Two questions I ask when planning events.......

I had a meeting last night to plan some events for our youth ministry with some folks last night.  With planning events on my mind I wanted to pen down a couple of questions to frame our events with.  Here is what I would say to any youth leader, volunteer, or parent planning an event:

When we're looking at events I'd like us to ask ourselves two questions.  The first one is, "Is this sustainable?"  Here's what I mean by that.  First of all I ask that of myself (I try to ask that with more than just these events).  Will I be able sustain this pace over the long haul?  A quick trap that youth ministers (and plenty of others) often fall into is saying yes to everything.  In light of both of our schedules Karyn and I have discussed this and feel that one event a month is sustainable.  To dig into that a little deeper a two night camping trip probably shouldn't be followed up with an overnight trip Canada (an exaggeration of course) to be considered sustainable.  I also look at my volunteers.  Am I asking them to be involved in so many activities that it easy to quickly become overwhelmed and burned out?  Or an even a better questions is am I asking volunteers to be involved in so many activities that it becomes increasingly difficult for them to be present for those weekly programs where discipleship happens.  I also want to ask is this sustainable for the families involved.  The one thing I repeat more than anything else to students is that they have an obligation to honor their parents.  So am I honoring families when I'm asking parents to have their kids out 3 or 4 times a week?  That's not always a bad thing, however church can easily become another obligation in a busy families' life.  We teach often that families need to be strong, do our events reflect that?  Also is the event financially sustainable.  When I was a student there were several events that I could not participate in because we did not have the money to pay for it.  I will almost always default to the cheaper local option for that reason.  One of the reason's families struggle financially is because we've lost the art of playing cards, board games, camping in the back yard, etc and instead instead entertain ourselves with expensive vacations or video games.

The second question I want us to ask is, "Is this Purposeful?"  I'm not Purpose Driven by any means, but when I'm looking at the youth ministry one the easiest tools I can use to make sure that I'm balanced are the five biblical purposes of Discipleship, Worship, Evangelism, Serving, and Community.  If all of our events centered on gathering around a guitar and singing a song then we would quickly become unbalanced.  Likewise if all or our events are times where we "hang out" (which is easy to do since I believe relational ministry is the most effective way to minister to our students) then we're unbalanced.  Most of our events will have some overlap, that's natural.  However the question to ask is which purpose does this serve?  If we go and work in a soup kitchen that's serving.  We'll also get some community out of that, maybe even some evangelism.  The main drive of the event though is serving, and that helps us to become focused.  We should work to maintain a balance in our events. 

I believe that asking these two questions are crucial.  They go a long way in the longevity of the ministry.  Churches generally have a tendency to get stuck in the rut that we don't know why we do what we do except to say that it's the way we've always done it.  Let's try to avoid that as much as possible and be intentional in everything that we do.  So let's plan these events, but let's also ask ourselves:  "Is this sustainable" and "Is this purposeful"