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Change Through Discomfort

April 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Matt: I admit it; I am a creature of habit. I like things to stay the same. As Steven says, “Matt is not the biggest proponent of change”. I also know that as a Student Ministry Leader, discomfort is one of the ways that God will stretch and grow me in many areas. I need to look at discomfort as a tool to make me a better leader, not as something to shy away from.

Sometimes in student ministry things can get just plain messy. I have 17 guys in my high school small group. It seems like at any given time at least one of them is going through some kind of issue in his life. Some are small problems, but some have been some pretty major issues. I do my best to explain how God will never waste a hurt, and how he uses situations to help grow you. I explain how during bad times we have two choices.  We can worry or we can worship.

Discomfort grows me as a leader. It helps me to remember that I don’t have the answers to everything, but I know someone who does. Discomfort makes me want to turn to God for help, to realize that I can’t do this by myself. I need to count on God and the people he has placed in my life. One area I always need work on is timing. I want to fix my students problems, but I forget that its God’s timetable not mine, I’m just the instrument that God is using, but the timing is all up to Him.

Discomfort strengthens my faith. I need to recognize that often times the discomfort in my life is spiritual warfare going on. Satan HATES when we start bringing more and more students to Christ. The more effective we get, the more Satan turns up the heat. That’s when I rely on my faith to get me through hard times. I think of the apostle Paul, in prison, but yet teaching about Christ, and relying on Him for strength.

Discomfort makes me grow. It makes me get out of my spiritual rut. It makes me seek out God even more, it forces me to go deeper in His word in my Bible reading and my quiet times with God. My mother use to say that God made rainy days to help us appreciate the sunny days. For the most part, my life is filled with sunny days, but I forget to be thankful for all that I have in my life; instead I dwell on what’s going wrong. The rainy days in life help me appreciate all the sunny days that God has given me. I want to pass that on to my students.

Steven: I like to take my students out for dinner every week. It’s a great time for me and my co-leader to connect with students one on one, and often times they seem to be completely different people when we get them away from the rest of the group. I think this is when the best ministry happens. Last week we took a guy out who tends to be one of our more…vocal…students. In our thinking, he tends to get louder and more disruptive whenever we’re talking about something serious or a struggle that someone has in their life, so maybe he’s just trying to avoid talking about things like that. When we took him out to dinner we got on the topic of struggles and we told him that this time was a perfect opportunity for him to speak freely without the other 12 guys in the group hearing what he had to say. At first he was very reluctant to go deep and he stuck to the shallow “struggles,” but we tried something that he probably isn’t used to – being uncomfortable.

By not allowing him to escape the conversation through jokes or changing the subject, we forced him to look deeper into his own mind and feelings and really think about the things that were bothering him. He knows these things deep down, but I’ve found that when someone is struggling with something very serious, they bury it so deep that it takes a while to dig back out. In this kid’s case, it was a very emotional family issue that he has been struggling with for years, so it took a while for us to get it out of him. If we had just let it slide and allowed him to change the subject, I know we wouldn’t have gotten down to the root of the issue, but because we got him to step out of his comfort zone, it got real.

When I look back on my own life, I realize that the best moments for my spiritual growth happened when I allowed that discomfort to set in. When I rededicated my life to Christ and I chose to live a different way, it made me uncomfortable at first. Why would I want to change my life when I’m so comfortable with it right now? When I chose to start volunteering with junior high ministry, I was uncomfortable. One of my best friends had to talk me into doing it, but I was still apprehensive about spending all this time with junior highers that, quite frankly, drove me crazy. Looking back, I’m so glad that my friend made me uncomfortable in that time because it changed my life. The bottom line is this: We love the comfortability of the status quo, but if you want to see real change, there has to be some discomfort.

Are you allowing discomfort to change you, or do you shy away from it?

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What Are You Waiting For?

