No one should be doing youth work alone. You have to work in partnership with other adults, committed to seeing teenagers come to faith and live out their faith daily. To do this effectively, we must meet regularly to plan and to pray.
Mention team meetings to most leaders, however, and you don’t tend to get an excited response. It is almost the necessary drudgery that comes with doing youth work. How sad! It shouldn’t be like this. It should be a highlight of being a youth leader for each and every person on your team.
The problem is that I don’t think we have realised fully why we are meeting together. From my experience, the reason we meet is because we’ve seen our current rota run out and we need to regroup to discuss what is going to happen next. It is a purely functional meeting, to enable the programme to keep going.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you will know how much I get worried about programme-based youth ministry. Of course we need programmes, but they should be built on relationships, not existing for their own reason.
In the same way our team meetings need to be built on relationships, not merely programme efficiency. My desire for every team meeting is to achieve 4 things:
1. Worship
A chance to gather together, to connect with Jesus together and to be reminded that he is in ultimate control of all we do. Taking time as a group of leaders to seek God together, to read a passage of Scripture, to thank him for what has been going well, to pray for our young people and the situations they are in, to praise him for his faithfulness and provision week in week out, and to remind ourselves that he has far greater plans for us and the young people we serve, than we do ourselves.
It can be easy for us to get so focused on the tasks facing us, that we can forget, albeit temporarily, that we are serving God in what we are trying to do. Taking time out to worship helps us to reorient ourselves corporately as a team.
2. Training
We want leaders to be enjoying their leadership. Part of this must involve constant growth in their ability. If we cease to grow in our skills, we start to go stagnant and our leading becomes more of a duty than a delight. I want delighted leaders so I need to make sure that I am investing in them and their development.
Most volunteers have plenty of well-meaning but little training in effective youth work so we must use our team meetings to highlight an aspect of the work and encourage them to grow in their skills. Not only will this make them enjoy their ministry more as they will be more effective, but also the young people will benefit from vibrant leaders. These are the role models for the young people. If they see their leaders are always growing, they will want to grow too.
3. Programme
Of course there needs to be some time set aside to discuss the forthcoming programme, to make sure the rota is completed and everyone knows what they are expected to do.
Use this time, too, to set some goals for the term ahead. This makes sure that we are not just making sure we get through each session safely, but that we are aware of some of the deeper issues and areas where we need to see the group develop.
Take some time in each team meeting to create at least three key goals that you want to work on and decide how you might achieve these goals. Then at your next team meeting, review how you are getting on. Not only will this prove to be an encouragement as you see goals being reached, but it will also enable your team to see more of what is going on in the group under the surface. It, in turn, will continue to fuel their enthusiasm for the ministry and the young people.
4. Encouraging
One of the aims of our team meeting needs to be that each person leaves feeling more encouraged than when they arrived. This means we need to take time to appreciate each person, to check in informally with each leader and to offer public praise for what each member of the team has been doing to develop the youth ministry.
This is so important. For leaders to grow in commitment to the team, they need to know they are valued and have their contribution recognised. They do not want to feel that it wouldn’t matter whether they were there or not, or that they are just part of a group of leaders. They want to be a team: made up of individuals, each with their own unique talent and skill-set, making a vital contribution to the team.
Team meetings are so important as we get the opportunity to remind people of the reason why we do what we do. Make sure you meet regularly, have fun in your meetings and instil them with worship, training, programming and encouragement. Do these four things and you will see your team transformed.