Good afternoon everyone. It's good to see you. I'm going to read a little excerpt from your Christianity I don't think I've read this one yet if I have been just interested. I think you will be this is Something that I really appreciate because it reminds me a lot of the challenge each day. There's so many good things coming at us Whether studies or conversations Are just devotional stuff or ministry. There's so much good coming at us John Piper says that this way says The greatest enemy of a hunger for God is not apple pie It's poison. Does it make sense or it's not poison. It's apple pie It's not the x-rated video. It's the prime time dribble of triviality. We drink it at midnight And I think that there's a statement that goes along with it that says We become so satisfied with good things and that we no longer hunger for the great The question is why why do we become so satisfied with good things and that's what this is about Let me read see as so says it is like That here the terrible thing the almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self all your wishes precautions Everything to Christ and that's what he's talking about here Just God wants all of us not just a part of us but all of us every bit of us He continues But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead for what we are trying to do is to remain What we call ourselves to keep personal happiness as our great aim Our great aim in life and yet at the same time to be good We are all trying to let our mind and heart go the wrong way centered on money or pleasure or ambition and hoping in spite of this To behave honestly and chasing and humbly and that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do As he said a thistle could not produce figs if I am a field that contains nothing but grass seed I cannot produce wheat cutting the grass may keep it short But I shall still produce grass and no wheat if I want to produce wheat the change must go deeper than the surface I must be plowed up and re-sown that is why the real problem of the Christian comes where people Do not usually look it comes the very moment you wake up each morning now to really appreciate this I want you to think about your life this morning. What were the things you thought about instantly Probably preparation for a class and meeting you were running late for all the things you had to do and didn't get done yesterday He says all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals and the first job each morning Consist simply and shoving them all back Listening to that other voice Taking that other point of view letting that larger Other stronger quieter life conflowing in and so on all day Standing back from all your natural fussings and freddings which are coming at you out of the wind We can only do this for a moment at first But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system because now we are letting him work at the right part of us It is the difference between paint Which merely covers the surface And a dire stain Which soaks right through I was thinking about that last line not long ago when I was Just really think about where I was at with Christ in terms of my own devotion to him the time I was spending with him and I happened to be in Oklahoma City and I looked at this really large chain of Christian bookstores. We don't have anything like adherence St. Louis It's called Martell's and it's a great great store It's got office supplies home school teaching supplies things like that on one side and on the other side It has just tremendous amounts of Christian literature and some of these stores are the size of small walmart In your hometown and I walk in them because I'm from Oklahoma City and I look around and I look at all the new books now the books They have there similar to some of the books we have in the covenant bookstore But there are also many books that aren't in the covenant bookstore because it covers a wide range of reading for all different different Different denominations and I walked over to this one section top sellers And you just kind of look at all the books that are there and I started thinking about this community that This is a well-read community people are constantly saying have you read this book by so and so have you read this one by so and so and I've Begin to think about how much this store Really could much more look like a paint store than it could The Christian bookstore. It's not the bookstore's fault But it's the way we approach books sometimes is that we simply look at them to be a different coat of paint I'll go grab this book. I'll read through it quickly and it will impact my life at some level And it will give me a different coat of paint But we don't stop and really take the words that have been written and let them act like stain Really soaking in changing our character and who we are This is not a statement that books are bad Of course, I love to read and I recommend it obviously But it's a statement about how we read Are we going in simply to find something that will give us clever thoughts about Ethological issue a doctrine and understanding of scripture are we going and reading thinking lord transform me With what I'm reading let me pause in the midst of a page Books don't change people's lives paragraphs do I told you that quote last session They change you because you allow them to soak in and that's what CS Lewis was talking about here in merit Christianity That each day if all we're doing is laying paint on the surface the wild animals our frettings our fussings as they come at us They're going to win So