The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

Faith-based Venturing

I've been around youth ministry since I was a freshman in high school. It has changed over the years, and one of the best ways it has changed is the shift to a more mission/service focus. I saw this begin around 1990 when students arrived at the college where I was chaplain. They came with the desire and expectation to do service projects. Their primary service had been soup kitchens, homeless shelters and Habitat projects.  This was before youth group mission trips began to flourish.

A dozen years ago I became involved with another youth program that helped me see a very different approach to working with kids. That program is Boy Scouts.

Both of my sons went through scouts, and both earned the highest rank in scouting, the Eagle rank. What I saw in the process of working with them and numerous other boys was an approach that developed leadership skills. In fact, as a person who has spent a quarter century engaged in leadership development work, the Boy Scout leadership development program is the best I have ever encountered. The emphasis on scout troops being boy-led means that the kids learn how to work as a team, make decisions and manage organizational details. Most youth organizations provide a program of activities for kids. The programs may be personally and culturally broadening, but they don't teach leadership like scouting does.

Since I first came into contact with scouting, I have wished that there was a way for scouting and church youth ministries to work together.  Many churches charter scouting units, but don't treat them as ministries.  If we could help our young people learn to lead within the context of their faith development, we could then see them grow into being people who make a tremendous difference in the families, churches and communities.  I believe the answer to this need has now been met.

Recently, I met a scouter named Stan Belyeu. He is an IBM engineer has developed a program that incorporates the Boy Scout Venturing program into a church's youth ministry.

Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women who are 14 (and have completed the eighth grade) through 20 years of age. Venturing's purpose is to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults.

What I like about Stan's program is that all the strengths of scouting that are truly compatible with a traditional youth ministry are there.  Here's how he describes the approach.

• The Venturing method is used as an additional, complementary resource for a church’s youth ministry.
• The youth group retains its primary identity as a “youth ministry.”
• The new or existing youth group is registered as a Venturing crew.
• A faith-based Venturing crew can either standalone in a church or coexist with a conventional Venturing crew.

Faith-based Venturing improves the health of a church. It will encourage and empower youth to dig deeper into their faith and to be more effective leaders. It brings an added level of excitement and interest to a church youth group.

Stan is not just talking about borrowing some activity ideas from scouting. He is recommending that youth ministry register as Venture crews. It is up to the leadership of the ministry to incorporate the appropriate aspects of the scouting program into their church's ministry. Along with the program activities come, Boy Scout insurance, access to scout camps and the best training program for adult youth leaders that exists.  Scouting's Youth Protection guidelines are the best there is anywhere. Check them out.

Stan Belyeu's approach is ideal for small to medium size churches where there may be inadequate local support for the church's youth ministry. The local scouting council provides all sorts of resources that can assist the church in the development of its program for youth.  He has written an excellent introduction that can be downloaded here.  His contact info is contained in the paper.

From my perspective the best aspect of this partnership is that young and adults in churches will be exposed to the Boy Scout leadership system. It really is the best I've seen at enabling young people to learn how to handle the wide range of responsibilities involved in organizational leadership.

If you can provide kids the opportunity for leadership and faith development in the context of service/mission experiences, then your church is doing what it needs to do for its youth.  Take a look. Talk with local scouters and the professional staff at your local council office. It could be just the thing to strengthen your church's work with kids.

Tim Keller on the church in the city

Tim Keller is a Presbyterian (PCA) pastor in NYC.  He is cut from a different bolt of cloth.  NYTimes has an article on this pastor who embodies two trends that worth considering for every church in an urban environment .

1. Keller treats the philosophical/ideological/human orientation of each person who comes to his church seriously.  Boston pastor, Stephen Um says of Keller, "This is Tim's thing," said Dr. Um. "He said, 'You need to enter into a person's worldview, challenge that worldview and retell the story based on the Gospel.' The problem is evangelicals have always started with challenging the worldview. We don't have any credibility."  The reverse in many respects has been true of mainstream Christians. Too quickly assimilate comtemporary trends or ideas into the beliefs of the church with the effect of diluting and marginalizing the faith.  In other words, Christianity is a belief system that is both adaptible to contemporary life and is a system that transcends the trends of the moment.  It would seem that Keller has a handle on this.

2.  Keller's church meets four times a Sunday in three different rented space in three different sections of the city of New York.  On top of that his church is planting churches, and training pastors from across the country on how to do the same. 

Pastors from around the world are beginning to come in a steady stream to New York City to glean what they can from Dr. Keller and Redeemer. Their goal is to learn how to create similarly effective churches in cosmopolitan cities like New York, which exert outsize influence on the prevailing culture but have traditionally been neglected by evangelicals in favor of the suburbs.

