Stop the Bottle Neck

Last fall I spent a few days alone thinking about our youth ministry and evaluating.  Discipleship came to the top of my list (see previous post).  Underneath discipleship came "Restructure".  Looking back I realized that what was holding us back from improving and moving forward was me.  So I started to think about how that could change.  It's terrible to be the youth pastor and to be the cause of the bottle neck.

Our old structure consisted of me as youth pastor, volunteers as POD leaders (small group leaders).  I did most of the planning, etc.  I realized that I need to do what I do best and then let others on the team rise to the surface and do what they do best.  So while most of our adult volunteers are still POD leaders they also fill other ministry roles within the youth ministry.

I sat down with a big sheet of blank paper and started a flow chart.  I thought of the different leaders we needed to do ministry more effective.  Lots of scribbling and marking out and drawing boxes and lines and I came up with this:

My focus as youth pastor will be with the Worship Coach/Minister in planning youth group worship and also investing into the student leaders and my adult leaders.  (I'm the only staff, everyone else on the team volunteers)

Worship Coach/Minister - will work with the students worship band in training and equipping them to lead us in worship in music.

Associate Youth Pastor - works with me on youth worship and overseeing our 5 "Coaches".

POD Coach - works with the POD leaders to make sure they have what they need and to encourage them.

Communications Coach - works with student leaders on our check in system; entering student data; assimilation process.

Hospitality Coach - organizes our food (super important!) and works with our volunteers in the kitchen as well as students involved in serving.

Discipleship Coach - will follow up and hold POD leaders and myself accountable for discipling students one on one.  Creating a spreadsheet and keeping it up to date so we can view our youth group's process "at a glance".

Tech Coach - oversees the students who operate the audio and video as well as our social media.

Our goal in this process is to involve students in every process, to train them up to lead the youth group.

We are only a couple weeks into the transition of structure and so far it seems to be working well.

Your youth ministry can do the same thing.  Your structure may look different because we aren't all the same in what we do and how we do it BUT you can sit down and think about all the positions it would take have a healthier and improving youth ministry.  Get alone with a big sheet of paper and start evaluating and dreaming.