Are you a Youth Pastor in transition? Here are four things you need to do when you arrive at your new church.

Transition happens to all of us. Here are four things that you have to do when you arrive at your new Church. 

When you transition from one student ministry to the next, you will see so many things that need to change. That is great but you can’t change everything at once. 

I read a very good book one time that had a phrase that went something like this “The steps of the righteous man are ordered of the Lord.” If you notice, the scriptures do not say the leaps of a righteous man are ordered of the Lord. God orders and ordains our steps … not our leaps.

Coming into town and trying to tackle, facility, recruiting, outreach, discipleship, small groups and team building all at the same time would not be a step – that would be a very large leap. Because of this you have decide to accomplish His vision for your ministry one step at a time.

Four things you need to do when arriving at your new Church.

Step One - Take care of your family. 

The first thing to do when arriving at a new church, is not to change the youth group name, start a new ministry, or take the leadership on a retreat. The first thing to do in starting this new journey is to take care of your family. How is your spouse handling the transition away from family, friends, work and the home you left behind? How are your kids doing emotionally? It is far to easy to say, "Oh kids are tough, they will adjust easily". But the truth of the matter is, moving is tough on adults, let alone a 13 year old. In this transition, make your family your first priority. Give you spouse and children room to grow into the change. 

Step Two – Build relationship with students.
When you first arrive, you will be so excited to get to know all of the students in your new family at the Church. However, they don’t have a clue who you are, what you are like or if they can even trust you. They most likely have gone through several Youth Pastors and they all came in talking about how much they love them, and how God is going to do some great things in the ministry. They have heard it all before. When you first arrive don’t tell them you love them… show them! Take every opportunity during your Youth Services, weekend venues, off day trips, ball games, gatherings at your house and retreats to simply get to know your new friends as well as let them get to know you.

Relationship trumps everything!
Teenagers are your ministry so, build relationships with your students and you will be building your ministry! 

Step Three – Build relationship with parents.
You have to begin to look at everything through the eyes of the parents. You have some incredible families at your new Church. So take some time to establish trust, build friendship, as well as cast the vision of where you are taking the student ministry and inviting parents to bring their teenager along for the journey. 

Talk to parents in the halls of the Church. Set up times to grab a coffee. Go to one of their Children’s games, sit on the bleachers and just get to know them. Other than your relationship with your Senior Pastor, your relationship with Parents is the most important relationship in your ministry, so be authentic, be real, be a servant and get to know them. When you do, they will love you! When they love you, they will make their teenagers come to your meetings!

Step Four – Build the team.
Nothing can be done alone. In order for you to do what God is calling you to do, you must build an incredible team. When my family and I transitioned to a new church a few years ago, we had an amazing summer planned. We also had a brand new launch coming up in the fall, so we took 13 weeks of the Summer to not only cast vision, but to recruit, train, and release new workers into the roles they were going to play at Student Ministry in the fall. 

We arrived at the new Church at the end of May. We took time to build relationships with teenagers, build relationships with parents, we recruited and trained 70 new volunteers and in 13 weeks the student ministry went from 40 students at our first service to 395 when we launched in the fall. 

When Jesus came to the earth, He did not come to promote or push a program, He came to the earth to help people. It is the same with each us us. God did not call us where we are to promote or push some program! He called us to live and to love His people. 

Build HIS people and HE will build HIS church! 

If you want to find out more ways to grow, and build your team, be sure to check out Youth Ministry University. Click (HERE) to find out more. 

5 things we need to do with our kids every day!

If you are anything like me (which I think you probably are), there have been many times where you thought to yourself, "Nothing I'm doing is working, and I've tried just about everything!".

One of the things that I've discovered is that more times than not, when I don't know what to do, going back to the basics always seems to work. 

Here are five things you and I should do everyday with our kids. 

PRAY

Don’t just pray for your child each day, but pray with them too. It is a great idea to regularly ask them what you can be praying about for them. Prayer can be so powerful as we as parents humble ourselves, join hands with our child, and ask our Father for help. Say a prayer as you drop them off at school or before bedtime. One of the most powerful things Veronica and I have ever done is pray for our children every night before they go to bed. 

SMILE

Smiles lighten things up and brighten up almost any room. So smile! Whether you feel like it or not. Studies have shown that not only are we happier, but so is our family, when we smile! 

HUG. 

I don’t care if your child is 1 year old or 23 years old, they need hugs! Hug them when they’re happy. Hug them when they are sad. Hug your child every single day. Hug when you feel like it and when you don’t. Hug them when they want one and even when they don! There is so much healing that flows through a simple hug. Through the years with my kids, sometimes they just need a good old fashion hug.  

LISTEN

You may think that you have amazing words of wisdom to share with your child, but they will not really hear you until they feel you have heard them first. Here are some tips. Listen. Be patient. Don’t interrupt. Show your child that you’ve heard them by saying something like, “I can understand why you feel this way,” “This must be hard for you,” or “I get what you are saying.” Listening will build strong relational bridges between you and your child, not burn them. 

