new thing Issue 10 November 2015
Struggling Or Flourishing
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Kaye Reid Churches of Christ Vic/Tas
Opportunities & Pitfalls
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Peter Lusk Southern Cross Kids Camps
Herding cats
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Leanne Hill & Andrew Simpson Crossway Baptist Church
Pioneering Youth ministry
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Siobhan Glenister Encounter Church
last the distance Penny Martin
Stirling Theological College
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Contributors Kaye Reid
Peter Lusk
Leanne Hill & Andrew Simpson
Kaye is the Transitional Team Leader of what is currently Mission & Ministry at Churches of Christ Vic/Tas. She is passionate about wrestling with faith that is grounded in every moment of life and is inspired by ordinary people who live life with great purpose and love. Kaye is married to Paul and together they do life with their three children, extended family, friends, and neighbours.
Peter Lusk is the CEO of Southern Cross Kids Camps in Australia. He is also on staff at Discovery Church in Mt Evelyn, where he has served as Generations Pastor for many years. He is married to the beautiful Sandy and they have 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren. He also rides a bike and is a member of the mighty Richmond football club.
Leanne is the Head of Department of the Young Adults ministry at Crossway Baptist Church. Andrew is a Young Adults Pastor at Crossway Baptist Church. They are passionate about journeying alongside young adults as they live out their faith authentically and take ownership of their faith journey.
Siobhan Glenister
Penny Martin
Chris Douglas
Siobhan has been the Youth Pastor at Encounter in Sunbury for nearly 3 years, along with her husband Elisha. Kingdom Youth has pioneered its way into the outer North Western Suburbs of Melbourne.
With over 20 years of experience in ministry (predominantly with youth), Penny is currently a member of faculty at Stirling Theological College teaching Ministry Studies and directing the Field Education program. She is passionate about the value of ministry in contemporary culture and is presently undertaking a Doctoral program in the United States.
Chris is the Chaplain at Glen Waverley Secondary College through a partnership with the school and Young Life Australia, a not for profit reaching out to high school young people. Chris and his team have discovered that mentoring is a natural and powerful context to nurture leadership and positively impact the lives of students.
Nathan Oliver
Glen Coleman
Shey Hall
Nathan is part of the CCVT Communities team, supporting church planters and churches interested in developing new communities. Nathan also leads a church in the eastern suburbs called The Church Next Door (tcnd.com. au), with a focus on everyday mission in the local context. He is married to Amy and has a daughter named Evie.
Glen has been in local church ministry for about 12 years, currently as co-senior minister at Living Faith Church, a combined Uniting Church/Church of Christ. He has been married to Louise for 17 years and they have three beautiful children, Amber, Siera, and Jethro.
Shey is the Associate Pastor for Youth & Young Adults at Diamond Valley Baptist Church in Plenty. She is mum to four boys Wesley, Lucas, Damon, and Callum. Shey has a passion for pastoral care and empowering young people to embrace Jesus entirely. She loves music, movies, and hanging out with her boys.
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From the Editor Like an old man who has tasted garlic in his mashed potatoes for the first time I feel compelled to shout quite loudly, “I don’t like change!” I like to know how things fit together; where I sit in things. If things are constantly up and changing, it makes it that much harder to keep everything straight. I like to know where and where not to expect garlic. The Early Church had a fair share of irate old men with garlic on their breath too. Acts 15 recounts the story that is typically known as the Council of Jerusalem, a major turning point in the narrative of the Early Church. A huge point of transition. The Early Church, which existed as a sect of the Jewish community, was faced with the increasing spread of the Gospel into Gentile (non-Jewish) communities. Obviously the whole Church was on board with the Gospel spreading, but it posed an issue. Can these Gentile believers join in with this Jewish community? This was more than just the issue of Jews being able to have fellowship with their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ. This was a question of identity. “As believers in Christ, are we Jews… or something else? Is what we have been doing enough… or do we need to change?” The leaders of the Church met and came to a conclusion. They chose to transition. They chose to grow. They chose to examine everything they were and had been in the light of where they were going and, piece by piece, they decided whether or not to bring it with them.
YV Calendar 15/16 State Youth Games TAS #MakeItCount15 6-7 November YV Connect Lunch 27 February THE FEW Formation Days 26-27 February Surrender:16 surrender.org.au 18-20 March THE FEW Intensive 27-29 April CCVT Summit: INTO 13-14 May State Youth Games VIC #SYGVictories 10-13 June
I doubt it was easy. I know it wasn’t painless. But that was their transition— one of them, in any case. We all experience change all the time. We are called to be world-changers. It’s the how of that that is so important. Will we hold tightly to what has come before, kicking and screaming and struggling, or will we prayerfully examine everything in our lives every day and ask God if we really need to be, think, act this way? Will we find that balance that honours what we have been without being bound by it? Because change is inevitable. But how we transition is up to us.
— Mitchell Salmon
Youth Vision is the youth & young adult ministry arm of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania CCVT. The Youth Vision Team consists of Kat Deith, Jay Sawyer, & Mitchell Salmon.
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1st Floor, 582 Heidelburg Rd. Fairfield VIC 3078
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03 9488 8800
W vic.youthvision.org.au E yv@churchesofchrist.org.au
Struggling or Flourishing Writer Kaye Reid I love change, and have come to realise that this is not the same for everyone. Most people don’t like change, but know that it is part of life and ultimately good for us. On reflection I can see that how I handle change, and how I value transition now, can be seen in some indicators or experiences from key events in my past. My family moved house in early primary school. I recall looking forward to having my own room and a house with staircases. I was given the opportunity to change schools if I wanted to for grade five and six when my other siblings had finished at what had been our local primary school. On my last day, which I hadn’t even considered as my last day, I remember running across the courtyard shouting goodbye back over my shoulder, excited and happy that the school holidays had started. I travelled to the USA alone, on my first experience ever of travel and flying, to be an exchange student as a 16 year old. I said goodbye to family and friends with great excitement about the trip. I ended up completing my schooling in the US that year and not returning to school in Australia. I departed from Australia in my late teens to travel around the world for a year or two with my husband, having left our jobs and sold our belongings; excited and looking forward to the adventure and the known but unknown. I can see some themes emerging there. Transition is easier with a positive outlook. Transition is easier when there is expectation and hope for the future. Transition is easier with forward focus. Transition is easier without regrets. Transition is easier with confidence in your own capacity to cope. Transition is easier when you have some control or choice in changes.
Self-awareness
As you have been reading you may have been reflecting on your own responses to key events or transitions in your life and how you feel about transition and change. It is evident that this is an aspect of life which is inherently easier for some people than others, so different people will be reacting differently. So if it is easy for you, then great; support people, be aware it is different for others, and lead well.
If you struggle significantly with change and transition, then you are normal and okay. You may be able to enhance your self-awareness regarding your reactions to change, your need for stability and why you feel like this. This is a start already. Change is not inherently wrong even though it can generate strong reactions and feelings, but you can realise your need for sufficient stability to cope with transition and change and perhaps make some incremental steps towards coping better with transition. If you are somewhere in the middle, then through self-awareness you can choose towards some of these positive and forward oriented responses which may allow you to make the most of the opportunities inherent in change and transition.
Pursue vocation that is consistent with your orientation towards change and transition.