we've got to do something different Be still Step back and allow the word of God often presented through other writers Through their books whether it's RC Sproul Chuck Swindall whoever you read to really permeate deeply into our heart Classes that covenant seminary can be the same way as you're rushing through them You have way too much to read way too much to do And you just don't feel like any of it truly staying. It's just coming at you so fast almost like spray can't Kids of paintings that have even brushstrokes But you must find seasons during the week During the day during the month to step back and say let this become like a stain Joshua one eight do not let this book of log depart from your mouth meditate on it day and night So you may be careful to do everything written in it Hmm that's staying let's pray Jesus We pray that the word We become such a rich stain in our life that it would just make us so transform We know Lord the kind of stain it is that it's actually going to make us transparent That is it stains our lives people will be able to see who you are much more clearly As you rest you as the Lord from our sin As you provide grace for us Lord and you transform our lives We pray that you would bless us this afternoon as we work through The different things related to this we love you in the name of Jesus amen I want you to think for a moment About your favorite store your favorite restaurant your favorite product doesn't matter What it is but what you think about something you really enjoy and then I want you to tell me what is The purpose statement or the vision statement or the slogan of that product Okay Quick minute product Restaurant store What is the slogan I've got several here that we're gonna look at and I don't want you to necessarily scan down and pick one of those is anybody got one They just left Steve Okay, I love it. Dr. Pepper makes the world taste better. Let's talk about suffering phrases and slogans for a minute. What are some others? What a sprite Sit again obey your thirst Yeah, image is nothing thirst is everything obey your thirst. You think you better hold talk on that. I do it this way I say images everything thirst Is everything obey your thirst. You see what we mean? Well, that's not for this lecture, but I'll bring it up another time slogans are powerful. What's another one? What does coke said direct your life? What are some of the different Coca-Cola Statements that they made it's the real thing. How about this one coke is it What's the one they're doing now? Do you know I know must not be very successful Visions of people diving into streams Pools of Coca-Cola and they're sitting down at the bottom Drink it. That was it simply coke drink it others gatorade. It's what you That's not it. That's white castle I set you up and I know you like white castle you just told me actually you said you like crystal burgers Gatorade division is the gatorade coming out of your body Is it in you? Those are great little slogans aren't they you can take tremendous amounts of images and talk about what that looks like A couple of great ones famous mission statements are these microsoft. This is their mission statement Microsoft's vision is to empower people through great software Anytime any place and on any device. That's it That's your vision and it's placed on walls in their corporate headquarters People will work and know this is why I'm working J. McGuire the movie this was his vision statement less money fewer clients 3M to solve unsolved problems Innovatively, and you know they do different things like they give definitely major bonuses for people who create things You remember the story of the guy who made the little post it note and those kinds of things and it goes on to make lots of money Because it was his idea Mary K. Cosmetics to give unlimited opportunity to women Now I would never have thought of that as being their vision statement. I would have thought I had something to do with You know makeup Nothing unlimited power to women Merk To preserve and improve human life Walmart's a great one to give ordinary fault the chance to buy the same things as rich people Now what are some of their little slogans? Can you think of a commercial that Walmart uses? Always yeah, you see it on everything what a little icon do they have floating on TV and Little happy smiley face guy going around Slappin prices slash on them. They're dropping on to the ground world Disney great Statement here to make people happy I love that to make people happy that is our vision odyselivator. This is definitely my favorite one To provide any customer a means of moving people and things up down in sideways over short distances with higher reliability than any other similar enterprise in the world That is great. I mean to sit down and think about that at your desk. This is what I'm gonna do This is our vision statement move people up down sideways over short distances so that they can take it Anywhere they want to go better than anybody and then Nike. This has got to be one of my favorites to experience the competition of winning and crushing our competitors Now what are these things have in common? Can you pick up anything? What's their purpose? Okay, sell a product That's perhaps one of the secondary things that they're trying to accomplish But why do people write vision statements? Okay, it's talk louder because air conditioning done so say it again All right to empower individuals with their product First of all, they want people to buy their products in order for their product to be purchased Usually they have to have