Just last month I attended a youth pastors conference. The conference was small and poorly attended. However, those who were involved in the leadership side of the conference were very optimistic. The break out session speakers were trying to come across as if they were experts and had everything together.



Unfortunately, I perceived them to have fallen into the death mode of an organization that is struggling between change and tradition, young and old! They saw themselves as being cutting edge. They were using terms like in this post modern world... We should be using clips from mcguyver in our sermons... And we should be looking for a great big marketing hook to bring students into our services...



Here's a new great big Marketing hook to try....How about letting the Holy Spirit show up and show off!



I work with urban youth. My students have probably done everything that they knew was bad, smoked everything, or try everything they were told was bad... And yet they still keep coming back to church every week. We consistently run 80 - 100 students between 11 year olds to 24... And our big nights we run over 100. We are not a mega church, we do not have 100's of students that attend church services that haven't come to youth yet... In fact we are consistently reaching over 40% of our congregational attendance.



It concerns me that we have mega churches--but the youth ministries are not mega compare to their church... For instance... instead of saying wow that guy is an awesome youth pastor because he runs 800 students in his ministry, we should be saying--he better, in fact thats not good enough when his church is running 15,000 - 20,000 in attendance or even just 2,000 - 3,000...



What concerns me is that these big church youth pastors are considered to be the leaders of youth pastors in general... We need to understand that church is a system... each size church has its own system. I believe successful pastors can and will be succesful where ever they go--but! they need to understand different dynamics...



My church runs 350 - 400. I barely get paid. All of my adult staff members are volunteer. My budget for the year is what I can raise. The majority of my money goes into lowering the cost of our trips so that any student who wants to go can be able to afford to go.


In our culture we constantly re-define success by numbers; bigger budgets, number of conversions, size of our sanctuaries, and the salary package...

We the church need to re-define succes by God's definition...In the end he will not ask us how big our church was, or how may people were "saved"--he just wants to know were you faithful!

May God's peace be with you, may his joy overwhelm you, and may his favor greatly increase upon her head!

Harvey............................................