April 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I’m not perfect; in fact I’m far from it. But I have figured out that God has blessed me with the talent to relate and talk to teenagers, especially ones who are hurting. This has to be a God given talent, you tell me what a fat bald guy in his late forties (and I do mean LATE!) has in common with teenagers. But somehow I am able to relate to them and get them to relate and understand me.  Beside my high school small group I have met and counseled with many, many teens that are going through some sort of issue in their life. Keep God first, and trust that He will give you the words and advice to help you.  You have probably had life experiences that today’s teens are going through now, they can benefit from your hurt, hang up or habit and how you dealt with it.

If you wait until you think you are perfectly suited for a ministry, you will miss out.  It does not work that way!  God wants you now, He wants you to use your gifts and talents that He has shaped you for and He wants you to use them now.  If you wait until you think you got everything in life together, which may never happen by the way, you’ll miss the boat! If you have a heart for students and enjoy working with them, step up and step out now. Your main requirement will be to commit to living your life in a way that is an example to students. Get involved in your church’s high school or junior high ministry.  I work and volunteer at a mega church, the number of students far out weights the number of leaders we have. Even if you attend a normal size church I bet you will discover the same thing.  Start making a difference now in a student’s life.  It’s one of the most rewarding things you will ever do. Start small, if that’s more comfortable to you. But I will guarantee you that once you dip your toe in the waters of Student Ministry you will be hooked!

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The Only Part of Religion I Practice

April 27, 2011 by 1 Comment

I’m not a big fan of religion. The word “religion” screams ritual, boredom, and impersonality, so I try to avoid it at all costs. That being said, there is one thing that I do religiously.

When I sit down to have my “quiet time” with God every day, I usually try to include at least two things: Bible reading and prayer. I pray before and after I read; the first time asking God to guide my reading, and the second time for everything else that I know I need to pray about. Here’s where the religion comes in… The prayer before I read is almost exactly the same every time. It goes something like this:

God, guide me as I read today. I pray that you speak to me, I pray that you convict me. Teach me how to love like you, teach me how to live like you want me to live. I give this time completely to you.

These four main things are super important for me to establish before I can fully devote my time to God.

  • I want to make sure that I’m open to what God has to tell me. Whether it’s through something I read or through prayer, I need to open myself to His communication.
  • I want to be convicted in some way. I know that my life isn’t perfect, so I pray that God reveals something in my life that I need to change.
  • God is the ultimate form of love, and I pray that I’m able to represent that more and more every day.
  • As a Christ-follower, I want to model my life after the model Jesus led. I pray that God shows me how to follow that model more closely.

The next time you slow down and spend intentional time with God, ask him to evaluate your heart and reveal what you want to get out of that time. Whether it’s a deeper understanding of His Word or just the comfort that can be found in Him, be sure to ask for that to be strengthened in your life.

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Retro Tuesday // Communication Considerations

April 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This post is the very first in a blog series we did at VolunteerYouthMinistry.com. We originally planned to only write this post, but then it evolved into a 10-week commitment. After 10 weeks we realized we had way too much to say, so we ended up writing posts every week for about 6 months. The original post can be found here.

Steven: Something that seems so simple, yet so many leaders struggle to demonstrate, is in the area of language and speech. What a lot of us don’t remember is that we’re constantly being watched. Students soak up everything we do like sponges, so it is extremely important that we remind ourselves to be on the lookout for inappropriate language. We have to remember that leadership isn’t just about preaching and telling people what to do; it’s about leading by example. We can’t expect students to learn anything we teach if we’re not living out those concepts in our own lives. So many people follow the “do as I say, not as I do” principle, but as leaders in youth ministry, we should really be doing the opposite. If one of the guys in my junior high small group sees me with my buddies talking exactly like they hear at school on a daily basis, they’re not going to see a leader, and they’re definitely not going to learn anything about how they should be living their lives as Christ followers. We should be committed to being the ultimate example.