a series of employees who are committed to the product Have you ever been a part of something that you really didn't know why you were doing it? Simply you were one part of a process But you didn't know really why you were there that happens a lot My first job was to serve bread at first cafeteria. It didn't last long. It was only three days long I was fired Partly because I misunderstood the mission of this organization and what they wanted me to do I walked in my good friend Brett Ross to show was serving alongside me He was the drink guy cogs waters and the rush starts about three o'clock because the senior citizens are coming in for dinner They eat dinner early and so I'm sitting there serving all types of bread and they were sweet The lines would go out to the mall and they would come in and they would want all different types The other thing that would happen though is that my responsibility would be shared with also busing tables I was told dual rows bread guy Bus boy bread guy bus boy So I'm in a serving bread which I've far preferred to do when suddenly the boss comes in he goes you need to go bus tables So I went out and I started bus bus and tables and they were packed now There were three women that were from Vietnam that also served as the bus ladies They didn't speak English, but we had fun together. I didn't speak any Vietnamese so we would have these conversations and it would be funny Table you know, they'd say things and I'd say things back and we keep working well after we got all the tables clean I went back To the line and begin to serve bread again 15 minutes later without my knowing the tables got stacked up again and got dirty because they were just overwhelmed The boss came in grab me literally I guess you could do this back in the 80s by the neck took me outside and said look at the tables And I said I cleaned them you asked me to clean them and I did and I kept it for bread because that is not your purpose I said well, what is my purpose? He said to clean tables I said but you also told me to serve bread and he got very frustrated with me And after that day shift called me and fired me I was really working hard, but I didn't really know what my purpose was do this or do that That's a simple illustration to what companies find constantly with employees that don't know why they're doing it Why is this worth it? Domino's pizza when it first started had employees that would come in and they would make a commitment to the company They would go through this regiment I've basically making these vows to this company to do things this way If you were walking into a domino's pizza it is clean It's precise and it's the same pretty much in every store you go to they've got a purpose and you've got a formula Now good companies will change their slogans all the time. We already mentioned Coca-Cola But they won't often change their mission statements because their mission statement has become something that identifies who they are and what they're trying to accomplish But some would say mission statements are kind of worthless People write them they hang them on the wall and that's pretty much all they do In a book written in the last year or so called It's not the big that eat the small but the fast that eat the slow They go through the history of mission statements and vision statements And now in many cases in many companies they're worthless. They don't really do any good Men executives sit around and board meetings and they come up with these clever statements that will say things about how people are To be moved and motivated in our company Yet they don't really prove to be that effective Instead they say principles or what should move and we're going to talk a lot about that in this section I want to talk about why I think principles vision statements mission statements and even slogans are very important for what ministries do And the reason is because your position on a youth ministry team whether you're the one leading it or your volunteer is to understand what god Has specifically called us to do in this ministry does it make sense Now some people would say I'm not sure they're that important. I'll tell you an example I took a group of three students out For dinner three for I guess this is about four years ago We went to this place called Casa Guetta Grill around in great food and I presented to them The mission statement for Chesterfield Presbyterian Church's youth ministry I thought about it for months and crafted it and it wasn't that profound It was very simple, but in its simplicity it spoke clearly to what we wanted to do The two girls that were there were like wow that's exciting. We're going to do those things Yeah, we are it's exciting and the boy his name is David pretty analytical says I think mission statements are stupid Well really David tell me why he was a junior and he's actually sophomore design Well because nobody ever does what they say they're going to do so in this cynicism I got a little frustrated But I simply said well give me an example And he couldn't give me an example So I asked a different question David does your dad like vision statements? No my dad hates them And I was oh that's where it's coming from you've learned that just as you would vote for your parents vote for You think vision statements stink because your dad thinks they stink And so we began to laugh about it a little bit as I made fun of them And we had some good conversations about the significant stuff When I took the same vision statement to our youth leadership team on a retreat that we had one of my leaders