Can You Change?

By Doug Franklin April 16, 2012

The world of youth ministry is changing. Students are different then they were five years ago. Parents need to have greater involvement with youth ministry. Church leaders want increased control of your time and schedule. There are new ways of buying curriculum. Youth ministry conferences are now cohorts. Ongoing training is done in small groups. Forget books, everyone reads blogs. I don’t need to know where my favorite youth ministry speaker will be next, I can find out what he had for lunch by reading his Twitter. So with all this change happening in youth ministry, are you changing? Have you changed the way you schedule your time? What have your intensified and what have you simplified? Is your strategy different or are you doing ministry the way you did it when you started? Change in ministry can be tough but the real challenge is changing ourselves. For the first ten years I was in ministry I went it alone. Using my gifts of leadership to get people to work until they dropped and then finding new people to take their place once they were burned out. This served me well until I realized that I was building my own kingdom and not his. I had to change but change was not easy. I would have to reinvent myself as a collaborative leader, one who was ready to share everything. I had to fundamentally revalue people, goals and the rewards. The process has taken me years and it’s been rewarding but not as you might think. The reward has been in how I understand God. I get how he works in us and through us like never before. Change is his plan for me and I never got that before. Change was the journey and I learned about him alone the way. How about you, are you ready to change? It can be fun.