The decorations were complete. The new washpan for bobbing apples stood full of water. A sack of apples leaned against the wall nearby. Forty bananas lay on the kitchen counter for making banana splits. The buns and chips were stacked high along with cookies and a mountain of soda pop.
Preparations for the all-night party had kept me running all day long. I was expecting about thirty-five teens and four sponsors. Everyone in the youth group had said they would be there, and several had asked if they could bring friends. As the hour drew closer, l began to worry that I might not have enough food. I could hardly resist the urge to run to the grocery store for more bananas.
Two senior high girls showed up and went into the nursery to discuss boys. Two more girls and a boy much younger than the girls came in together. One of the sponsoring couples showed up. And that was it.
Four girls. One boy. Two sponsors. A mountain of food. And me.
So there I was with nearly $150 spent and an activity planned for more than thirty teens. None of my games would work. You can’t run relays with two on a team. The devotional had been planned as a singing and sharing time. Should I send everybody home or what?
I had a bad case of the youth ministry blues.
As I remember that experience, several others come to mind that did not go according to plan. Most were times I did not get a gold star by my name.
There is nothing like sitting in a big McDonald’s for an Early Morning Before School Bible Study (which is supposed to go over great with teens) and having only one teen show up. Whatever happened to the Noon Prayer Meeting phenomenon? I had figured by the third week we would be renting the McDonald’s and perhaps a Hardee’s down the street. Alas, on the third week I was still hearing the same excuses I heard the first week, and attendance had dropped off!
It took me awhile to figure out I was making some of the same simple mistakes each time I planned a program or activity.
First Mistake: Last-Minute Planning
Honestly, I never thought I would be guilty of that. I prepared in advance. I put things on a calendar. Months ahead I knew what we were going to do. But I spent the last hours before the activity putting it together.
Because I was doing the functional planning at the last minute, I had time to plan for only one set of circumstances. I usually planned for the maximum potential that could possibly show up. I put out a lot of feelers, and out of the nebulous I came up with an expectation of who would be there. Then I planned the activity to accommodate that many. I never made an alternate plan to fall back on if things did not go as expected.
I remember the first time I really made an alternate plan. I had written the executive head of our denomination’s department of youth, inviting him to come speak at a banquet. He wrote back and accepted. I wrote him again thanking him for his acceptance. All three letters had the date, time, and place mentioned.
Early in the week of the banquet, I spent an hour drafting a “small talk” just in case he had car trouble during the two-hour drive.
The appointed hour arrived. The guest speaker did not. I called and found he was at home. Wasn’t the banquet next Monday night? He had it right on his calendar, but not in his head.
I never expected him not to show up. But he didn’t, and there was no way to wait on him . . . so we went right on without him. Perhaps the evening wasn’t as great or dynamic, but it wasn’t a failure either.
Second Mistake: Trying to Do It All Myself
Once I worked in a church where the pastor’s wife told me that when her son was a youth minister, “he didn’t need any help. He was so good he could do everything by himself.”
Anyone who works with teens for any length of time will admit that it is a lot safer and sometimes easier to do everything. If you delegate responsibility and depend on young people, they will frequently leave you holding the bag on the proverbial snipe hunt. A sudden biological mood shift or courtship upheaval-and a key teen just will not show up. Can the success or failure of an activity be placed in hands that sometimes drop the ball?
From time to time I find myself doing things the safe way. I go ahead and decorate because “they” don’t want to get out of bed early on Saturday. I plan the refreshments and buy the food. I plan the games, plan the devotion, plan the publicity, and plan on the teens coming.
No wonder I wind up with huge expectations. After all, the planning was so well done! It’s not my fault they didn’t come. But I still walk away mumbling, “How can I get them to come to the next deal?”
Youth ministry involves the dynamics of failed responsibility as well as the joy of shared success. Everything does not depend on my performance. When a young person fails, the other teens and I must work through that and grow from the experience, perhaps more than we can from fulfilled responsibility. It is growth of a different sort.
That is not to say that involving teens works perfectly and cures youth ministry blues. Sometimes, a young person will help plan an activity and accept a part in executing it, but on the actual night . . . he goes out on a date. And there you are.
I have realized that getting teens to come is always going to be something of a problem. They must eventually make the decision, but it helps them decide when they are involved and responsible.
Third Mistake: Spending More Than I Meant To
I have never grossly overestimated the cost of any youth group activity! However, I will never be able to make the opposite statement. It is extremely easy to underestimate the cost of youth programs.
Sitting in McDonald’s by yourself is nothing compared to that sinking feeling when you realize you should have charged every teen sixty-two dollars instead of twenty-seven.
Actually, getting the cost lower has very little to do with a successful youth program. Yet I have spent long discussions on local and district boards trying to make something cheaper. Teens will come up with or earn whatever you ask if they understand why the activity will cost that much. It doesn’t matter if it’s fifty cents for a hot dog or two thousand dollars to go to Israel.
I have spent hours adjusting a retreat schedule so a teen will spend only forty-five dollars instead of sixty. The next week one of the prime families I worried about packed up and went to England for a month.