did this He had a sheet of papers in his hand like this. He's looking at it. I read it and he goes Finally, I know what I'm supposed to be doing Now part of me was like whoa, I motivated him Another side of me was like well, didn't you know what you're supposed to be doing up to this point You've been working with me for three years Literally three years. He's like I really didn't know I didn't know how my role here fit in to the big picture And now I can see on this vision statement That the third thing we talk about doing is what I'm primarily supposed to be focused on The first church I served in as a full-time youth pastor was David's church. I was David's youth pastor David was just coming into high school. I guess or late middle school and I never had a vision statement Our church had one But I don't know what it was. I never read it or if it had been read to me I really didn't pay much attention to it But I certainly couldn't tell you what it was. I couldn't summarize it anyway And I didn't think at all about the kind of vision statement. I was gonna have We did ministry and I think we had some pretty healthy things going on But if somebody said what's your purpose and what's your vision? I would say that I You know love kids hanging out with students tell people people about Jesus But I wouldn't have any clear way of articulating what we're supposed to accomplish It really didn't matter. I guess in some ways There was pretty average attendance Kids were coming to Christ certainly being discipled. I mean good things were happening large group of leaders So in some senses I could say it didn't really matter Until I left When I left to come to covenant seminary With no vision statement Everybody is a struggle to find a youth pastor Begin to bring their own To the table nobody had a unifying way of identifying what we were supposed to do And it was chaos People who had for years trusted my leadership to move us in one direction Without that leader was suddenly bringing their agendas And people didn't have the same agendas And suddenly it was disruption and it took them a long time to work through a lot of always taking place Does it make sense? So in this session we're going to deal with how do you put together a vision statement and what's the purpose the first thing a vision statement does Is it gives focus if it's a good vision statement? It's going to be short enough and specific enough that it will give us focus for what we're going to do It will act as a motivator People need to be motivated in order to do stuff It's not going to be enough just to constantly throw out scripture at them and say go do it You know flavors are few the harvest is full go go go They're going to need to know specifically how they're fitting in to the occasion What gods call them to do it also adds validity to the program that you're involved with why would it do that? How can a vision statement add validity to something? Okay, good see To evaluate Doesn't certain program Things you get going on and if they're not if an ad You know producing the fruit of what that Mr. statement, you know, is is is is your tours and Scrapping okay, and you heard that on tape scrap it It does it gives you an opportunity to evaluate it how we talked about this already But how do most people view youth ministers in the church? What are some stereotypical words they would say Oh True false the youth ministers are highly organized true false they allowed Also, okay, you've been to a clear keen understanding of where they're going and how they're going to get there true false You ministers think lots about the future of where this ministry is going to go and how it's going to get there Youth pastors have a keen sense of understanding Models for how to manage people and move organizations forward Most of those would say false now somebody say not me Well, you might not have a keen Understanding of the future of the ministry you might have a keen understanding of your own future and what you want But when you can take a statement to people who don't think you have any ability to present something like this You have people suddenly going wow This is important now someone say well, that shouldn't be your motivation Well, maybe you shouldn't say that so quickly Your motivation should be able to empower and enable people to help you Respond to the call gods given you if people don't respect you if people don't understand where you're going Then they're not going to follow you. We're going to talk to the next section about how you get leaders One of the ways you get leaders is by having clear Reasons for why you want them to follow you and a vision statement will do that The other thing it does and Steve mentioned this already is it provides a great tool For evaluation poor mission statements won't do that They won't have any specific measurable way where you can say whether you're accomplishing what you're setting out to do or not A couple of other things it shows commitment and passion it helps draw boundaries to what you are going to do and not do Now for instance youth choir we mentioned that already some ministries have amazing youth choirs People are dynamic the ministries dynamic they go all over the country Edifying the body of Christ doing outreach or anything as they sing Some churches only do youth choirs because it's been a tradition and they stink Others have a passion forum, but they don't have the leader, but since they we have a passion they're going to do it anyway That would be my situation and my church suddenly said mark we want to have a youth choir I would