I have a business management and finance background and found that over time I flourished in roles which allowed me to come into new situations and quickly assess the situation, then identify and implement change that was needed. This was energising and motivating. Whereas continuing in a role where the situation was quite stable over a long period of time had the opposite effect. We need people who can lead and flourish in times of transition, but most of the time we need people who are able to steadily and faithfully work and live with stability. Understanding your own needs and responses is beneficial to allowing your vocational calling to emerge consistent with who you are and who you are becoming. However, the rapid discontinuous change evident in our western culture makes change and transition more constant and less predictable. This means that we require a greater understanding of transition and change and a greater ability to cope with it also. When I transitioned into ministry—seeking to explore God’s calling for how business management, finance, theological studies, advocacy against injustice, and a love of people could be combined—I already realised that ministry is generally long term and stable, and there is a great fruitfulness that comes from that. So after the first year in ministry I felt like I had made the changes that were needed and wondered what ministry in the second year would look like… and the third year. By the fourth year I knew that longevity and stability was not yet my calling and that my strong preference for transition and change was not something to be supressed
There are seasons of transition or significant change in the life of any church or organisation. This may be due to a planned or unexpected change of leadership, relocation, conflict, crisis, loss or growth.
• Coming to terms with the past (not writing a history but storytelling, sharing, listening, celebrating, and seeking healing where appropriate),
How these seasons of change are handled will impact significantly on the future of that church or organisation. Transition and change is an opportunity to enhance our understanding, listen to God, others and ourselves much more intentionally, and discern the future that God has in store for us.
• Clarifying current identity (naming our perceived identity and adjusting to the reality of who we really are at this point in time), and
We need people who can lead and flourish in times of transition, but most of the time we need people who are able to steadily and faithfully work and live with stability. In 2013 I spent the year in an Intentional Interim Ministry role at Northern Community Church of Christ; a vibrant, community based church with multiple congregations and a vast and hectic, Careworks program including two on-site retail Op Shops and weekday community meals as part of skills based programs for the long term unemployed including retail, hospitality, maintenance, gardening, and computing. Northern was already familiar with change having begun in 1999 after four churches in the area each closed to join together to create a new future for ministry in the inner north of Melbourne. In 2012 the Ministry Team Leader concluded due to poor health after an impacting and innovative period of leadership from that courageous beginning. The church could have rushed in to making another appointment immediately, however this would have been a very challenging position for anyone to come into and a missed opportunity for the church to discover who they were at that point in time, to re-discover their calling, and seek a Ministry Team Leader who was gifted and committed to that future.
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Discerning the future (practicing spiritual disciplines, listening to God, others and ourselves, to discern and articulate the future God is calling us to).
Concurrently throughout these steps we were reviewing and developing our governance and decision making and exploring our partnerships with others. Throughout the year of review or transition, Northern continued to worship, proclaim, minister and do life with the community. In the process it journeyed together developing a richer self-understanding and a much clearer sense of God’s calling and blessing for this community of faith. Clarity around the future, articulated in what had been affirmed and discerned, lead to a rigorous search and appointment process, based foundationally in spiritual discernment, and the appointment of a Ministry Team Leader and a new season and direction.
Spiritual Discernment
For me an essential and integral aspect to this process of transition is spiritual discernment. I have found the writing of Ruth Haley Barton, including Pursuing God’s Will Together and Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, invaluable. The underlying premise calls us to be participating in regular and intentional spiritual practices which allow us to listen to God and lead with discernment, as individual leaders and as leadership groups. These are practices for all people as they are discipled and disciple others. It is based in a belief that God continues to speak and guide. In times of change and transition it is God’s leading that I am seeking, confident in the future that is continually being created and renewed once again. “See, I am doing a new thing!” Isaiah 43:19.
Quarterly Issue 10 November 2015
Interim and Transitional Ministries
Northern created space, while being committed to keeping their momentum going, for self-awareness, reflection, and discernment. We loosely followed a process developed by Transitional Ministries Australia which included:
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to fit into the shape of long term ministry but part of my giftedness and vocational calling to be embraced, and expressed in a form of interim or transitional ministry.
Opportunities & Pitfalls Transitioning Young People from Year 6 to Year 7 Writer Peter Lusk The world is different to how it used to be. Times have long passed where kids simply did what their parents wanted until they were in their late teens. From the very early years kids have an enormous say in how a family runs and what a family does. You only have to stand at the entry to a Kids Church room on a Sunday morning and listen to the conversations, as I have for many years. Parents will ask their kids if they want to go to Kids Church or not. Most say yes, but some, especially if they are new to the church, look around and choose to stay with their parents. “No big deal,” I hear you say, but I’m not so sure. Because when the kids that are part of your church are ready to transition to youth, they may get the same choice. So, if we are not deliberate in the transition from kids to youth, they may look around at this strange new space and choose to stay in the safety of what they know. This transition from year 6 to year 7 is the one of the most significant times in a person’s life. That sounds a bit scary I guess, but there are a few things that we can be part of as a youth team that will ensure the transitions are really successful and connections are long lasting. Not only that, we can partner with the parents to assist us to journey together. As we know, when church and families work together we are more fruitful.
What to do? A plan is a start
I will assume that our aim is to successfully transition all of your year 6 kids to the youth community—kind of obvious really. At Discovery Church, we have a plan that rolls out over the best part of a year, and in reality commences from when our kids are in preschool. My guess is that you are thinking, “How is that possible? There is no way you could do anything for a 4 year old that will help them transition to youth at the appropriate time.” Well let’s start there.
Have small groups for your kids from an early age
We start the small group experience for our kids from when they are in preschool. So that by the time kids are ready to step into youth, they don’t even consider that small groups is something you wouldn’t do. Not only that, we place our year 7 life group leaders for the following year in the Sunday morning year 6 groups from mid-year. This is a total winner! Kids have a familiar, trusted leader that is going to be part of their lives in an ongoing way before they have even set foot into youth ministry. It has also been shown that kids need excellent relationships with their peers to go the distance in faith and we have found that the small groups do that well.
Have a key transition piece
Several years ago we realised that we were not getting all of our kids to transition as we had hoped. We decided to create a major transition moment for our year 6 kids. For us, it has taken the form of a Junior Youth Camp. This has given us the opportunity to contact parents, let them know that we are intentional about the wellbeing and future of their kids, and that this is an important moment in their family. The camp is for our year 6 to year 8 kids. As a side note, this has also allowed us to do a Senior Camp at another time in the year, where the program is created with the older group in mind—which has worked well for us! This camp gives the year 7 and 8 kids a leadership role in welcoming in the new guys. It also gives our year 6 kids a chance to be part of youth and begin to establish and continue their community in new surroundings. We have leaders from both youth and kids on the camp so there is a combination of new and familiar faces. Once again, small group leaders are an important part of this weekend. We conduct this camp early on in term 4 and after that weekend year 6 kids are welcome to join in all youth activities. That way they can be familiar with how youth runs before the end of the year. When school starts the following year, in the midst of new and probably challenging things happening, the transition to youth should be well underway, if not already established.
Get in the same room as the parents
At Discovery Church we say “Parents are the primary disciplers of their kids, in partnership with a great local church”. It is worth noting that a lot of our philosophy around this process comes from Reggie Joiner and the Think Orange group.
Quarterly Issue 10 November 2015 p.6
Parents are the primary disciplers of their kids, in partnership with a great local church This key transition time is a great time to reinforce this value. Often parents are feeling like this is the beginning of the end of their influence over their kids—but this isn’t true at all. It can just feel that way. So here is our chance to encourage them, get to know them better, have them meet their kids’ leaders, and explain where you are heading as a ministry. At times, especially in youth ministry, parents can be viewed by youth leaders as, if not the enemy, then definitely not as allies. But this doesn’t need to be the case at all. We have found—by creating a couple of parents’ nights throughout a year—a place where parents and leaders come together, there has been a dramatic shift. The main aim of these nights is to build relationships. When that happens trust is built and a sense of team, or doing this together, can be established. During these times it is always vital to reinforce that as youth leaders, we are not here to do the job of a parent. We are actually there to support and be helpful to the family. Parents are encouraged to hear this. These gatherings also give a chance for the leader to explain what will be happening over the course of the year and to say how parents can most help the team and their kids. It also gives familiar parents a chance to say how much they appreciate everything that the team does for their kids. The first time we did such an event, our leaders were quite scared at the prospect of spending a fair chunk
of time with parents. I assured them it wasn’t going to be like a theology exam. Provided they knew and loved their kids and said something positive, it would all be good, and it was!
