Intentional Student Ministry | Youth Ministry with a Purpose

My goals for Youthmin.org

January 31, 2012 in youthmin with 4 Comments

The last two summers, God has really put different ideas for blogging on my heart. Two years ago, he put a desire and passion to start a site specifically for Small Town Student Ministries and the struggles and environments that don’t really come into play in the larger churches and towns. From that, SmallTownStudentMinistry.com was born and God really blessed it.

Then we moved from a small town of 1500 to living less than 10 miles from Fenway and the rest of the heart of Downtown Boston. I was no longer in a small town or small church, and so the site changed to Intentional Student Ministry this past August.

But around that same time, God started putting something on my heart as well as my Brothers heart, another, new site. This new site, I really felt, was to be something that would grow into being a megaphone for the new voices in the Youth Ministry world. From this, Youthmin.org was born. I tried hiding the fact that it was my site for a while, but I’ve been outed by a few people, so oh well. (thats for another post)

Though I didn’t fully agree with everything Marko wrote in “Youth Ministry 3.0″ I love the language and purpose of the title, and I fully believe that just because his definition of 3.0 might be different from mine or how others would define it, I believe that Youth Ministry is moving from 2.0 to 3.0. It has been for a few years, but still has a ways to go. I wanted Youthmin.org to sort of be the soapbox that discussed the sort of issues that arise in that transition of the Youth Ministry world.

There are a lot of various things we hope to accomplish with Youthmin.org. Some of them have already started happening, and some are a ways away.

But one thing I love about this experience is that I’m learning so much, both about Youth Ministry but also about writing. Ill get to one aspect in a bit, but for starters, I read and edit a lot of posts every day for the site, whether to publish on the site or simply tweet out. A long with that, I’m learning a lot more about social media than I ever planned.

All that to sort of lead into 5 quick goals I have for Youthmin.org for February, and some discussion about them.

Goal 1 | January 1st, we had 360 twitter followers, and today (January 31) we are at 531. I would love to be at 1000 by March 1st. Want to be one of the 1000? Follow @youth_min

However, we don’t have a huge number of followers compared to many sites. I know the tricks and tips on growing a twitter following very easily, and have seen it work with some friends. But, we haven’t tried those tips and tricks and probably won’t because I am amazed at the interaction we get with our followers. I feel like the majority of people who follow us want to be following us and are engaged with our tweets. We use buffer.com, which I HIGHLY recommend for anyone interested in using twitter with a blog or business, and its amazing to see our engagement go up and up and up with our followers.

Goal 2 | Along those same lines, we are currently are at 281 Fans on our Facebook page. I would love to be at 400 by the end of February. With this, though, I am trying to find a balance. We have a specific strategy with what we tweet with our buffer, but along those lines, I don’t want our twitter streams and Facebook stream to be too identical. Im learning, though, that not all of our Facebook fans are on twitter, so we are missing out, I feel, on traffic when we don’t post on there. Im doing some tests this month about that, and will share them in March. Want to help us out? Like Youthmin.org on Facebook!

Goal 3 | Decemeber was our soft launch, and we had nearly 38,000 views. January was our official launch, and we had 8,000. We’re starting something in February with some of our top contributors that Im hoping pays off, and I’d like to get back to 25,000 views in February.

Goal 4 | We did 2 or 3 weeks of a weekly round up, a popular flavor on many blogs, where we posted our posts from the week and 10 favorite posts from others. In February, I’m hoping to do this through an email newsletter with some other things incorporated in it. Would love to have 50 people sign up by the end of February for our weekly newsletter.

Goal 5 | Our bi-weekly #youthmin #tweetchats have been awesome. I love hearing the feedback from people about how great they are for youth pastors, and I couldn’t agree more. We only had one in January, but had over 30 people participate. We have a few in February on the books, and I would love to have 50 people participate in our #youthmin #tweetchats.

Update: Goal 6 | Adding a goal. Currently we are at 560 comments on just 130 posts. By the end of February I hope to be at 160 posts and I’m aiming big - 1,000 comments

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Photoshop Files of our Spring Calendar

January 26, 2012 in Resources, youth pastor with 3 Comments

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I had several people ask how we made this calendar. It was very simple to do but it was a bit time consuming for me. Here are the photoshop files for this interested, Feel free to download this and remake it for your ministry.

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God’s Great expectations of Youth Pastors

January 24, 2012 in Discipleship, Leadership, Student Ministry, Thoughts about the Job, Virtues of a Youth Pastor, youth pastor with 2 Comments

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This post Originally appeared on Youthmin.org

This verse can sometimes serve as a direct punch to the gut.

The easy way to see this verse is that its talking to those who want to be Teachers but are not called. In Youth Ministry application, it could be seen as talking to people who want to be Youth Pastors yet are not called to be Youth Pastors. It’s sometimes tough to imagine that people would be crazy enough to want to be Youth Pastors without being called to be Youth Pastors by God, but their are people out there living this way.

But like I said, thats the easy way to view this verse.

What God has been laying on my heart as I reflect on this verse is the idea that as Youth Pastors, we are teachers, and we have HUGE expectations on us. Not just the expectations the Parents of the teens we minister to, not just the expectations of the teens we minister to. Greater than the expectations our Sr. Pastors and Elders and other church members have on us as the Pastor of the Youth.

God called you to where you are. I don’t know your current circumstances in ministry, but I look back at where I was a year ago, and even in that dark time, I understand that God called me to that church and that ministry. Just because I am no longer there, doesn’t mean I wasn’t supposed to go there for a season. And the same applies to you. Whether you are in a dark time in your Ministry or things have never been better, God has placed a Call on you, not just to Youth Ministry, but to the specific Ministry you are in right now.

This means that God has great expectations on you, on me, on every one of us who have accepted the call as Youth Pastors.

God has been laying on my heart the severity of this the last few months and weeks and really pushed me hard about something I have been struggling with the last year or so.

Im of the understanding that as Youth Pastors, one of our functions is to Teach the Bible to the students. Yet, in the past, I have taken something that God takes very seriously, and James tells us we will be held accountable for, and placed it in the hands of people I have never met.

There are great curriculums out there, there are great resources available to us as Youth Pastors to make our “jobs” easier. And in the past, I have been a huge fan of these things.

But I have to wonder, did God really call us to the Ministries he has called us to so that we could teach the students what some other Youth Pastor is teaching their students and repackaging for us to buy for $20?

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