draw quickly to our vision statement and show that that is not anywhere within the scope of what we're going to do Now we might still do one, but it would not be something that I would necessarily be pushing In other words, I would get people maybe to help do it, but it wouldn't be something and I can go back to our vision statement Which has been stamped in our doors by the elders and say that's why we're not going to do it Believe me ideas are going to come all the time And you're going to want to have something where you can say that's not what we're about in terms of this ministry It's a good idea, but not necessarily here If you don't do that, you're going to be constantly taking in ideas Making promises you shouldn't make, getting involved in things you shouldn't get involved in And you're not going to be very happy in ministry It enhances your effectiveness, reveals weaknesses Great example when I share my vision statement for our church in a little bit I'll show you where we were very weak and some real areas It reveals your strengths as well and it unifies the body The vision statement of Chesterfield Presbyterian Church I have written a few pages over if you want to look at it because we're going to kind of talk through this a little bit As I mentioned earlier, this vision statement took several months to develop And as you read it or hear it or see it, you'll probably go, wow, why did that take so long? Let me read it to you Chesterfield Youth Ministry exists To bring students into the body of Christ To nurture students in the body of Christ Or in their relationship with Christ to equip students to serve in the name of Christ All by the grace of God, all for the glory of God There are three major things that we talk about here The first is that we're going to be a ministry that brings students into the body of Christ Second, we'll nurture them in a relationship with Christ And third, we'll equip them to serve Now this is a significant vision statement because it's a tool we can use To evaluate, how could we use it to evaluate? Or be some things that we could do that would allow people To evaluate whether or not we're doing it Based on statements we put on the paper Yeah, bottom line, our people being brought to Christ Now, this is an interesting line Some vision statements would say things like We exist so that students Will have a relationship with Christ Our vision statement doesn't say that It says we exist that our students will be brought into the body of Christ What's the difference? Corporate Okay, so this statement is individual The other statement we exist to bring students into the body of Christ has a more corporate view Why do you think we chose that language? Yeah Okay, exactly great answer God is the one who brings people to himself We believe that it's more significant For us to connect students to the larger body of Christ than it is anything else You see we assume this if they're going to come into the body of Christ But the way we evaluate isn't by counting We don't step back and count how many students came to Christ this month How many students came to Christ this year And evaluate whether we're successful or not What we do is we look at our ministry and say our students coming into the body of Christ How would you evaluate that then? Where would be some things you do to know whether or not you're succeeding Where would you look for success? Not sound legalistic I mean, I would look at maybe the different programs that we have and look at Our kids coming to more than one big in terms of is there a real connection there? Okay All right programs what kind of programs would you be looking at Okay Sunday school morning worship. I'm just going to abbreviate for speeds of Sunday school morning worship What other kinds of things would you look at? Okay small groups so any kinds of things now what's interesting about these is These two particularly another youth group functions are centered on youth group functions The only one that's not is this one My primary tool for evaluation is to pay attention to whether or not Students are in worship participating as the body of Christ Are they passing notes? Are they actively involved? Are they sitting in more than one location? Not obviously not at once But are they sitting in one youth section or are they spreading out now in our church? It's still predominantly one youth section But we really challenged because to think about worshiping if they're distracted by their friends like oh boy, you know Mary sitting on the road she shares cute I kind of want to talk to her or the writing notes I'm just sticking little gum wrappers up their nose whatever We encourage them to go other places and kids will spread out because they want a worship But it's not just in the morning worship or reevaluate And it's not just in Sunday school of small groups But where else in the active life of the church are high school students and middle school students participating with the rest of the body That's a much greater Impact on their lives than just simply saying we want kids to come to Christ For years that was what I did I simply thought oh, we want students to come to Christ now. It's not I mean, that's certainly exciting. We rejoice But it's even more exciting for them to come to Christ But then to begin to be connected to the larger body So on our ministry all the leaders are constantly focusing on how can we get students more connected to the body Now we still have Sunday school. We still have small groups But we make a concentrated effort to move forward. That's one example