Have your youth team and pastor visit kids events/camps
Relationships in the transition phase of any ministry are vital. Often over the course of the year our kids department will be visited by the Youth Pastor and other youth leaders. We have found that camp is a great time for this to happen. It might just be for an hour or two, but it makes a huge difference. It might look like calling into Kids’ Church on Sunday morning to say “hi” for no particular reason. All these things go towards building a sense of one team and confidence in the future. It also works really well when some kids team members join in on some youth activities and events. The whole idea in our Generations area—0 years to 30 years—is that everybody’s business is everybody’s business. One team, different age specialists, one goal.
The ministry team receiving the kids has to do the work
While it is really important for the kids team to tell the year 6 kids that youth is going to be fantastic and that’s where they need to go, the bulk of the work needs to be done by the youth ministry to ensure that it all goes well.
There will need to be some follow up calls with those less well connected, or unsure. And quite possibly more than one. The plan will need to be well thought out, a long time in advance and communicated to the team and families consistently. I love and hate what Thom Rainer says in Simple Church: when you are sick of talking about it, your people are just starting to hear it. So simple, consistent, long term communication is best. Our youth team publish dates and times on a simple post card. The same thing appears on the website and on Facebook. So, I believe our kids and youth teams have done a great job to create an environment for an excellent transition from year 6 to year 7. The kids team have set it up well and the youth team have executed like lives are on the line…because they are. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. Do we try to do better every year? We do. So, if some of these ideas are all new to you, don’t panic. Start with one new thing and work from there, it will be worth it.
Writers Leanne Hill & Andrew Simpson Andrew I never thought I’d end up in Young Adults ministry! In fact, the idea of having a Pastor dedicated to ministry to young adults is a relatively new trend in Australian churches. This is my 3rd year in the role at Crossway, and for the most part I absolutely love it! Young adults ministry is an exciting and dynamic frontier with incredible opportunities to speak into the lives of millennials as they enter adulthood and grapple with being ‘grown ups’ — whatever that means. When we look at statistics across the Western Church, we see that millennials are leaving the Church in droves—and they’re not returning. There’s something about the Church that’s not capturing the hearts and attention of a generation of emerging adults the way that it used to. It’s time for us to rethink our approach as we seek to retain young people in the transition from youth ministry to young adulthood. The more time I spend with young adults in coffee shops and cafés, and even bars (because I’m one of those rebellious Baptists) the more passionate I become about making disciples of young adults once they leave the cocoon of high school and take their first steps into adulthood. One of the challenges we face when looking at the transition out of high school is that most churches have programmed a finish line for youth ministry at the end of year 12. The problem we encounter with this model is that we push our teenagers out of community at a time when they need it more than ever before.
In the Australian context, reaching the age of 18 and graduating from high school is one of the closest things our young people get to a rite of passage. Up to this point, school has been a relatively safe place with boundaries and support. Within a matter of months, 18 year olds go from a position where they need to ask for permission from a teacher to use the bathroom to having complete autonomy in their decision making. I think this is the part where I get the most nervous as a Young Adults Pastor! As these freshly-minted young adults try out their newly found freedoms, they can often push the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable’ and find ways to limit accountability. In the first couple of years in my role as a Young Adults Pastor I would worry about kids I’d seen grow up in our youth ministry who were out at clubs and bars, experimenting with relationships and generally engaging in all the sort of stuff we’d managed to shelter them from during high school—and the things they had been doing in secret during their adolescence come to the surface. However, one of the things I love about the young adults I’ve journeyed with over the years is the opportunity to walk with them as they work out the kind of person they want to be. As we help our teenagers navigate their way into adulthood, it’s imperative that we give them grace and support as they establish authentic boundaries. We cannot underestimate the impact of providing these young adults with unconditional love and support.
When we look at statistics across the Western Church, we see that millennials are leaving the Church in droves— and they’re not returning. There’s something about the Church that’s not capturing the hearts and attention of a generation of emerging adults the way that it used to.
It is a challenging time to be a young adult transitioning out of high school. As I sit with guys and girls in the time leading up to and during this transition, it has become evident that there is a significant amount of pressure and expectation on them from their school, their families, and their faith community. This pressure comes at an age where their life experience and routine is about to radically change from what they have been used to throughout their childhood and adolescence.
This period of transition also presents a time for young adults to question their beliefs and express doubts surrounding their faith. This is especially prevalent where a young adult has attended a Christian School and then enters a university where their worldview is challenged and they are confronted with authority figures who purport a different concept of truth to what they heard from their parents, church, and school.
Quarterly Issue 10 November 2015
Transitioning Young People out of High School
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Herding Cats
Leanne I’ve been leading the Young Adult Department at Crossway for four years following being part of the leadership team as a volunteer for nearly five. I love journeying with young people as they make their way into adulthood with all the good, bad, and ugly that happens along the way. My greatest joys come from watching young adults follow Jesus, wrestle with their doubts, and influence their culture. We have identified the need to embrace young adults as part of our Generational Ministries strategy. As a result, we have aligned our Children, Youth, and Young Adults Departments within a broader Generational Ministries team. The advantages we have seen in aligning these departments has been huge. When we start to identify the transition points between life stages we start to understand where our young people can fall off and get forgotten. We have worked really hard to partner together as leaders in these areas to run alongside each other and pass the baton carefully. There will always be young people that decide for many reasons to wander off at these transition points but our desire is to know what’s happening in their lives and provide opportunities for them to keep connected to God rather than just participate in a program. Partnering with parents is something we have done relatively well with parents of our children and youth, and partnering with parents of young adults is an area we are pushing into. Once a young person turns 18 a lot of parents feel they have to be ‘hands off’ and let their young adult find their own way. From my experience as a parent of young adults, this is one of the craziest times as a parent and a time when I need to be available at ridiculous times of the day. I’ve come to love the late night chats with my girls even when I am utterly exhausted. And I’ve realised that it’s so important to know how I can be part of helping shape their faith journey alongside my church,
not just hoping that the church will pick up the parenting role. We have had a few parents contact us with concerns for their young adult and asking questions about how we are journeying with the young adults, and personally I love chatting to parents about how we can partner together to transition their young person and, more importantly, how we can walk alongside our young adults as they walk with Jesus. Andrew In the past 3 years, we have seen a 70% increase in our retention rate of people engaged in Church life one year after leaving high school here at Crossway. We’re by no means experts in this area, but there have been some significant learnings that have helped us improve in this area. Here are some of the strategies we’ve used in our young adults community.
Make them feel special
Each year our Youth Ministry holds a week-long camp in the winter holidays. As a young adult community, we create an afternoon with gourmet desserts, coffees and hot chocolates, and introduce them to the Young Adults team. We also bring in some of the previous year’s graduates to share their experiences of being on the transitions journey, one year on. As year 12 exams approach, we carve some time out of the Friday night youth program and get our Young Adults leaders to come and pray over our year 12 students. We’ve set up a daily prayer email where our prayer teams pray for each student for each exam. In previous years, we’ve also arranged ‘Study Survival Packs’ with lollies and stationery (and stress balls) to create our own Crossway ‘rite of passage’ for our high school graduates. The year 12s were encouraged to identify three adults they want speaking into their life in this stage of transition and invite them out for coffee. This has been a great strategic move as we highlight the importance of mentoring relationships and intergenerational partnership in the successful transition of students from high school to young adulthood.