Matt: Little pictures have big ears. Teens today have been shown in school and in the media that offensive language is okay, comedians can’t do a stand up comedy act without dropping the “F” bomb throughout their act. TV shows and websites that teens are exposed to on a daily basis regularly use foul and offensive language to the point we have almost become immune to the words. Students need to have a leader who stands above that, and uses language that lifts people up, is not demeaning and makes fun of them and tears them down. They need leaders who set the example. You may think how you talk in front of your friends, when students are not around won’t affect how you talk in front of teens…but it does. You can’t compartmentalize your language and talk one way in front of students and one way in front of others.  The filter will fail when you least expect it, and you just became a very poor example to your students. Some leaders try to “fit in” with the students and use offensive language because they hear teens talk that way. That just further shows your students that foul language is okay. They need a leader that takes the high ground in this area.

So what do I do if I slip up and say something I shouldn’t have in front of students?

STEVEN: Sometimes foul language doesn’t just mean “bad words.” Last year in my junior high small group, I had a student with a mentally handicapped brother. We’ll call this student Johnny. Before small group one night, we were all hanging out, playing a few games, and someone slipped up and said an inappropriate word. Unfortunately the person who said the word didn’t realize that Johnny had a mentally handicapped brother, and Johnny overheard him. Johnny was very upset and explained to the group what his brother’s situation was. The word that was said that night wasn’t necessarily a word that people know as one of the “bad words,” but it does cause a lot of conflict. My co-leader and I made it a point to make sure we weren’t saying that word outside of group, and explained to the group that it wasn’t something that anyone should be saying. My co-leader and I wanted to be the ones to set the example of not using that kind of language, regardless of how accepted it has become in common language.

MATT: When it happened to me, my first thought was to just pretend it didn’t happen, maybe they didn’t notice. However, when you do that, you condone that kind of language because it is guaranteed that they heard it (I’m not exactly a person who can be described as quiet). So I stopped and apologized to my guys and made it a point to them that the word I used was something that has no place in my vocabulary and shouldn’t be in theirs either. I used that night as a learning experience. I want to be the example to them, not the guy that has to use expletives to get his point across. I also challenged them to look at how they talk with their friends outside of church. Common is talking like your friends do. Uncommon is daring to step out there and say I’m not going to use that kind of language, and I’m going to be the example in my group.

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God will use you…if you let Him

April 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I had an “ah-ha” moment today. I woke up and during my quiet time this morning I spent an extended time praying for mine and Steven’s new blog. I prayed that God will continue to use us as a resource for other leaders in youth ministry, that we keep learning, and that we always keep God first in everything we do on this blog. And then as I was walking my dog this morning I flashed back to when I was new at this student ministry gig, when I first started out as a student ministry leader with a small group.  I think I drove Josh Griffin our high school pastor, crazy with questions.  How do I handle this…how do I address that…this kid drives me crazy, how do I keep my sanity?

One night while sitting with Josh in the Worship Center at Saddleback church, flying a remote controlled airplane (yes, our Worship Center is big enough to do that) Josh reminded me to pray for help with these kids issues and problems, and that God will help you with the answer.  And He always has! Over time I began to feel more comfortable with dealing with problems and issues.

I began to research student ministry websites and found some good ones; in fact we have included links to them at the top of our blog. Now I feel we have come full-circle. We are providing a resource to others to use for help with their problems and issues. We want to help you find answers to those problems and questions, but we also want to help you grow in your faith.

If you are dealing with a problem or have a question, send it to us. We will do our best to find an answer. One thing I have discovered is that issues I have gone through with my students, so has someone else. By sending us your questions you can not only get some help for yourself but also help someone else who may be going through the same problem you or your students are experiencing.

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Welcome!

April 25, 2011 by 3 Comments

Whether you’re new to reading us or a regular reader, welcome to our brand new, very own blog! We want this blog to be real, so to keep it real, we’re going to need your feedback. Take a second after you read something we post and use the comments section – let us know your thoughts and what you’d like to see more or less of.

We want to use this blog as a tool to bring students closer to God and to help them with their day-to-day problems. On top of that, we want to help you grow not just as a student leader, but also in your walk with God. We don’t have all the answers, just the ones that have worked for us.

Please keep checking back – we want to make sure to keep this blog updated on a regular basis, to keep us fresh and to keep you updated on the different things we learn in our journey with youth ministry.

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