For how we use Evaluation the second thing that we do is we talk about we don't want to just bring students into the body of Christ But we want to nurture them in their relationship with Christ Well, how do you evaluate whether you're nurturing someone This can get real tricky Especially in ministry with high school students and middle school students because their relationship with Christ It's going to look like this at times, you know sometimes like that slower places and then up and down it looks like a little chart in a hospital They're live spiritually instead of ours are constantly going to be going through a process of ups and downs This goes back to why we talked so much about identity the last two weeks if you are struggling in your identity And you're identifying your own sense of worth based on how well your students are doing spiritually This is what it's going to look like as their spiritual growth goes so will your emotional life Up and down up and down. This is Tuesday Since Sunday, which is the Sabbath the day of worship and spiritual growth and reflecting on God I've had amazing journeys up and down I called one of our leaders and said how do your small group go last night and he said great A lot better than last week. That's exciting to me I talked to another well it was really good But there's a couple of key students that are really struggling With making a commitment to the group. We have a little covenant that they're looking at and they're kind of reflecting on it saying I will commit to the group and they don't want to do it They don't want to sign it because they think oh, it's legalistic. Well, they don't understand what legalism really is It's certainly not but they're afraid to make a commitment. They said this to me We don't want to have to come to the group when we don't feel like coming Well, I know that this is the reality of what a spiritual life is going to look like So if we have 20 meetings a semester Maybe half you would come and half you wouldn't Now this student in a herwalk with Christ is incredibly inconsistent And if I was constantly evaluating how effective I am I would be very discouraged That's only one example How do you evaluate whether you're nurturing and some ways You have to wait Many many many years After they've graduated from your program truly even understand and identify Whether what you did was that effective or not Now in some ways it doesn't seem fair The reality is God knows because of his Attributes what's going to happen in this person's life from the beginning until the end In youth ministry sometimes we're very Near-sighted we look only at what's going to happen between now when they graduate And we think if they're not fired up for the Lord at the moment they graduate high school That they never will be and that's not necessarily true Or if they are that they always will be And we can watch what happens when so many of them enter college And then there's this big dip in terms of their hunger for God. You know what I'm talking about Some of these experience that we all know it's a reality So how do you evaluate nurture? For our team when I say to them as we look for biblical Passages that would identify whether someone's walking with the Lord through to the Spirit a passion and hunger for God Consistency in a way they display grace and they seek the Lord but ultimately this Do they love the Lord by God's grace? Do they love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength And mind and do they love their neighbor as himself And when you can begin to identify that then you can say we're nurturing if they're not if the large group of students is not doing that Then you have to ask questions about what you're doing in ministry to take that ahead For instance there'll be seasons of your ministry when you look at stuff and you go our group In general is struggling with This what does them sense that youth groups could struggle with as a whole No gossip What else? materialism sure How about relational difficulties? Every fall about this time of year homecoming comes It I hate homecoming. I do. I mean it's just nuts. Okay These young Christian kids are not really dating each other, but they want to go to homecoming So they say well, let's just go with friends. What does that mean? And all of a sudden they're going out. They're doing all these different things. This is friends And then somebody gets left out and all of a sudden they realize they left somebody out and then they start trying to force relationships to build It's a nightmare. We had two homecoming this last weekend You know, I just watched the fallout Sunday morning and Sunday night the students came Some girls are crying some girls are tired mixed in out You know, they stayed up to four in the morning just you know hanging out and this is the mess You know they slow show up the worship with their dresses on and there's no back to their dresses You know and guys are really worshiping God when they're counting, you know, look at the backs here shoulder blades everywhere You know, it's a struggle That's sorry with a young person here. She's an eighth grade. She's not going to She knows exactly what I'm talking about. So anyway, that's the world and all of a sudden it's like Well, are we doing any good? Are we helping these students in anyway? Well, you can't just look at one day. You can't even look at one hour really You've got to just look at the process of what's going by and then that's the question What things what tools what programs what relationships that we put into students life to help them Be