Start the transition early
Part of my role involves having a presence as one of the Pastors at the weekly Youth program. This has been great to build relationships with the year 12 cohort before they transition and make the change from Youth to Young Adults seem more gradual and less dramatic. Leanne Andy has been instrumental in spanning the bridge of transition from youth to young adult. I’ve watched him walk alongside young guys who are trying to discover who they are and some who have wandered away from church; some even decide that Jesus isn’t for them, and then a few years later they are contacting him asking to meet up, asking for help to get their life together. The open door that he gives the young people he’s walking with is awesome.
Facilitate Relationship
The transition for youth to young adults in regard to Life Groups has been interesting to watch. Within the youth ministry our young people have the same Life Group throughout their high school years, usually with the same leader journeying with them which creates great stability and a constant person for them to track with. They then transition to young adults, and we’ve come across numbers who are reluctant to participate regularly in a group. It’s like they are now exercising their right to not be in a small group. But after only 12 months they are wanting to form Life Groups with their friends; some they travelled with through youth together and others they’ve met in young adults from different year levels. As a result, we have ended up with an incredibly diverse range of Life Groups within the young adult community. Some are single gender, others are mixed. Some have more of a social aspect whilst others are big on Bible study, prayer, or mission. Some groups are led or facilitated by peers whilst others have expressed a desire to have older mentors lead the group and give direction and advice. As a leadership team, we have embraced the mantra of ‘low control, high accountability’.
Once a young person turns 18 a lot of parents feel they have to be ‘hands off’ and let their young adult find their own way. From my experience as a parent of young adults, this is one of the craziest times as a parent and a time when I need to be available at ridiculous times of the day. Leanne As we consider our role in the broader church community our intent is to connect and release the young adults in our care. Connect them to God and others and release them to pursue opportunities to influence their culture and to be disciples that multiply, becoming all they were created to be. For the church to become all it was intended to be there needs to be young adults leading in serving across the church and beyond. Andrew 9 years ago, I signed on as a Youth Leader at Crossway and was given the task of leading a group of year 7 boys. If you asked me to predict who of those boys would make it into their young adulthood with their faith intact, I would have been completely wrong! Some of the guys that I invested the most time and energy into as teenagers no longer call themselves Christian—and to be honest that breaks my heart. If you’ve spent any amount of time in youth ministry, you’d have some very similar experiences. However, it’s not all bad news! Recently our Young Adults leadership team sat around my dining room table as we talked vision and strategy for the community. I looked over to see Duncan and Tim. These guys are two of my heroes. I’ve known them since they were 12 years old, and here they are—21 years old, giving of their time and energy to serve God with their gifts and talents in community. At the end of the day, managing the transition of high school graduates into young adulthood is like herding cats: it’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, and most people look at you and wonder why you even bother! But when I see guys like Duncan and Tim sitting around my dining room table, it makes it all worthwhile!
Quarterly Issue 10 November 2015
Andrew One of the challenges we find with high school graduates is that they have outgrown the youth ministry, but the idea of sitting with Mum and Dad in Church on a Sunday morning wasn’t really appetising. To combat this, at Crossway we have monthly young adult gatherings that are open to anyone aged 17-30. We want this to be a place where our high school graduates can step into and feel loved, accepted, and understood. Our gatherings provide a space to express their doubts and concerns as well as tackling issues about engaging with culture as a Christian. It’s gritty, authentic, and messy, but most importantly it’s a place where the Holy Spirit is active and moving. At the same time, it’s not meant to be a silo that isolates the young adults from the life of the broader church community.
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Create Opportunities to Belong
Pioneering Youth Ministry Writer Siobhan Glenister
The Youth Ministry in which I’m involved is still in its infancy. Like a child, we’re still learning what is wrong, and what is right. When we were ‘born’ we didn’t have a name; all we knew was that here we were, chosen and called to be at this time, and this place, in history. The exact location was even chosen for us.
groups which expand knowledge and theology at a pace for each person in their individual journey. In addition we participate with our brothers and sisters from other
Kingdom Youth was established 3 years ago in August 2012 when there was a need for the young people of our church to own who we were. The pastor and an elder of the church reached out to a few young people and gave the opportunity to teenagers and young adults to start a new Youth Ministry from the ground up with the full support and backing of the church body. I believe each person at that time felt ill-equipped and unprepared for what was in store, though God was looking for a ‘David heart’; an obedient and willing spirit that would usher in the words, “Send me God, I will go”.
The journey through these past three establishing years hasn’t all been easy. There have been many hardships and trials and errors. But we now thrive when trials and errors come our way, as now we know that when we encounter and endure those times we come out stronger and wiser than before. Furthermore we tend not to make the same mistake twice and have a tendency to have better judgement when such situations arise again.
There is freedom in pioneering, and in things that haven’t been set before us. As a ministry we are not defined by what has been done in the past. This is not to say that previous youth groups didn’t come before us, which in fact they did. Each had merit and purpose at the time, though Kingdom Youth wasn’t an inherited ministry that had been passed down. We were able to start afresh. We were not bound by previous generations of ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’, and this enables us, and even forces us, to be creative with what we have, or sometimes with what we don’t have. We hadn’t had physical possessions or materials passed down to us, though with initiative and God’s grace we have never gone without. Kingdom Youth is a ministry that is aligned with the vision of Encounter church and embodies its message of bringing people to know Jesus and encounter him. It happens through the avenue of a Friday night outreach program with rich messages, spirit-led praise and worship, with the element of frivolousness games, tribes, events, activities and outings, or the ability and opportunity to learn how to be a Christian and engage in how to become the best of who we are via the pathway of masterclass connect
youth ministries so that our young people can expand their horizons of Christian networks and discover that there is more than just us and be encouraged by that fact.
Our youth ministry, and moreover our church, doesn’t have a physical building to call home. We have a church embodied by people and functioning ministries, though when Kingdom Youth was conceived we were born in the ‘desert wilderness’. When attempting to establish a Friday night program, a reasonable venue has proved hard to find in our town of Sunbury. We’ve outgrown 2 venues in as many years, and we now find it a privilege to have such an issue, as it means that we are reaching lives and growing into our potential and the sphere of influence that we possess. However, it is a downfall of our town and council that we don’t have larger youth facilities in our area. Being in the North West with its prevalence for a lower socioeconomic demographic has its own difficulties at times, as the reality is that many are disadvantaged— though this increases our scope of young people who we are able to attract and connect with. I’m a firm believer that that is how God makes all things work for our good. Kingdom Youth is a living testament to that so far. In February this year we had a fundraiser in our local community to purchase a bus for the church— primarily for the young people. Consequently, more youth are able to participate in Kingdom Youth because we are able to go to them and bring them in. We live
In our child-like state when growth started to occur, in search of food and nourishment, the leadership team started to build connections with other youth ministries, youth movements, and Youth Vision. We needed ‘big brother’ ministries to guide us as to how to do things and how to operate. After all, we had never experienced how a functioning youth group is ‘supposed’ to be. We found this by participating in training days and being involved in Youth Vision breakfasts which equipped us to break outside of who we were. Conversing with other youth leaders, passionate speakers, and world influencers made us realise that we weren’t in the Christian race alone. We, in fact, have peers to encourage us and spur us on. Through trial and error, we’ve discovered that what works for others may not necessarily work for us, and we’re now at a stage where we know that that’s okay. There is so much yet to be discovered or unveiled to us. It has been taking time, though little by little we gain
Currently, we are endeavouring to gain access to our local high schools. In past times, we have been able to come to the aid of the teachers and students when a crisis has occurred, offering assistance with pastoral care. Our role has always been to fix and to heal, which is a beautiful gift to give. Our heart is to be there alongside school students, to not only be there when something bad happens by
being a grief counsellor but also to raise up and empower young lives to live life to its fullest potential. Again, this hasn’t really been readily available for long periods of time, and to implement something new, or a change, to a traditional education system to which it is harder and harder to gain access has proven to be a difficult task. Nonetheless we have found we are beginning to be a beacon-light of hope to young people. Kingdom Youth has become an opportunity for youth to open up and find someone to talk to if need be; broadening the possibility of being more than a Friday-night based program, but just to know they have a friend. Pastoral care, relationship building and friendships that involve meeting at coffee shops, or at the local basketball courts, are emerging as common pastimes and are positively influential to the mindset and spiritual journey which we all take. We invest our time and effort to portray to each individual that they are valued and are of worth. We are trying to make a name for ourselves, a name that can be transparent and associated with Jesus which points towards His love. I love being a pioneering ministry— growing and navigating our way through everything that comes our way—but I hope, in years to come, when Kingdom Youth is reputable with age, that we will forever have a pioneering outlook.