"We're not giving them a turnkey template," said Dr. Keller. "What we're saying is, 'There's lots of overlaps between our big city and your big city. Some of these things you will use. Some of these you will discard. Some of these you will adapt.' "

Believing new churches are the best way to produce new Christians, evangelicals are making a major push to start new churches around the world, said Edmund Gibbs, a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary outside Los Angeles. But only recently have some evangelicals begun to turn their focus to urban centers.

Dr. Keller "has grasped the strategic significance of the city, of the urban culture and the need to engage that very diverse culture at every level," he said. "Our culture is urban-driven."

In New York City, Redeemer has become the central training ground for anyone planning to start a church in the metropolitan area, whether among Guyanese immigrants in Queens or streetwise youths in the Bronx.

Since 2000, when it established its own training center for "church planters," as they are called in evangelical parlance, Redeemer has helped start more than 50 churches in the city, from faith traditions and denominations as diverse as Assemblies of God, Lutheran and Southern Baptist. In addition, it has helped found 17 "daughter churches" of its own Presbyterian denomination in communities like Williamsburg and Park Slope, Brooklyn; Astoria, Queens; and Hoboken, N.J.

Meanwhile, so-called city-center churches modeled on Redeemer — also attracting audiences of professionals and creative types — have sprung up in places like Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Berlin, London and Amsterdam. The churches emulate much of Redeemer's approach, including its attitude of embracing the city and its focus on the Christian message of grace and redemption, which Dr. Keller argues has been muddled in many churches.

There are two things to take away from this article.

1. Every person who comes to a church comes from a specific context with a particular perspective. Being able to understand the diversity of the sources that affect people is essential for pastors.  It is one of the most demanding aspects of pastoral ministry today.

2. New churches are all future.  Old churches are a tug-of-war between the past and the future.  Keller's story points to the importance of mission as a key to the vitality and extension of the church's reach in the world. 

(HT: Bill Kinnon)

Technorati Tags: Dr. Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, church planting, worldview, New York Times

Clergy Renewal

Presbyterian Outlook has an excellent article about clergy renewal - Pastors and the Sabbath.  It is worth reading in its entirety.

While I agree with all that is said, I don't think it addresses one of the fundamental issues related to clergy renewal.

Part of what drives clergy to work hard are not just the relentless expectations of the congregation.   Rather, it is the inner drive of the pastor to work hard to know that they are meeting expectations that are lack clarity and reality.

Having spent almost twenty five years in ministry, the last ten working with churches and pastors on strategic planning projects, I'll say the most undiscussed aspect of churches are measures of effectiveness and success. 

No one wants to talk about whether they are moving toward being a more successful church. We couch these conversations is safer terminology, but that means less clarity.  A salesman knows whether he has made his sales goals each month.  Why shouldn't churches and pastors have specific goals for their performance?

I don't think this is foremost an organizational development issue.  Instead, I see this as a spiritual issue.  How do we determine whether we are progressing spiritually?  I don't mean some vague feeling of improvement.  I mean something specific, clear, measureable.

I know that many feel that spirituality is not suseptible to measurement.  Why isn't it? 

My own position is that spirituality is more than study, reflection and prayer. It is also about action.  The more clarity we have about what actions should follow from our study, reflection and prayer, the more likely we will be able to establish measurements of spiritual health.

This applies to pastors because most live without clarity about how they are doing.  This is because churches are not really that clear about what are appropriate measures for their pastors.

This is a spiritual issue that is manifested in how churches conduct their life.  And my experience has been that the more focused a church is on "mission" the more likely they will be able to identify the spiritual action measures that demonstrate the health of the church and the health of their pastor.

So, if clergy renewal is to be sustainable, it requires us to think differently about how we measure as our lives as the church, and consequently our pastors.

Best Practices - Turning Committees into Ministries

Is the trend of renaming committees as ministries or task forces just playing around with words or is it truly a change that makes a difference?

Tom Evans, pastor of the Reems Creek - Beech Presbyterian Church outside of Asheville, N.C. shared with me last week what he has done with his folks. 

When I asked him to send me something in writing, he wrote back..."the reason for going to Ministry Teams, besides getting rid of the "Committee" thing, was to involve as many of the congregation who would like to be involved.  I made Session members and a couple of Deacons heads of the teams so they could bring action items back to the Session.  I also meet with the team leaders for 30 minutes before our teams meet on the first Sunday each month to share ideas and pass on to them any needs that I have observed.  The initial signup found about 50% of the congregation involved in the ministry planning and activities of our church.  It gives ownership to so many more people than just a few Session members.  Also many of the members have great ideas and get excited about doing the "work" of the church.  A good idea for the first year of having all of the teams meeting on the same Sunday night is for them to bring snacks and share them at the beginning.  Also the first year I gave lists to each of the Teams of things that I thought they ought to be considering.  It gave them a starting place.  Now they develop their own agendas."

Tom also sent me a couple of templates they use to help stimulate involvement. Click below to go their ministry structure.