Enjoyed reading Jeremy’s post over on REYouthPastor talking about burnout and youth ministry. He asks some good questions, and I’d love to read some of your thoughts on the subject or burnout. Here’s a clip of his stuff, head over there to read the whole thing and comment if you would like:
Pain is part of the youth pastor job description. Does experiencing pain and exhaustion season a youth pastor? One of the biggest negative aspects of being a youth pastor is that working with students stunts our emotional and life growth.
Many youth pastors try so hard to dodge the ?burn out? bullet.
We try to take more days off, vacations, see a psycho-therapist, take a monthly spiritual retreat, and pursue spiritual formation but it seems like we are only left with more exposed pain, exhaustion, and burn out. There is this belief that if you burn out, you are a bad youth pastor because apparently you didn?t take enough days off or establish healthy boundaries. I think the exact opposite is true.
America?s best youth pastors are the youth workers who have learned and persevered through their many painful and hurtful church experiences. The youth pastors that persevere make it, but the youth pastors that live in the past and become jaded don?t make it.
My point ? the best youth pastors are the youth pastors who burn out or get burned because very early on they learn to forgive and to let go.
JG
We are excited to finally roll out the new SYMC website for 2011. The new site has the speaker line-up (although there’s more to come there), the great Training options, and all the registration details you need to know. There’s so much there you’ll have to check it out what Doug and the rest of the gang have planned.
We are so excited, I hope you join us in Chicago, March 4 – 7 2011.
1 September 2010
posted by Scott Rubin
Some of your churches are like mine, and you encourage some of your volunteers to ?take a breath? during the summer months. We push the pause button on our small groups in June & July so that our faithful volunteers can vacation, rest, and be ready to jump back into investing in junior highers once the school year begins. Honestly, our ministry is less effective during those months, and I miss those volunteers like crazy, but for us it?s the best choice in the long run. (and, it probably explains why so many of our volunteers have stuck around for years & years!)
So last week, I was anticipating the ?re-arrival? of our school year volunteers. I said to our staff team, ?Who?s one person that you?re really really looking forward to serving alongside of this year?? It was fun to hear people?s answers? and look forward to this fun we?re going to have together this year, as we point middle schoolers towards Jesus.
Later that day, I decided to take 4 minutes & jot a note to one of those volunteers? and tell them how much they?re valued around here ? and why. It?s a habit I?m trying to ?re-create? ? because honestly, I?ve gotten a little sloppy with it! (Which is crazy, because when I get an encouragement note, sometimes I?ll carry it around with me for a few days!) Thoughtful words are really meaningful to me — and in about 4 minutes, I can put some fuel in someone?s tank just by jotting them a snail-mail note. In a mailbox full of credit card offers and cable-tv-advertisements, a card from you would be a welcome site!
Yesterday I was on an hour long live radio show with Faith Radio in Saint Paul, Minnesota. We talked about the book I wrote with Reggie and Abbie called, The Slow Fade. They asked me a bunch of questions, people called in and sent emails to ask questions. If you’re interested in listening to that interview via podcast, click here.
Here?s a thought-provoking twist on an old game that you can use at a youth group meeting to help kick-off your fall and to generate a great discussion about community and commitment to each other. With this new twist on the classic Hide and Seek, from back in the day, your youth will have to make a decision that will provoke deeper thoughts as to: “Why we hide sometimes,” “Why do we not seek others out” and “How does it feel to be ‘found’.”
Hide and Seek (with a twist)
There are a lot of changes happening in our student ministries right now. In the midst of the crazy summer so many other components are moving in different directions. Many of the changes are great, and needed. And it will be exciting to see how God will unfold all that we have been praying for. But there are a few changes that I (as the wife) do not like so much and don’t understand. It is these changes that I don’t know what to say, and not say, and just what to do. My pride wants to shout at my husband, “Hey, did ya think it all through? Are ya real, REAL sure about that one?!” And my favorite, “Listen to me, listen to me, just listen to me!” BUT…..I know I shouldn’t.
I don’t know if I’m alone on this one, or what?? Anyone else fear change as much as me? I totally trust my husband and his call to this ministry. I do believe he is brilliant and gifted and a wonderful leader. Buuutttttt, what do you do when you don’t agree with it all?? Nothing? Pray? Vent, and visit this site?
I did take a big step (for me) this weekend. Our Pastor asked us to choose one area in which we would come to God daily for the summer and ask his guidance. I was certain that I was going to ask for wisdom concerning all these changes happening for us [...]
Ur YM has kicked off for the fall or is about to. How’s ur voluntold team looking?
Mark DeVries in his epic book, Sustainable Youth Ministry, says u should have 1 adult volunteer (engaged and relational I would add) for every 5 of ur youth. How’s that going for you?
Some of u are doing great. Skip the rest of this blog then and go back to chatting on FB.
For the rest of you: having trouble getting enough good volunteers?
Three reasons why: 1) Have you asked the right people?
2) Have you given them a specific job description with clear cut expectations, boundaries, plans and purpose?
3) Are you spending more time with ur teens than w ur volunteers?