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more experience and more equipment to run the functional activities for a Friday night program. Though every penny is precious, we rent the venue facility each week, but we’re never guaranteed that it will be available to us the next week. In 2014 Kingdom Youth was recognised by our local council, and a monetary grant was awarded to us. This was the first time that we were acknowledged outside of a Christian organisation to have merit and value to the community, though the question of ‘what is a youth group?’ still exists quite prevalently. Many still don’t really understand what we are, or what we do, or value what we have to offer. Those who don’t know us are wary—we are aliens, in a sense—and because of that, the unknown is scary and perceived as dangerous. Recently we were seen this way purely because of not knowing who we are, or what we are about. We are constantly breaking boundaries, barriers and stereotypes of what it is to be a Christfollower in our community, but with relationship we will get through this part of the journey.
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in a time where it’s hard for parents to convey their children around from here or there—especially as many of our teenagers aren’t from standard nuclear families. Many we engage and interact with are from non-Christian backgrounds and broken families; what we offer is a safe, nurturing environment which is positive, uplifting, empowering, and encouraging—all done in fun with love.
Last the Distance Writer Penny Martin “Change is what happens to us from the outside and over which we usually have no control. Transition is our inner response to the change we are experiencing and over which we do have some control.” 1 I can distinctly remember the moment that I realised that I had grown up. Despite my substantial resistance to ‘growing up’ it somehow happened anyway—and in that moment of realisation I felt incredibly liberated and thankful. It was smack bang in the middle of my sermon on a bright Sunday morning, and as I looked out at the incredible community that I had been part of for so many years I had this surreal insight that I had changed and my ministry had changed. This group of people had welcomed me into their ministry team when I was a crazy 23 year old and let me loose to pursue my energy and passion for working with young people. Over the years they had endured countless insane ways we used (and sometimes misused) church resources. They let me preach in my pyjamas! I was visited in hospital when I had knocked myself unconscious after an epic jelly extravaganza. They somehow turned a blind eye when I turned up to work barefoot, and over many years they continued to make helpful and responsible suggestions as to how I might best protect and serve our young people in response to the combination of hilarious and horrendous suggestions I came up with for youth activities. With patience and love this community freed me to minister to young people and they had also significantly encouraged me to deepen and mature into my vocational calling. In that moment, as I stood there 10 years into my youth ministry, I threw a quick glance toward my youth leadership team, some of who were just little kids when I arrived, and felt overwhelmed with incredible gratitude—there is nothing like a long-term investment in ministry. Looking back at my many years in ministry, 14 of which were spent in one church, I realise that numerous challenging transitions, both personal and spiritual, are necessary to last the distance. Here are just a few.
Growing Up We live in a culture that intentionally encourages us to not grow up. We celebrate being young; from hair dye to cosmetic surgery to University research into anti-aging
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drugs, we cling to youth with desperation and naivety, and can easily forget the gift of years, scars, experience, wisdom, and familiarity. As a result, it’s sometimes difficult to grow up—particularly for those who work with youth. I remember saying often that I loved my job as it kept me young—who wouldn’t want to spend time hanging out with kids, running camps, researching popular-culture (that’s right, watching movies and playing video games was work, people) and exploring ways to challenge and encourage youth—it’s heady stuff! However, I recall the struggle it became for me to sleep on hard floors or to play active sport as I developed osteoarthritis in my lower back. It was a simple and painful physical change that was a result of my body aging, but the mental transition in response was a significant challenge. I immediately began to think that a younger and newer version of youth minister was probably needed—almost forgetting in my minor aging crisis that youth ministry was about a lot more than simply sport and sleepovers. Sadly, I think we have often idolised the image of young, cool, and extroverted at the expense of wiser, more mature, theologically reflective and culturally connected leadership.
Building and releasing The reality was that whilst I could not physically maintain the same frenetic energy levels in ministry, someone else could, with the right encouragement and empowerment. Building a diverse team—gifts, age, and stage—around me helped me not only physically but mentally transition into a new understanding of my emerging role: I wasn’t just the ‘kid’ of the church leadership that worked with kids, I was a leader of other leaders. But it was a hard transition. Building a team around me was an invitation to more chaos, differing ideas, and a vulnerable lesson in self-awareness: I am just not gifted at everything. Whilst I was good at creativity, upfront charisma, and humour I certainly, at times, lacked practicality, sensitivity, and pastoral care. I needed added wisdom, I needed other people’s physical and spiritual experience, and I needed other people to ultimately lead young people better than me. They were all hits to my overly developed ‘messiah complex’.
Roxburgh, Alan (2005) The Sky Is Falling!?! Leaders Lost in Transition. Eagle, ID: ACI Publishing, p41.
A messiah complex doesn’t only imply a fixation on doing everything oneself, it also implies that you view yourself as something of a saviour. In Psalm 127, Solomon writes, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.” Learning the humble lesson of partnering with God—rather than trying to be a god—is a life and death transition in ministry. Consistent levels of turnover, exhaustion and burnout among ministers are clear indicators of the inability of so many to navigate this transition.
Facing seasons of complexity I am the first to champion how enjoyable and exciting youth ministry can be, and I am also the first to underscore the absolute life-changing and worldchanging possibilities that are a core part of any intentional work with young people, but I know I was incredibly idealistic and quite simplistic when I first entered youth work over 20 years ago. It did not take me too long to realise that there is a lot at stake when you walk for any length of time alongside youth, it’s not all just fun inspiration. It’s full of gritty, exhausting work, sharing heavy burdens, encountering resistance and sometimes outright hostility. I can recall many heartbreaking moments when people walked out the door.
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of hilarious, and some that probably meant that some young people in my care might not have made an ongoing journey with Jesus. Over time as I worked through many seasons of complexity I realised that it’s in the intersection between heartbreak and hope where youth ministry is often at its most profound. It’s not just playing games on Friday nights. It’s life and death and everything in between. The Bible is full of imagery around what it means for God’s people to deal with uncomfortable but formative transitions: Isaiah 64:8—moulding clay; John 15:1-2—pruning a vine; and numerous Old Testament examples of refining precious metal including Psalm 66:10, Jeremiah 9:7, and Malachi 3:2-3. Each of these provides poignant reflection for me as I look back on my years in youth ministry. I was most deeply spiritually formed in moments that were complex and tough. The ability to theologically reflect on circumstances that were hard helped me transition into a more realistic, authentic and empathetic leader.