The first task is to figure out what trips and activities will really cost. The second is not to feel guilty about asking for a little more than that.
The last four years my youth program has had to be 90 percent self-supporting. I have learned from numerous sinking moments that any trip will cost more in reality than it does on paper. Even when I had made the trip before and tried to allow for inflation, I got caught short. During the first two years, my wife had only two questions when I announced an activity: “What will it cost the teens, and how much is it going to cost us?”
Not every teen that signs up to go will show up-and that is planned income spent but not received. Many times the young people have very legitimate excuses, but the result is still Man, are we going to lose money on this one.
A significant advance deposit, or payment in full, one week before the activity makes planning the budget much simpler. Once teens have committed 25 percent of the cost, they are much less likely to back out. Also with advance deposits, I can compare anticipated costs with what I am really going to receive. I know then whether I’m going to have to cut a corner or whether I can relax.
I’ve learned another thing about self-supporting youth ministry: Activities that draw a large number of teens should be planned to do better than break even. A canoe trip that draws outside teens should pay for itself and your Bible study curriculum for a quarter or even a year. An all-night lock-in should make enough to pay for the next banquet’s guest speaker.
Fourth Mistake: Not Keeping the Schedule Given to Parents
Parents do not like to wait. They begin worrying as soon as the group leaves, and it gets worse if you’re not back on time.
“Maybe they had an accident.” “They could have had a flat.” “They could be stuck on the side of the road.” “I wonder why they didn’t call the church and let us know they were going to be late.”
Trust relationships are damaged if the youth minister announces a schedule and then changes it “in flight.”
Most of us say to ourselves, “At fifty-five miles per hour it will take two hours and forty-five minutes to get there. If we leave at 7 A.M., we’ll be there by ten. If we leave at 8 P.M., we’ll be home by eleven.” All that is reasonable and fine in theory.
But the typical summer trip to anywhere goes something like this: At ten minutes before seven, the daughter of a board member calls and is running late. She is leaving for the church “right this minute” and could we please wait? So we roll out at 7:15. We are still on schedule to arrive at ten, but it’s close. At nine o’clock in a distant city a doughnut shop is spotted, and a quick ten-minute stop somehow becomes thirty. To add to our problems, we have picked the day Farmer Brown has chosen to drive his tractor to town. The crawl goes on for miles. After numerous red lights, we arrive at 11:15 A.M.
Soon there is a mass movement to get the youth leader to agree to stay later. After a while, he or she agrees and dutifully calls the church to let them know the group is going to be an hour later than scheduled. All of the parents (hopefully) are notified to be there at midnight instead of eleven.
As it gets close to one in the morning, parents get very worried. Finally at 12:50 A.M. we pull in. What happened? Very nearly a repeat of the morning.
Not everyone got back to the bus on time. An unscheduled stop HAD to be made. You can’t argue too long with biological functions. When we stopped for a minute to allow nature to take its course-somebody ordered a hamburger from the restaurant next to the service station. …
Here are three guidelines I use that help parents avoid worry:
1. Announce the morning departure time about an hour before you absolutely must be on the road. When everybody complains about how early it is, you can move it up thirty minutes. You are still ahead. But do not change any times once they are in print and distributed.
2. Call the church or have the teens call their parents when you have mechanical trouble or are changing the return time.
3. Announce your return time about forty-five minutes later than you really expect to be back. Parents are so happy when you get back early.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Youth ministry also requires a sort of eternal vigilance, but frequently I seem to have . . .
… A Momentary Lapse
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” is the way the producer of Jaws II advertised the movie. Likewise, just when you thought it was safe to take a little nap . . . you can get shark-bit. Usually it’s not too serious, but it can still give you the youth ministry blues. You can go around for several days asking yourself, “Is this the thanks I get?”
One youth minister with two volunteer sponsors hosted sixty-five teens at an all-night party. Along about 2 A.M. everybody seemed to run out of steam as far as the planned agenda was concerned. The youth minister decided it was pointless to keep trying with everybody going to sleep. So he announced they could lie down or talk quietly. Considering the hour and the circumstances, it seemed like a good plan.
But as Private Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise.”
Sunday morning there was a huge hole in the sanctuary ceiling where one of the teens had stepped through the Sheetrock while walking on the rafters . . . playing chase in the attic. Luckily he had not fallen all the way through and landed on the pews below.
The major topics for discussion at Sunday dinner were: (1) What were the teens doing in the attic? and (2) Where was the youth minister?
Spending more than you planned is one thing. Sitting by yourself in McDonald’s is another. But being the roast duck for the congregation’s noonday meal is something else!
Even good kids will get carried away in a loosely structured situation. A clear understanding of expected and prohibited behavior coupled with an adequate teen/adult ratio will reduce the chance of shark bite.
Each one of these:
l. last-minute planning
2. doing it all yourself
3. spending more than you meant to
4. not keeping the schedule you announced
5. a momentary lapse of control
can give you a blue week. And each one can be repeated each time you plan an activity. While they are simple to correct, they deserve constant attention in the planning and implementation of every youth program.
Rickey Short is pastor of First Church of the Nazarene, Waurika, Oklahoma.
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