Steve Adame’s Blog

So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve had an idea in my head just bouncing back and forth.  I’ve had this question in my head and here it is; is it possible that if instead of having one person be the head of the ministry, there was a team in charge of it.  I look at churches out there and I always see one person in charge of Jr. High and one person in charge of High School and when that person leaves, the church is left with a hole to fill for some time.  If its the High School guy that leaves, its usually the Jr. High guy or the College guy that has to try and fill the void while at the same time running everything in their ministry.  Or…the church turns to the volunteer staff and asks them to step up and take charge for the time being and what usually happens here is the staff usually gets worn out and starts to wonder why they’re doing this and sometimes, SOMETIMES they leave.

So I guess here’s my thought.  What if the youth ministry (High School, Jr. High, College, Whatever you consider Youth Ministry) was ran by a team?  there could be a few point people to go through and that could end up getting messy as far as communication, but that’s where the team would need to be amazing.  The Youth Ministry as a whole would be on the same page and I also think that there would be less students lost in the transition from JH to HS, or even HS to College.  I think there would be less students lost because the same team is there through out the years.  Stronger relationships would be built and idealy stronger disciples would come out of the ministry.  That’s the purpose, right?

Lets take Jr High and High School for example.  Keep in mind that each ministry would still serve its purpose and therefore would still be its separate group.  If there was a team, maybe this is what it would look like.  You had 2 to 3 people as the “leaders” of the ministries.  There was 1 or 2 support staff and they constantly met and were brainstorming and planning for both ministries.  As far as speaking, there would have to be a rotation.  For one month, Bob would do a series at both services (JH/HS) and the next month, Jannett would do the next series.  It could be a shorter or longer series.  I guess it would just depend on the individual.  They would also have to come up with a lesson plan for the year obviously.  It already has to be done anyways now.  The only difference is that you have 3 brains and prayers going out to God to lead them instead of just 1.

So what if 1 person decides that their time is up or if something happens to them?  The reality of this is that it happens.  The enemy is going to try and get it to fall apart.  We see it all the time at churches across the world.  So if one person leaves the ministry, if there is 3 individuals leading the ministry, there would still be 2 left to run them.  Same if there were only 2 people working the ministry and 1 of them left.  Someone would still be there to run it.

I know that this format is usually seen only when the church needs to respond to someone leaving or when they don’t have the funds to provide for a person to be in that position, but what if we did it, but meant to do it?  I love youth ministry.  I feel like I relate a little better to HS, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a heart for the other ages.  Most of my life changing events happened in JH.  What if there was a team that was the same way?  Maybe One felt more towards the JH and one felt more towards HS, but they both still had a passion for all students.

This is the first time I’ve actually wrote/typed this thought out so there still could be some things that I’m missing or haven’t thought about.  If you think of something to add, please do.  I’m really interested to see if this works.