Water: When we lived in Colorado, it was almost impossible to travel any amount of distance in the Denver area without seeing signs or billboards posted by Denver Water that communicated the simple message, "Use Only What You Need." In case you're unfamiliar with Colorado, there isn't a lot of water there. And California uses up a good chunk of what is there. During droughts, some communities actually have difficulty making sure everyone's water stays on.
Toilet paper: Use only what you need. That's a lesson our three-year-old daughter has had to learn. Due to a liberal use of TP lately on her part, I've had to plunge the toilet a few times in our home.
Youth ministry: Yep, youth ministry.
Have you ever been to Costco?
Our family has a Costco membership. My wife, Jennifer, goes about every other week to Costco. It's a pretty fun place. She is the disciplined Costco shopper of the family, which is why she's the one that holds the Costco membership card. If you wonder why being disciplined would be an upside to shopping at Costco, you've clearly never been.
There are aisles and aisles of great stuff at pretty good prices. If you're willing to buy something that comes in a pack of a bagillion, you're bound to get a good deal on it, right? You can't buy just a gallon of milk at Costco; it's a two-gallon minimum. Just a four-pack of AA batteries? Not gonna happen. But you'll get a great deal on a pack of 400.
I'm not a compulsive shopper, but there is something about the amazing deals at Costco that makes me want to buy just about everything I see. The thing is, if I made a habit of shopping that way, I would spend way too much money, I would end up with lots of stuff we really didn't need, and there would probably be a few things that we really did need but I didn't come home with because I was so distracted with other stuff.
Before Jennifer goes shopping each week, she makes a list of everything we need from the store. Actually, she goes beyond that: she plans each dinner we'll have, lists all the ingredients, and double checks what she has in stock already at our house. She is one efficient shopper.
Here's the point (in case I lost you on our trip through Costco): there are a lot of really cool things you can do in youth ministry. Maybe you've got your eye on a shiny overseas mission trip with your students. Or perhaps you've noticed a few other youth ministries in town do this really awesome event every year, and every time you hear about it, you think about how great that event would look in your youth ministry.
When we just walk through the options of everything we could do in youth ministry, we start to think that we need everything. But we don't. Before you go shopping for a new program or event, sit down, take a lesson from Jennifer, and meal plan. What do you want to see happen in the lives of the students you serve? Ideally, the first thing you write down is that you'd like to see them know Jesus and grow in their relationship with him. Dream about how that might happen in your context. Discern where God is leading you. Then choose the tools at your disposal. You won't end up with a lot of things your don't need--or in a youth ministry setting, a lot of stuff that in the end doesn't have a lot to do with helping the students you serve know Jesus. But you will have a plan, and you will have focus. Maybe then, it will stop being about what you do, and it will start being about what Jesus does in the lives of students.
Use only what you need, man (or woman...although I'm really uncomfortable telling a woman how much toilet paper she should use).