nurtured the last one is do we equip them are we equipping them to serve In the name of Christ. I mentioned earlier that Once I'd written this vision statement and had the session look at it and and everybody endorsed it Is that a good vision statement will help you identify areas of strength and areas of weakness Bring students into the body of Christ. We can look at it and say you know what We're succeeding there. That's that's exciting nurturing. We've got good programs to nurture But I'm going to look at equipping them to serve in the name of Christ. I realized our ministry is doing a very poor job Of equipping students to serve Everything's kind of for them So with this big weakness, what are we going to do? So we identified some things mission trips do a short-term mission project Tutoring program for any inner-city students through the new city fellowship and that church down there And all of a sudden we began to identify that problem and then we put people in places to help serve And all of a sudden we're accomplishing what's going on now. It's really easy To think that once you get to a place where you're doing something that'll it'll be perfect the rest of your life It's not that way Just in the business as in the business world you can have the greatest vision statement You can have clear procedures. You can have great organizational structure But different circumstances externally and internally perhaps are going to change the way Your success looks you might not be near successful. I mean just think about the market in the last couple Well last year particularly, but over the last five years It's a lot different isn't it people three years ago would never have thought that they'd be experiencing things financially with their portfolios that they're experiencing now How could it be? But it is the spiritual nature of the ministries that we're leading the fact that we're fighting against principalities Evil darkness. They're going to be things that we just don't understand You're going to have classes that come through your ministries that just aren't very good classes They're not going to have good leaders. They're not going to have good students You'll graduate great classes and wonder what are we going to do this last year last two years Graduated 27 seniors a year ago and this last May graduated 33 when the 27 left I thought we will never be able to replace that class But over the year we had the most amazing young leaders Rise up young Christians really maturing bringing friends and even a bigger class Now I look at this year and we don't have a lot of seniors I get a junior class. It's great and I got a freshman class That's tiny and I got to solve more class That's big But nobody in that class other than two or three people are very interested in what we're doing Why have we changed anything not really but something It's different about them. What does that mean? That means I've got to step back I'm going to talk about equipping. I'm going to talk about nurturing. I'm going to talk about bringing With all of our leaders and say what are we going to do different our leadership team has changed I lost This summer at the end of August probably 14 leaders that were there during the summer college students had come back to serve Different seminary interns who've been present over the last couple years who had to leave because they graduated and went to their own churches And that makes things different God provides and we'll talk a lot more about that in the next section But the same things consistent They all know what the vision statement is and how we're going to seek to accomplish it But the programs The plans all the different things that we implement could be radically different depending on the needs Of the students But yet the vision will stay the same any questions so far. Yeah It's not part of our vision statement Good question because they could say wait a minute a youth choir would be about Nurturing it'd be about equipping why can't we do it out of the vision statement you will develop principles For your ministry that are very specific General vision statement because if it's too specific You're not going to be able to fit everything on a piece of paper But out of that I'll have things like bring and then all principles under bring what do those look like? Under nurture principles for nurture under quit Principles for nurture the principles could be six there could be six of them there could be ten of them And they'll focus on specific things that we will do and then sometimes the negative specific things that we won't do Underneath the principles that we have listed youth choir it doesn't say we won't have youth choir But it shows that based on the things that we're doing we won't do one um the place I would pull from would be Leaders will use their organized gifts and abilities And their passions To be involved in ministries that they can be involved in another ministries Will be supported by a team of people though an equal passion for each of the events that we produce So in other words, I could go to them and say we don't have a team right now That's really excited and committed for a youth choir doesn't mean we just like you But it means we don't have a team that's generally excited about this another principle we have is we will not put together So many programs as so to distract students from the core things that matter most now our core things are Sunday morning Sunday nights and then Wednesday nights and so anytime we want to add a program Chardill we basically asked a question what's get what's it