Subscribe to the NetworkBack Home…and thinking
Got back home late last night – around 10:30pm. It was a long day of traveling. Today I’ve met with three people from my church – all great guys. Feels good to be back home in Portland. I love traveling, but there’s no place like home (cliche, I know). Nevertheless it’s the truth.
One of the best things about traveling so much is that I can step back and look at ministry from a distance. So often you get so close to things that you lose site of what you’re leading…know what I mean? Taking these steps back and looking at the “bigger picture” really helps me stay focused on where we’re heading in our ministry.
Sunday night I had dinner with about 10 youth workers at the camp that wanted to talk about college ministry and preparing kids for their college-age years. It was a great time. The thing I loved about it was we talked big picture and developing a ministry structure that helps college-age people. I tend to think bigger picture anyway, but stepping back this weekend once again clarified some things for me for my ministry here in Portland:
- God has given us more insight into ministry philosophy than we often realize. If we can just tune into those more and develop infrastructures that facilitate that effectively in our context we’d be far better off. I’ll probably write more on this – in blogs or articles.
- College-age people are vital for any church…and the Church is vital for them. So many youth pastors give up on college ministry simply because they don’t understand how it works or what it’s role is within the church. Pastors don’t concentrate on college-age people because there are typically higher priorities at any given time. Stepping back this weekend completely re-affirmed how this works in our church…or, how it fits in the big picture of what we’re doing. I will be covering some of this topic more in a couple weeks at the National Youth Ministry Conference and also at the CollegeLeader regional training days.
- If we’re not careful in our ministries we can VERY easily do things that actually undermine what we say we want to accomplish – without even realizing it. Stepping back and thinking more deeply is the only way we’d see it. This often comes from experience. We know in our head that things ought to be a certain way, but without realizing it we can too easily implement things the ways we’ve always seen it done – simply because that’s all we know. Again, I’ll write more about some of these things.
- What we’re doing in our church is extremely unique. Sitting with pastors as often as I do it constantly reminds me that what we’re doing is very different than “traditional” approaches. Much of this is tied into #3 above, but I’m trying really hard to create a culture that is truly focused on the right things. Not that traditional approaches are necessarily wrong. I’m just trying to avoid some of the same problems that these approaches have created. However, I’m also aware that even if we do avoid some of these issues…we’re just creating different problems. I have no idea what those are (yet), but we’ll see.
Ok, I know that’s probably really ambiguous, but maybe it gets your mind going a little. Or, maybe, it would push you to take some time away and take a fresh look at what you’re doing in your ministry. Either way I’ll likely elaborate on these things again sooner than later….
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Thanks for your time this weekend!
Our students had a great time as we drove home quoting everything from “pee on me” and “juicyfruit”, to “in what areas do we say we believe, when we don’t” and “what does it look like to stand firm on the Word once you’re home”.
As pastors, we have plenty to process about whether or not we actually consistently have a functioning theology of the Body throughout our ministries. hope to hear you again soon. thanks again! ~ bulfreno