilities have grown from a smaller staff to having a global influence. His level of discipline and focus is unmatched. He has challenged me to shoot high in all areas of my leadership and management.
Nancy: Russ Robinson and Dick Anderson at Willow Creek were very good managers. I learned from them the strategic necessity of leadership wedded with management. The person who can take big ideas and boil them down to concrete details is just as valuable as the creative visionary who generates all the big thoughts.
YWJ: How have you learned from personal failure in management?
Nancy: I need to be careful not to start something new and move on to the next thing before I really implement a structure that can sustain it. That takes different gifts—the starter versus the maintenance person. I need to find other people because very rarely do those gifts exist in one person.
Kara: My long list of failures shares a common theme: the failure to ask enough questions. For example, I hired an intern and then had to fire him a few months later. He was a good guy and a gifted leader, but our visions for ministry were just too different. I hadn’t asked enough questions during the interview process to really unearth his theology and philosophy of ministry.
Scott: My biggest area of challenge is prioritization. The consequences of poor prioritization have brought times of putting out fires that could have been avoided had I been more proactive. At Willow we use a 6X2 strategy. I choose the top six things I must accomplish in the next two months, then I build my schedule around them. When I am disciplined and stick to my plan, there are fewer fires to put out.
Steve: Because of my temperament, I am more apt to see benefits and opportunities and have failed to share the cost of a new idea or approach. I’m learning to get both on the table. Then the cost and challenge is part of the journey, not a surprise.
YWJ: How can a youth worker who struggles with management issues learn to do a better job?
Scott: I honestly believe that having a learning posture is the best way to improve in any skill area. Reading from great authors on management is my favorite way to grow.
Kara: Ask yourself: “Which of my colleagues does a good job managing? Which church members do I know who similarly excel at management?” Sometimes you can identify best practices simply by observing. Other times you might want to ask these folks the secrets to their success.
Steve: I heard Dr. Christian Smith (sociologist at University of Notre Dame) say, “The people I know are not an adequate representation of reality.” Our impressions and intuitions need to be checked against good research and multiple perspectives. Youth workers who create their own vision for the next year, who enjoy being the prophet everyone follows or who only think about their youth ministry context miss the broader picture of what is truly going on in their youth ministry and the world around them.
Nancy: You can’t do everything. Recognizing the need for management is different than saying that I’m the person that has to do it. Can I get people around me who can do it, praise them, thank them and allow us all to do what we are best at? When you are new, you don’t want anyone to think you can’t do everything. You can do it, but you have to learn how to work with other people. Don’t try it on your own.
YWJ: How do you develop goals and measurements in ministry?
Kara: Begin with a narrative of what you hope God does in the future. Identify the values and steps that can take you toward that picture. As I set goals with our team, we try to make sure our goals are measurable (meaning there is a quantifiable number involved), time-bound (meaning there is a deadline) and assigned to teammates to implement.
Steve: This goes back to how do you define the problem and how you offer the solution. Good measurements measure what you want to really know. Anticipate someone asking you, “How did the retreat go?” Now, avoid the cliché answers. Ask, “Theologically, did we communicate the aspect of God and God’s story that we intended? Personally, did our team end up in a good place? Contextually, did we truly understand what our students and volunteers needed? Missionally, did we contribute to our bigger priorities for the year?” And…be honest with your answers.
Scott: You can find the right statistics to support just about any point you want, so be careful as you begin to establish goals and measurements in your youth ministry. Whatever you decide to measure is going to get extra attention. It’s worth asking, “What really needs to be measured?” Pursuing goals for students’ individual spiritual growth can be difficult to measure. You’ll need to select the right indicators to decide if your ministry is moving in the right direction.
Nancy: My first thought is do it collaboratively. You don’t set goals in isolation. You start with the end in mind. What do we want to see happen? Figure out what you need to get there, then measure those things. Be careful of numbers, too. There is something about numbers that becomes all encompassing. I would push to find metrics that don’t necessarily involve numbering things, because they take on a life of their own.
YWJ: What are the biggest management challenges in youth ministry, and how should youth workers address them?
Nancy: Youth workers need to realize that management and leadership are not the same things. It’s easy to think that if you’ve managed, then you’ve led. That’s not true. Leadership is about taking initiative. Management is about putting structures in place that don’t need to be recreated all the time. Don’t mistake those two. Leaders offer inspiration. Managers focus on efficiency. You need both.
Scott: This question is very contextual. Each youth worker will need to figure out his or her own management challenges by asking and answering, “What is the biggest obstacle to moving ministry forward?” Then you must be willing to attack your obstacles relentlessly. These obstacles probably won’t be simple and might even take more than a ministry season to fully realize an end result.
Steve: One of the biggest management challenges is handling crisis. People process shock, anger and grief in so many different ways. Caring for everyone else can mess you up. Another challenge is more pedagogical—the way we teach and learn. Learning involves incorporating new ideas, even reframing old ideas. This creates a tremendous amount of angst in people. I think that’s why students don’t like to study and adults resist change. Never underestimate the hard work of learning, changing and transformation.
Kara: The two challenges I’m hearing about the most are: managing up and managing parents. One of the best ways to build credibility with those who supervise you is to show you care about the broader church or organization. Don’t just speak and advocate for youth ministry. When it comes to parents, my best advice is to take the amount of communication you think you need to do with parents and triple it.
