When my kids were little, one of the fun things to do was to gather in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon and cook something together - usually a chocolate cake or chocolate brownies or chocolate chip cookies or chocolate .... something! You get the idea!Trouble was as we read through the recipe, unpopular ingredients were downsized and more yummy ones were increased.
"Two cups of plain flour""Eww! I hate flour, let's just add one cup."
"Teaspoon of cooking soda."
"Yuck! That tastes totally gross! Leave it out!
" Two tablespoons of cocoa."
" No! Double that! We want it to be really chocolately."
...And so on.
Of course the result would end up a rock hard, bitter slab of inedibility!
We realised that to get the magnificent, shiny succulent results promised in the accompanying photos, we had to sort of, follow the recipe and include all the listed ingredients in roughly the proportions suggested.To use a terrible metaphor, there is a metaphor here for us baking a 'church cake.' There are vital ingredients that need to be folded into the mix if we are to be effective.
I remember many years ago, when I worked with Caleb Ministries, we would often be contacted by churches looking for help in calling a new minister. We'd spend a good bit of time consulting with leadership teams as they worked through the process.
Anyway, on this one occasion a church secretary phoned me to ask if we had any possible names of potential youth pastors that she could take to her Board meeting that night. I asked her about the previous youth pastors who'd worked for them.
"Well, she said, "We've had three very diverse youth pastors in four years, all very different one to the other, and the last one has just finished up - and the youth ministry seems no better off for all the money we've spent on it."
"The first one was into outreach. He had the dreadlocks and piercings and spent all his time out there in the community hanging out with the street kids, helping at the local council with their kids at risk programme, doing sport at the high school. He was passionate about social justice! It was great in that there seemed to be all manner of kids hanging round the margins of the church, but it was really intense and heavy work 'carrying' all the needs and challenges that the kids brought."
She paused before adding guiltily,"To be honest it was almost a relief when he finished up because we were all so exhausted. Sadly, within a few months most of the kids had disappeared and were were back to the handful we're started with."
"So we thought we needed a different approach. The next guy was a very serious and thoughtful theological student. We figured it was time for a bit of bible study. For the next few month he ran a number of really thoughtful and intense bible studies and had many deep one-to-one pastoral conversations with the kids. We did gain a number of older teens who personally really appreciated his ministry, and who grew in confidence and maturity, which was just great - but not much else happened. After he left, so did a number of them and we were back where we started."
She drew breathe,"So when he moved on, we figured that we would copy the more successful churches and appointed a young woman who had been a worship leader at one of the bigger Pentecostal churches. So, for the last year the noise volume has lifted the roof at the nigh service. There's audio-visual screens, a smoke machine, a band with loads of long and loud music, and we have a large group of younger teens who just love the worship and sense of belonging. But the outreach of the first guy and the discipleship of the second guy seemed to be missing."
"Anyway, she's now left, and we've not been able to keep the Services as dynamic as she did, a lot of the kids who attended go down the road to another church with a cooler service. So, we are wondering what to do for an encore! Maybe you know someone who's into cross-cultural mission because we haven't tried that yet! Or maybe a youth care specialist?"
Outreach, formation (or discipleship), celebration, pastoral care and cross-cultural mission are all vital ingredients for a healthy youth ministry (or church), but they need to be considered together - not just one at a time as was happening here.
Often a minister will have a passion and capacity for one or two of these in particular, as was the case with the phone call. That's fine, but what that means, though, is that the leadership team will need to consider with the minister, how to ensure that the other ingredients are still folded in. Can you imagine if the church in the story could have added the formation and worship to the outreach and had all three supporting each other?
Often strategic documents jump directly from Vision and Mission statements to the nuts-and-bolts programmes and plans needed. I have found it helpful to pause and first consider what all the ingredients are, and to make sure they have all been included before the planning begins.
These “functions” are not a list of tasks or programmes, but rather a list of ministry areas (ingredients) for which we need to set priorities.
The “functions” are not the “structure” of the organisation. When we have identified the “functions” then we establish the most useful structure and programmes for achieving these objectives. There are several ways we can organise ourselves
One large cross-cultural mission agency's home office thought about how it would best serve the mission of the overall agency on the home-field. They concluded that their vital 'ingredients' of 'functions' were these below. To do these things well together would best fulfil the overall purpose.
- Ministry: Ministry to the local churches and their members mobilising them for world mission.
- Public Relations: Clear and consistent communication with stakeholders and clients.
- Resource Development: Financial, spiritual and practical resources for the field-workers.
- Personnel: Recruiting and care of all mission members
- Training: Orientation and training for new and established members
- Management: Good administration and finance processes
- Accountability: Policy formations, Board and constituent reporting.
One local congregation concluded that the following six functions were the 'ingredients' that they needed to consider carefully if they were to live into the future they had identified:
- Outreach: Being salt and light - Taking the good news to our community
- Fellowship: Building a community of interdependent, loving people
- Discipleship: Teaching them to understand and obey Christ.
- Mission: Discovering God’s will for our people in the Great Commission.
- Worship: Celebrating God together.
- Leadership: Effective and efficient governance, management and leadership.
What are the ingredients; the key areas of your ministry?
What are some of the key activities that might sit under each ingredient (or function)?
Is it helpful, with your leaders team to do a SWOT conversation(Strengths? Weaknesses? Opportunities and Threats?) of each area?
Are there gaps? Are there particular functions that dominate? Is it still the right list of ingredients?
... And, from time to time, we might ask the more difficult question - is this still the right recipe?
