To keep us accountable to what I believe God is calling us to focus on, at the beginning of each calendar year I identify a handful of priorities for our ministry. It's simply a way of saying, "these things should take precedence in the next 12 months or so." Of course, they might change as circumstances change--as leaders we need to be able to adapt to new obstacles and opportunities--but putting them down on paper is really helpful to me.
I've been reviewing our high school ministry plan for 2010, and these are the priorities I laid out at the beginning of last year. I've also included some brief comments on how well I think I've followed through on them:
1) Continue to develop our adult leadership team. I think we did a really good job with this in 2010. Numbers-wise, I always want more leaders and imagined that we'd have more at the end of 2010 than we do. However, I think I've done a better job in laying out the expectations of volunteers, and the ones we have are really committed and on board with what we're doing. In addition, we moved our small groups off campus because of space considerations, and I've been thrilled with how our leaders have responded to this challenge.
2) Evaluate and clarify the purpose and shape of our Sunday morning 10:20 learning time. Our Sunday morning gathering is our large-group time. I was kind of frustrated at the end of last year, because we were kind of meeting without a purpose. Should it be a place of discipleship? Of deep learning? Lots of students were coming, but I didn't believe we were feeding them adequately. This year, we've tried a lot of different setups and approaches to see what "sticks" including breaking up our group into smaller seminar type groups to study apologetics and evangelism. What I think works best is setting up round tables in our youth room and giving students some time to discuss in table groups what we're learning about that day. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going.
3) Develop a strategy to equip and empower students to share their faith in their peer groups. I think we did well with three of our four priorities. This is one we did not do well in, and quite honestly, it's because I didn't place enough emphasis on it as a leader. I have a lot to learn about in this area, and I'm open to suggestions!
4) Develop and implement a strategy to equip and empower parents and to foster discipleship within teenagers’ homes. This summer and fall, we (our junior high pastor, our children's director, our youth/children administrator and I) read Shift: What it takes to finally reach families today by Brian Haynes. Using this book as a template, we developed a strategy to equip parents to be the primary disciplers of their children. I'm pretty excited about it, and we'll finish the details this spring then launch the effort in the fall.
It's been a good year, but it's good for me to see that we still have a long way to go. I'm thankful that we serve a God that for some strange reason uses humans to accomplish his will, and I'm looking forward to another fun year of trying to follow God's lead. In the next week or so, I'll try to post our ministry plan for 2011 in case others can use it as a template, or perhaps to scrutinize it. I always love feedback!