Beginning again “Good leaders are committed learners”, 2 and yet so often in ministry we embody ideals of knowledge and expertise to engender confidence and trust. Don’t get me wrong, knowledge and expertise are excellent characteristics in a leader,
but not at the expense of humility, teachability, service, and surrender. Learning to have a posture of openness to new possibilities, to be resilient through mild and severe seasons, to approach everyday anticipating that God will teach you something, to practice patience and to learn the gift of deep listening in a noisy and superficial world are all calls to life for a follower of the way of Jesus, a disciple—a learner. Modelling these characteristics to young people, and to the Church, is incredibly important in the climate of our current culture that essentially idolises achievement and instant gratification. I always find it profoundly moving to consider that Jesus entered this world a helpless baby. The Son of God, heir to the throne of heaven took on humble, vulnerable flesh—a new beginning for him and for all of human history. I am stirred by the call to be ‘born again’ John 3:3 as we embrace the way of Jesus—not just once, but over and over and over as we choose life in Kingdom. Change happens all around us, all the time. For me, transitioning though so many seasons meant and still means partnering with trusted ‘truth-tellers’. Christine Pohl offers a beautiful description of such people, “Being truthful is not only about speaking hard things but discerning the whole picture with gentleness, humility and patience.” 3 Surrounding myself with a constellation of such people was the most important practical influence in me becoming more self-aware, more theologically reflective, and able to last long-term in my ministry.
Scandrette, Mark (2011) Practicing The Way of Jesus. Life Together in the Kingdom of Love. Intervarsity Press, p97. Pohl, Christine, D (2012) Living Into Community. Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, p115.
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I can remember being misunderstood. I can remember the pain of grief and loss as people dealt with the harshness of life and the finality of death. I also made mistakes—some that are kind
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I don’t know who coined that phrase or in what context, but consistently in most ministries—including my own— getting over a ‘messiah complex’ is a make or break transition that we all need to face up to at some stage.
The Shape of Leaders to Come Writer Chris Douglas
“So Chris. What’s happening next year with mentoring?” “Well, we’ll start up again next year, probably with a new group of boys.” “Is there, like, um, a way I can be involved?” This was one of my most surprising and rewarding moments. Watching the budding of a young man’s own leadership vision, the product of being mentored, supported and loved. How do you love those you lead so when they transition to leadership they love well and have a good chance of being an effective leader? Successful leadership transition is a function of a successful leadership development process. Transition starts well before the position description is drafted, or the symbolic recognition and handover of responsibility at the commissioning service or team meeting. A young leader, trained and nurtured, will have been deliberately and gently nudged out of the nest and compelled to fly by being offered numerous leadership opportunities, tasks and challenges. Ministry tasks are endless — as are the challenges, but all contribute to creating space for pastoral care, story-telling, demonstration and encouragement. Involved leadership tasters begin to nurture and build personal foundations (developing character, competence, and confidence) for the time when they will assume greater responsibility. Perhaps Jesus said it best in his parable of the investors; “Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities.” Matthew 25:14ff Any conversation about leadership development or transition should reference relationship in three directions. God (Jesus), others, and self. Spiritual leadership has always been ‘relational’, as much as we post-moderns like to think we’ve stumbled upon something new. In these dimensions, we have a helpful framework for recognising the opportunities and the challenges young leaders face as they transition into leadership.
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Power—A crisis of self What often looks like an interpersonal leadership problem is in fact a self-leadership problem. A youth leader came to me once during camp and complained that someone was not respecting his authority. I knew the young person he referred to, and for sure he was a big personality. However, the real issue was not the young person’s lack of obedience. The respect deficit was a function of the leader’s character deficit— his insecurity and his immaturity in the way the situation was handled. He was demanding compliance through his position — power. He had not earned the respect of the young person. Even spiritual leaders who God calls will discover that poor character produces chaos. Think David, the king who should have been out leading his army but was glued to the vision of a beautiful, married woman having a bath. A classic abuse of power, and we know how that ended . 1 Contrast Jesus, who deliberately emptied himself of his positional power and adopted the posture of a servant Phil 2:5-11. I’ve found Jesus’ model works well with young people who can have a suspicion of authority figures (teachers, politicians, pastors) but a responsiveness to those who are faithful, humble, honest, and present. If our position is our leadership reference point, we run the risk of isolating ourselves from those we lead. Our friends will be the first to notice, and the first to check out. Even if you think you’re a self-aware, collaborative leader, request honest 360 degree feedback. We all have character and stylistic blind spots.
Culture—Leadership space for others Leadership is about taking others on a journey. What does your leadership culture look like? What are your leadership processes? Rob Coleman’s insights into Jesus’ leadership method are profound. He notices “…the deliberate way that Jesus proportioned his life to those he wanted to train.” 2 In other words he invested heavily in being with his team and made use of what we would call the ‘action-reflection’ model. If we nurture this kind of leadership process and create this culture in the way we lead, our young leaders are likely to learn lots along the way, and mirror this for those they end up leading.
Having said that, we must give our leaders permission to fail. My own failures have been the source of my greatest leadership growth, and my greatest awareness of grace
This very scenario happens frequently in our mentoring program for students. Instead of quietly seething with frustration, I let the young people we are leading self-regulate —bring us back on point, or opt out deliberately — their choice. I’ve learned to be flexible, adjust expectations and actively find something else to do. For our team this means eyes and ears open, watching and listening for opportunities for one-to-one conversation, a spontaneous game of soccer that leaves everyone feeling refreshed, or waiting for a mad conversation to end when most of the boys have gone and we’re left with the ones who really want to be there. Underpinning this whole venture is a culture of love—we don’t love the students because they sit quietly and listen, we love them because of their intrinsic worth as God’s sons and daughters. And believe me, they notice how we love. In this way our leadership clearly witnesses Christ to those we lead 1 John 3:16.
Jesus—Our foundation, not our logo Clever marketers know that we remember catchy sights and sounds and quirky ideas. Leadership can all too easily copy the same pattern, and miss the point entirely. It’s not our music, our cultural savviness or our ability to make young people laugh and like us that will create fully devoted followers of Christ.
Here’s where our leadership rises and falls. Our leadership is an overflow of our relationship with Jesus. If God’s Spirit is fully present in our relational leadership triad (self, others, God) then he won’t just be our logo but 2
God’s grace I’ve bowed quietly in prayer with an injured or sick student, and galvanised all my family and friends around a situation where a student’s life hung in the balance. Like Jesus, our team regularly calls attention to acts of kindness, generosity, sacrifice, and courage when we see it among our group. And there are countless times when I’ve retold the parables or the grand stories of Scripture and experienced a respectful silence as teenage boys look up from their phones and wonder at the subversive and extravagant grace of God in the prodigal son, the neighbour, the leper, or the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair. It’s not all smooth sailing of course. Hard conversations are sometimes needed where an opposing spirit threatens to hijack the Spirit of Christ. In our experience, there are a few options to maximise the chances of success here. One is a private conversation calling attention to something that’s not okay. We’ve found this works when there is a strong and respectful relationship in place. This can also be an effective way of handling a situation when a young leader needs to call out a mate on an issue. The presence of a real relationship is critical, along with some skills in delivering both positive and negative feedback. Another option — and this is very cool when it happens — is for the young people we are leading to raise themselves the issues to be addressed. This has happened with several issues including smoking, alcohol, swearing, and gossiping. The young people see how their leaders behave, instinctively check their own behaviour, and come up with a set of rules and boundaries which reflect our respect for each other. Young leaders will face numerous challenges as they transition into leadership roles and assume responsibility. They are more likely to be effective, Christ-like leaders if they have been nurtured intentionally. Our best leaders have experienced love, support and leadership themselves, and whose instinct is to generously offer to others what has been offered to them.