TRAIN

Scripture says, Train up that child in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it. You are your child’s main teacher. Teach them God’s Word daily. It doesn't matter if they are 5 or 25. Teach them about God's creation. Train them in the characteristics of who God is. Teach them about the pitfalls of life.  Sure, this is hard work, but don’t get tired of doing the hard things! 

Lessons Learned from Session One of Breaking 200 Barrier

In my last blog, titled "Maybe the problem is not them", I talked about how, I have no doubt that the the lid on our churches abilities to win more people to Jesus is me. The bad news is, in order to not only get bigger but also better, our church needs a new leader. The good news is, I want to become the leader they need! 

So, yesterday we started an eight week journey with Carey Nieuwhof's "Breaking 200 without breaking you" course. The first lesson was so eye opening! The video session was inspiring and the questions caused us to take a close look at who we really are and what has held us back from being more effective at making more disciples. 

To actually take time to listen, learn reflect, and grow is so needed in my life and ministry right now. So I've decided to blog about what our team and I are learning during this journey. To be honest, writing and sharing this is more about me than you - lol. I guess I want to keep talking about, eternalizing, and sharing the things we discover, so myself and my team can actually begin to change. 

Here are five obstacles that have been blocking our path of reaching more people. 

1 - We have the flow chart of a Super Market but we run the positions like a Mom and Pop Shop. 

2 - Because we are gifted in certain areas, we have not trusted people around us to step up and do what we are good at. This makes us overly busy and keeps others from finding their place. 

 
3 - The people who "lead" our ministries spend the majority of their time doing the work rather than releasing others to serve. 

4 - We have a culture of compliments and not constructive criticism. This keeps team members from growing personally and makes are ministries mediocre at best.  

5 - As the Senior Pastor I have my hands on way too many things.

Maybe the problem is not "them".

Ok, lets cut through the hype of social media where everything is great, every service is packed, and every person on my team is a #legend. The truth of the matter is, myself and my entire team are working harder than ever before and we are not seeing the results that we would like to see in the lives of people or our church. 

We are almost four and a half years into this church plant thing and sure we can make things sound great by posting quotes like "What started out as a small group gathering in my home has now grown to two locations across two states". Wow! That sounds big. Wow! That sounds exciting. Wow! That sounds like God is moving like never before! But the truth of the matter is our new 5pm Saturday Night Service has not taken off like I thought it would, we have had a bit of a revolving door of team members, money is tight, and I am getting more and more bald everyday because of it. 

Something needs to change and I've come to the conclusion the thing that needs to change just might be ME.

There is one thing that has been the same since TheCHURCH was planted and that is the fact that I have always been the one in charge. I am the Pastor of TheCHURCH. So maybe just maybe, if we are not reaching as many people on the weekend as I would like, if teams are not as efficient as they could be, if we are not seeing disciples raised up at the rate they I had hoped we would, and I am the one in charge, then maybe I am part of the problem. Maybe I need to change! 

TheCHURCH needs a new leader!

So I have decided to become one! This week myself and a few team member are starting Carey Nieuwhof's "Breaking 200 without breaking you" training course. I've never been more humbled, excited, and challenged. 

Today, I don't have 3 points or 2 things that you need to do to improve. In fact, I really don't know why I am sharing this with you today. Maybe it's just good to get it off my chest, or maybe I am hoping there are others out there like me that aren't happy with the status quo and are feeling challenged to change. 

If you are like me, I'd love to hear your story or maybe even connect. There are no strings. I am not after anything other than connecting, growing and learning. So feel free to comment below or email me at growmoore@gmail.com. 

Dealing with confrontation.

When dealing with confrontation, most of us were taught the "confrontation sandwich". Let the person you are confronting know, "Here is what your doing good, here is what your doing wrong, and then end the conversation on a high note letting them know something they are doing really well". We are taught to do this with the hope that taking the time to talk about the good will soften the blow of what they are doing wrong. 

I don't subscribe to the confrontation sandwich theory ... here is why. 

With some people, the two compliments to one correction will have them leaving saying, " Hey actually I’m doing pretty good … I’ve done two things right and only one thing wrong".

Here is how you handle confrontation:

1 - Confront them personally.

Always be man or woman enough to talk to the person personally about the situation, do not tear them down privately behind closed doors to your other team members. Chewing people up in private, sows a bad seed of distrust with you and with the other employees / team members in your ministry or organization.  

I worked at a place of business like that before. Whoever wasn't at the table got ripped apart. It did not take too long before I began to wonder, when I am not at the table, am I getting talked about as well?  There was very little trust between teammates and supervisors which caused us all to severely underperform.  

2 - Confront quickly and conversationally. 

When someone is dropping the ball, don’t wait till the small problem grows into a large one, and then hold a big private meeting with them to talk about the situation. When something happens, just pull them aside and talk to them about the situation. You need to develop a work environment where people can speak freely, conversationally and improve quickly 

3 - Confront Head On.

When you confront, be open and get to the point. "Hey, we are going to have a tough conversation. The reason is, I really care about you and I care about the company, so lets talk about a few things ....". 

No one likes confrontation. But I've found that these three steps help me handle it correctly.