going to replace because we're going to pull something out now Sometimes we don't we come in and say well this is so good We're going to add it we added a divorce recovery Uh small groups for divorce divorce recovery for middle school students and high school students We didn't take anything out because we looked at that said this is critical. It's unique And there's nothing else like it that's going to there's nothing else we do that's really going to nurture and minister to those specific needs So we're going to use it to make sense with the youth choir we would probably say something like The benefits of this Are going to be covered in other places. So that's why we're not going to commit to it now. Let me say this real quick I'm not anti youth choirs. I can't lead one because I don't have a good voice But I'm not anti so you people in the video if you want to do youth choir please go do youth choir. They're great I don't want that to be said. Mark Davis hate youth choirs I don't in any way and I've seen many that are very successful But if you use it as an example that if you don't have a vision statement to declare and principles to support it You'll just have a youth choir. You're going to be selling everything For fundraisers, you know, we have a statement on fundraisers that we're not going to do These types of fundraisers it's in our principles because I get all the magazines. We can be selling candles Krispy Kreme johnuts and washing the car all the same weekend and all at the same time You know here candle burn incense your car will smell nice. Oh, eat Krispy Kreme don't spoil your ride on the road more shit for you I'm just to raise a few hundred dollars You know our churches committed to not doing that and I'm glad I know lots of guys that have to do tons of fundraisers that's where the church is that and that's great But that's not necessarily what we're doing. That's a great question though We're going to get more to the principles in another section in other questions Yeah
That's a great question We will a little bit but let me address it real quick now to the question basically is how do you evaluate where the students are In relationship to the vision statement and the mission and where you want to take the students. Am I hearing that correctly? Well, you've been formulating the vision statement. So before the ones even establish how do you not instead of simply opposing your will? Sure Okay, we're going to talk about that in a minute, but let me address it now first of all You want to put together a team of people to help you articulate what are the needs of our groups the first church I've ever worked in the man who's mentored me Scott Manley said to me what I would do is if I was you I would go to every parent in the church and say would you invite me over to your house For lunch or dinner Sundays just so I can get to know you and your children and find out what the needs are now. I was only 20 something years old I was scared to death to do that I basically without saying it said I'll never do that No way few years into the job. I became a little more secure and I did do that and I began to listen to what people were saying The needs were in the community and that's important how we didn't articulate a vision statement then But when I came to Chesterfield. I did the same thing. I listened carefully What do students say the needs are what a parent said the needs are what are the elders feel like the needs are and through that process You can begin to to generally understand now as you mentioned a minute ago our vision statement's pretty vague I mean, it's it's specific enough that I can evaluate whether we're bringing whether we're nurturing whether we're equipping but It's not It's not something that I'd say to anybody and they go oh, I don't want nurture I don't want to bring now It's not true some churches who said I don't want people to new people to come in as much But nobody said I don't want to equip and so because of that and I'm pretty safe waters The challenges when you get to a place where maybe the needs are changing in your group and you're not identifying them I think in the last summer we hit a point where we didn't very effectively Get the pulse of new students coming into our group and the nature of our sunny night youth group meeting became so intense The seniors and some juniors were loving it the teaching was intense The messages were long The worship was long and then we had freshman coming up out of eighth grade who you know There their youth meeting was basically you know lots of wild games and radical stuff Taking place all the time eggs flying and shaving cream hair, which I'm not opposed to any of that But it was so different when they came in That they haven't adjusted well. That was a weak spot on our part We should have been able to pay attention to what was taken place now We're reaping the fruit of that where some students are saying I don't think I can be a part of Small group. They're just a little too intense or I'm not sure I want to come to your wins tonight meeting because You know, it's a little bit radical. You know, it's it's a lot like the middle school administrators outreach. It's really You know loud and fun. We're gonna talk about purpose driven stuff in a minute But you have to pay attention and step back and that's the nature of your question All right, let me go ahead and continue actually let's take five minute break And we will come back and continue this discussion and then lead into Our discussion about how you get volunteers to help through this vision right