Let any one of these three facts go awry and that’s a place to start figuring out why ur begging and pleading for help. Why ur pulling out hairs u can’t spare from ur head. Why uve even resorted to asking the SP if he would like to help “chaperon” the MS lock-in. Ur are one desperate YP if it comes to that!
Stephanie
PS-u can always tell when i’m posting from my phone. grammer, spelling and abbreviations don’t seem to matter to me.
My friends at SnapShotWeb.com would love to get your opinon on a few things. Take their survey for a chance ot win a custom website for a year. That’s a $1000 value for a few minutes.
LINK: SnapShot Survey
I know a lot of people are using text messaging as a communication tool in their ministries, but have you ever thought of using it as an actual worship tool? There’s a Freebie over at YouthMinistry.com that lays out an order of worship for a worship service that consists entirely of text messages. It includes leader texts and student responses, you would need to set this up ahead of time with your students, but it could be a great way to engage them in thinking about activities of Holy Week each day leading up to Easter. It includes the scripture for each day so that you could hold one of these “services” each day without the students ever having to come to church.
If you use a service like SimplyTXT or a similar one you can schedule your texts ahead of time and set it up all ahead of time. Even if you don’t think you would use the entire service, I think the idea of using text messages to get students focusing this way is a great idea, and the scripture provided is a great place to start.
Get the Freebie here: A Cell-ebration for Holy Week
I must make a confession, I love jokes and playing pranks on people, but unfortunately for me I’m one of those people that always has stuff backfire. I was reminded today about an Aprils Fools joke I tried to play on my office a few years back that didn’t work out like I thought it would.
I was working as a network administrator for a small company, and we had just started supporting Macs as option for users. Those that had them loved them, and those that didn’t were split into the “I wish I had one” and “don’t make me use one” camps. I didn’t really realize how strong the feelings on both sides of this issue were. I thought it would be funny to send out an email detailing out our plans to transition the entire company over to Macs. I included a time line and schedule for when the transition would take place. I figured it wouldn’t take long for people to realize that it was April 1st and it was all a joke. But no, people didn’t catch on very quickly. After the email, some departments began to celebrate, and I immediately got responses back from people that were not going to switch and they wanted me to know it. Even some of the company executives that would have had to be part of the decision were taken [...]
I have been playing with the Flip Video MinoHD Camcorder
I think this camera is great for shooting quick little announcement videos, capturing highlights of an event, and an afternoon of fun. It stores up to 60 minutes of video so it’s plenty for [...]
I written about SimplyTxt before, but I wanted to highlight a new feature: Reply. Now when you send out a text to an individual or a group they can reply back and you get the message in your “Message Stream.” It always was a great tool to blast out messages to your students, staff, and parents, but now they can talk back, making it even better.
Watch this quick video to see how the whole system works:
Try out the 30 day free trial. I think you’ll like it. It’s one of the quickest and easiest ways I’ve found to communicate.
LINK: SimplyTxt
I launched our very own Twitter account for YouthMinistryGeek.com today. You can find us as YMGeek. Follow us for updates from the blog as well as breaking news, and other helpful tidbits. I plan I updating it with little software finds and other articles that I find interesting or helpful, but may not end up as a full blog post.
Here are a couple other tech news twitters that I find interesting are:
We’d love it if you’d give us a follow: YMGeek
For all the Mac users out there, one of the best Mac bundles is back. Mac Heist unveiled their bundle tonight. There some great stuff in there. I really recommend it. At only $39 you can’t miss. There some great image software that I know I will use a lot. There is also an application to access files on your iPhone or iPod touch. There’s also some fun games that I’m sure my kids will enjoy.
I’m hoping they get enough people to unlock Boinx TV, if you can get that for $39 it’s an unbelieveable deal.
It’s over a $550 value for $39. You can’t beat it.
Check-out it out: MacHeist
I have to say that of all the tools I have found, Ping.fm dulls the pain of updating mutiple social networking sites better than anything else. If you have friends and students split between twitter, myspace and facebook, the chore of updating statuses and tweets gets tedious at best. What I was looking for several months ago was a place I could go to make one post that would push to all those places. Ping.fm does just that. I log in (or click the button on my iPhone) type my status/tweet and viola, it’s done. It appears that I am taking the time to update all those places without taking the time to update all those places.
And the best part? It’s simple. It doesn’t try and cram 900 features into what should be a text box and a post button. It’s only real feature besides its accessibility and compatibility is that it allows you to group your statuses, blogs, etc. and choose which group any particular post applies to before sending it out.
Did I mention that it works with EVERYTHING? By everything I mean Jaiku, Tumblr, iMeem, WordPress, del.icio.us… a total of 30 social networking platforms at the time of this post.
I find that it seems like I am always recommending this to friends, acquaintences and [...]
Continue Reading “Update Twitter, Facebook and Myspace with one click!”
I’ve got some questions lately about the teaching series that you can get at SimplyYouthMinistry.com, so I thought I would talk about how they’ve helped me save time as a teacher.
This may not be very geeky, but I thought it was funny. I had many conversations lately about getting out of debt and watching family budgets that I thought this was timely also. It seems we as Americans could be in a better place if we would have followed this simple advice.
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