Coleman, R.E. (2005) The Master Plan of Evangelism 2nd Ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, p31
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our Lord (literally ‘master’). At some point our personal relationship with Christ brings us to a point of decision, or perhaps a series of decisions. Jesus was called to announce the Kingdom (‘reign’) of God and its resulting transformation Luke 4:18-19. In the pattern of Jesus, with
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Whenever we talk about leading others and creating a space or culture, we immediately find ourselves on a collision course with popular culture. For example, where spiritual leadership requires a contemplative, listening posture, we are in competition with technology that constantly vibrates and rings in our pockets, demanding our attention. When we move into leadership among our peers, we discover how disconcerting it can be when we’ve spent 3 hours preparing for an event or program or experience, and no one’s paying attention.
A Common Problem Writer Nathan Oliver
I can recall a conversation with a friend as he shook his iPhone in front of his face and said, “I’m embarrassed as a leader… I scrolled through my mobile contacts and couldn’t find one nonChristian person in there!” Up until a few years ago this was my story too. I’ve had the same conversation with loads of churchgoers, leaders in particular. And yet I notice most times there is a genuine desire to connect meaningfully with those who don’t know Jesus—a desire to see faith in Christ make sense to their neighbours and family and co-workers. I think we all know that ministry has the potential to get us stuck navel-gazing, forgetting there are real people outside of it. Churches can get stuck. Individuals can get stuck. Youth ministries can get stuck. Just to be clear, I’m no youth ministry expert. So read these words with a grain of salt! I spend most of my energy thinking about planting churches and developing my own church plant in a post-Christian context. Having said that, a lot of my experience in churchplanting has involved trying out ways of ‘being the church’ outside the walls of a building and beyond the shape of a program.
You’re already there
I reckon most people who have seen any ‘Magician’s Secrets Revealed’ TV specials tend to have a similar reaction to the unveiling of the tricks. It’s usually something like, “Of course that’s it, anyone could see that,” or, “Oh yeah, that makes sense,” and suddenly the levitating attendant who is actually lying on a mirror-table is not so impressive. The ‘special-ness’ of the illusion fades quickly after the mystery is removed. It can often feel by the way we talk that mission and reaching our neighbourhoods with the gospel is some sort of magic trick you’ve got to figure out the secret to. We hear stories of other churches and wonder, “How did they do it?” But the trick to reaching the communities around us has already been revealed… we’re already in them! Every pastor, every youth leader, and every kid in a youth group is already connected to a school, club, workplace, street, team, or a community of some sort. We’re all shopping at supermarkets, sipping lattes at cafés, or riding a train to work.
Perhaps youth ministry—or all ministry—is on some level not different to my experience. We all just want to make disciples of Jesus, and that’s a good thing. However, if our situation involves transitioning ourselves in some way from inwardthinking to being outwardly-focussed, then it might mean reconsidering things a little.
Let’s not overthink this bit—for the most part we are all already involved in aspects of community life with people from our neighbourhoods. If not, you can probably identify simple avenues to get involved. A lot of times the trick isn’t about getting to where the people are, it’s what we do when we realise we’re already there.
How can a ministry transition to thinking outside? How do we release? How do we grow? How do we plant ministries in our neighbourhoods?
You don’t need to be fluent in ancient Greek to understand that the Gospel, whatever your definition, is ‘news’. It’s information about something that has happened. It’s good news about what God has
Here is some of what I’ve learned along the way.
Gospel intentionality
done for the world through Jesus. Mission and ministry therefore, take place when we share this news with people. Being amongst unbelievers is not the end goal of mission; somehow the good news of Jesus needs to be proclaimed. So how can this take place in everyday life, right where we are? I remember when I realised I was caught in a Christian bubble and thinking how I needed to break out somehow… but where would I start? I thought lots about joining a footy team, but then I’d have to get fit. I remember envying my friends with kids thinking how easy it would be to meet other parents, but that seemed more like a long-term plan (and also maybe not the best reason to try and bring a human in to the world…). And then I noticed that the local green grocer was always up for a chat, so I just ran with that idea. The grocer could be my friend. So my wife and I made a decision that we would do all our fresh food shopping at his store. When I was getting a coffee from the café next door I would make sure to pop in and say g’day. If I was with a friend I’d make sure to introduce them. Sometimes I would go for walks around the neighbourhood for exercise and work in a detour past his shop to pop in for a chat. And we became friends. All the while that I got to know him I made sure to look for opportunities to bring Jesus into the conversation—nothing manipulative, just a matter of sharing life together by talking about the things that were important to us. We’d talk about family, food, business, and religion — his word,
It can often feel by the way we talk that mission and reaching our neighbourhoods with the gospel is some sort of magic trick you’ve got to figure out the secret to. My friend ended up deciding he didn’t want to become a Christian at that point in time, but amongst that disappointment I was blown away at how simple it could be to get on mission in everyday life! That guy never wanted to come to an event my church put on, but he was super keen to just hang out in his shop. For me, all I did was what I would do anyway—walking, shopping, chatting—but I learned to do it with intentionality. Nothing had changed about where I lived or worked. What changed were my intentions throughout the day. Through that experience, God transformed my whole take on ministry… we don’t need to add more stuff in to our lives, just do what we are already doing with gospel intentionality. Chester and Timmis from The Crowded House say, “… the bedrock of gospel ministry is low-key, ordinary, day-today work which often goes unseen. Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality. Whether it is helping a friend, working at the office, or going to the cinema, there is a commitment to building relationships, modelling the Christian faith, and talking about the gospel as a natural part of conversation.” No programs, just everyday life with Jesus at the centre.
There’s usually a point in this sort of conversation where one person will say, “So what program do I run for this?” It’s a reasonable question. There are lots of great programs that have been helpful ways for churches to find pathways into their surrounding communities. But if you’re encouraged by the idea of making disciples who live all of life with gospel intentionality, maybe the best program is the gospel itself. Think about it this way… Do you know what the gospel is? Are you regularly refreshed by the goodness of it? Could you talk about it in conversation with your friends? Could the people you lead communicate it to one another? To me this seems like an obvious starting point — even though it’s not always a common starting point. This is not about rehearsing dogma but letting the beauty of God’s story affect us to the degree that it is our motivation for all that we do. Then take it a bit further… How does the good news of Jesus apply to the everyday stuff of life? How might it shape the way you eat? Who you eat with? How might the good news of Jesus flavour the way you hang out with friends? Where you hang out with friends? How does the gospel impact the way you interact with others? The way you listen? What you listen for? And so on… If you can answer these questions and live in light of them, you can develop effective mission and ministry pretty much anywhere! Only at the end of his ministry Jesus commissioned his disciples with the mission of his Church: “Go and make disciples!” It’s simple, but the timing is significant. Jesus had lead these guys for three years by taking them along with him in the everyday stuff of life. They’d seen him perform miracles as well as how he acted in between miracles. They ate with him. Maybe they joked with him. They probably saw his bedtime routine! There was no classroom or curriculum to get through. Jesus applied his own message as he shared life with others, and when he sent his followers out to make disciples this was the only context they knew. My hope is that we as God’s people learn to enjoy his grace and help others do the same by sharing life with them wherever we are. If we want to transition ministries amongst neighbourhoods we must learn how to make disciples who live out God’s good news with intentionality in everyday situations.
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So how do we make this happen?
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not mine. Then one day my green grocer asked me a question: “So what would it mean for me to become a Christian?” I was kind of taken aback at his bluntness but quickly proceeded to seize the moment with all my bumbling enthusiasm. We chatted for about 45 minutes in his store during the busy after-work grocery rush of shoppers. I remember watching him brush customers away hurriedly to get back to our conversation about the good news of Jesus and what it means for us.
Discerning Calling Writer Glen Coleman
I never intended to become a minister. I was going to become an accountant, but ended up in retail— go figure! But here I am, and while the first adventure of moving from retail to ministry took me a while to figure out, the principles I learned have been just as applicable to later adventures, and probably saved my sanity along the way...
many conversations about what the future might hold for us—the usual stuff of children, travel, career. While we were happy in ourselves, and in our marriage, I was increasingly frustrated in my work and needed to figure out how to move forward.
This led me to the second stage of discernment, which was to 2 Corinthians 3 speaks of the discover the good, and sometimes Spirit of God being written on our difficult, things that God wanted to hearts, and that we experience this show me. At this time the ministry most closely when we have turned team leader at my church asked me toward God and allowed him to to spend a year thinking, praying, speak into our lives. Because and dreaming about what young of this we are able to live in the adult ministry might look like for freedom that the Spirit gives. That me. There was no guarantee of any about sums up the discernment role coming out of that time, it was process I was about to undertake— simply part of the second stage of turning, listening, living. my discerning process. That was an amazing period of my life, spending such I realised that God was an extended asking me to trust him, to period doing with God live without the safety net. time in such a way that had benefit in and of itself, The first stage of discerning regardless of outcomes. One of the God’s call to move into local results of that time was the simple church ministry was to practice realisation that God wanted me to self-awareness. Before I entered enter some form of local church ministry I was getting increasingly ministry. This realisation came restless in my retail job. At first I through lots of prayer, a sense of thought I was just bored, or in need foundation in Scripture and many of a holiday. Eventually, it became conversations with other, wise clear that I was restless in my spirit, and mature, people. This is the looking to understand how God essence of the second stage of could best use me to impact....well, discernment—prayer, Scripture, anything really! While working in and others. retail is certainly a valid way of living out Kingdom principles (and Towards the end of that year, I had been for me in some seasons), I entered the third stage of discerning began to recognise that it was time God’s call for me. By this time I for me to move on. I really had no was certain of God’s direction but clue what I was doing, or what I wanted the security of knowing wanted to do with the next part of there might be a role for me before my life. My wife Louise and I had leaving full-time employment for
what would be (if it even happened) a one day a week role. While we didn’t have children at this stage we were well aware that moving from two full-time wages to one day per week with some family tax benefits was a distinct possibility in the coming years, and a daunting prospect. The more I held on to this idea of having security, the more frustrated I became. Going through the first two stages again (although without the luxury of a whole year to do so) I realised that God was asking me to trust him, to live without the safety net. Together, Louise and I recognised this was the only way forward for us and so, with some fear and trepidation, but determined to trust, I resigned from work. A month or so later I was invited to join the ministry team and life changed forever. This pattern of the Spirit getting my attention, God speaking into my life, and finally taking a leap of faith into the unknown, has marked the conclusion of one ministry and beginning of another twice more. With each one the sense of God’s call has been different but the process of discerning has been the same. There is no right or wrong about how God speaks to us of course, but this process has allowed me the space to recognise, cognitively and spiritually, where I am, where I am going, and who is guiding me there. I have learned (often the hard way) to regularly check in to see if the Spirit is trying to get my attention around other areas in my life and ministry. So often I have needed more space around me, free of the ‘doing’ of ministry, to allow the ‘being’ a child of God to dominate my thinking and attitude towards the things of God. Turn, listen, and live.
As I walk into our Wednesday young adult gathering at a local hall I see nineteen chairs sitting in a circle. It was only 6 months ago, in this same hall, I saw ninety chairs crammed into this same space. How did ninety chairs turn into nineteen? On the other side, there’s our youth program on Friday nights. We started the year off with fifteen chairs. Six months later we are filling fifty-five chairs. How did fifteen chairs turn into fifty-five? This is the ministry question. We need to manage the tension of counting numbers. Numbers excite us, numbers disappoint us, but numbers don’t tell us the God story, they don’t tell us the impact. So what do we do when numbers disappoint us? We all dream of filling the room with students; these dreams inspire us, they push us to better ourselves. Some come true… and some don’t. I wonder with your broken dreams… do you ever ask why? Do you think your dreams are broken, or are the circumstances obstacles and detours? Joseph had a dream and there were many obstacles and detours. We are introduced to Joseph in chapter 37 of Genesis and his story continues on for thirteen more chapters. In chapter 37 from verse 1-11, we read about a seventeen year old Joseph who was his dad’s favourite son. This favouritism caused Joseph’s brothers to hate him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about the dream they hated him even more. The brothers came up with a plan to sell Joseph as a slave in Egypt and convince their dad that he has been killed by wild animals, and it worked. One minute Joseph is a seventeen year old boy with all of his life ahead of him
and in the next he finds himself a slave. It seems very much a ‘why me’ sort of season. So disappointing. In Egypt Joseph was bought by a man named Potipher, to be a household slave. Potipher was an extremely rich officer to the king; he was captain of the palace guards. Years after Joseph had been sold into slavery, he had worked his way up to head of Potiphar’s household. Potiphar’s wife decides that she wants a relationship with Joseph. When Joseph refused this relationship and ran away from her, he accidently left his cloak in her hand. She was worried her husband would find out, so she decided to protect herself. She began to scream; she screamed that Joseph had hurt her, and she used his cloak as evidence. When Potiphar found out, he became angry and had Joseph thrown into prison. I want us to look at the story of Joseph to see three principles of why we should not give into disappointment.
Joseph knew that God would not leave him
We have two choices when facing disappointment: we can become angry and bitter or, like Joseph, we can use our hard times to show hope and trust in God. In Genesis 39 chapters 2 and 3 we read, “the Lord was with Joseph” and “gave him success in everything he did”. Although the circumstances have changed between verse 2 and verse 21, the truth still remains the same that “the Lord was with Joseph”. The Lord was with Joseph in the palace of Potiphar, and when Joseph went to prison, the Lord went there too. When disappointment threatens to overwhelm us we need to stop and remember that God is still with us.
Joseph didn’t give up and kept serving
In chapter 40 verses 1-8 we read that the chief cupbearer (that’s the guy who tests all Pharaohs food to make sure it’s not poisoned), and the chief baker (the guy that makes all the food) end up in the same prison as Joseph. The cupbearer and the baker both had dreams and were worried about what they meant, Joseph offered to help interpret their dreams. Even during his own tough times Joseph reached out to help others and be used by God. In chapter 40 verses 21-22 we read that what Joseph interpreted from the dreams came true. Next we read in verse 23 that the cupbearer did not keep his promise. “He did not remember Joseph but forgot him.” As disappointing as it was to be forgotten, another even better opportunity was coming and this time it would be worth the wait. God is God and the promise of Romans 8:28 is that, “he is working all things together for the good of those who love him.”
Joseph chose to trust God
God did not abandoned Joseph. God was leading Joseph through his setbacks to the fulfilment of his dreams in a way far beyond anything he could have ever imagined. Like Joseph we all have a choice how we respond to our circumstances, we can become disappointed or we can trust God and respond with grace, love and hope. So when numbers grown or shrink, keep trusting God, through every season. Numbers will always be there; don’t ignore them, don’t brag about them, don’t let them define your ministry, and don’t be disappointed by them. They are there to help plan and help guide your decisions.
Quarterly Issue 10 November 2015
Writer Shey Hall
p.22
Seasons
Youth Vision is committed to developing leadership for the local church and seeing ministry among young people in local churches established, nurtured, supported, and encouraged. Throughout Australia each state has its own unique expression of Youth Vision dedicated to promoting health and growth among youth and young adults within the local churches and youth organisations they partner with.
Your local Youth Vision team would love to partner with you in support of your ministry. NSW
| youthvisionnsw.org.au
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| churchesofchrist-sa.org.au
WA
| yvwa.com.au
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| cofc.com.au
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