DreamBuilders Ministry in Motion (DBMIM) Ezine, February 19, 2008

-- The Reconstruction of A Youth Worker: "Where are all the twentysomethings?," by guest author, Dustin Nimmo.

-- 'do you want it thursday or good?,' No More Bad Brainstorming, by C. McNair Wilson.

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Greg and Terry were sharing the car ride home from one of those seminars at a well-known mega church. They were rehearsing their experience – the excitement, the discouragement, and their unanswered questions. Like many seminars there were excellent ideas and tremendous energy. It was a wonderful way to get away for a few days and rejuvenate their weary spirits. But would any of this work in their town and in their church?

Effectively leading a ministry in the 21^st century will not come by imitating someone else’s programs or styles. There are good ideas to steal and possibilities to imagine, but the secret does not lie in the programs or worship styles.

Effectively leading a ministry in the 21^st century is as unique as your community and your leadership gifts. God is not limited to one approach in your town. Actually God is sufficient to use your flaws as well as your graces. While visiting outstanding seminars can plant seeds for our imagination of what God can do, it is generally on a journey within that cultivates the most fruitful possibilities for effective ministry.

In this series over the last 3-4 months, I have leaned heavily on Roxburgh and Romanuk’s book, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. While this is not the book review, you may want to read this book to dig more deeply into their wisdom than this column can provide.

Because of the context of discontinuous change in most of our communities, because of the potential of God’s work through missional imagination, and because congregations living out their call to mission and ministry still matter in God’s scheme of things; leadership is critically important. Unfortunately, it will look little like we thought it looked in the past paradigm.

One pastor had moved to a new congregation and was rejuvenated by the challenge and opportunities for ministry leadership. But many of the programs and approaches he had used in the past, he quickly recognized were not going to work in this new community. He smiled at me and said, “I guess we are going to make it up as we go.”

Effective leadership needs to prepare to “make it up as we go.” The first apostles did not have a written strategy or a quadrennial plan for the mission. What they had was a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ and a compelling mission to which they were willing to devote their lives. All of the strategies, tactics, and policies in the world cannot substitute for transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the life of leaders.

Here are three basics for effective leadership in the 21^st century. While this column makes it sound simple, it will require the full attentiveness of a lifetime to accomplish. But then, ministry is a journey, is it not?

My first youth experience at Milford First United Methodist Church was a giant church brunch celebrating their decision to build an addition to the building. As I walked into the hotel, the first person I spotted was this teenager with red and black dyed hair sticking up. Even more importantly, I noticed he was drinking my favorite beverage from when I was a kid.

Dustin and I clicked pretty quick. I got to see a young man both struggle and succeed with learning about himself as well as his call to ministry. Today, Dustin is juggling being a youth pastor at a rural church, going to college, and being a husband. He has lots of unique insight into ministry and where we could or should be going into the future.

Recently, Dustin wrote an article to his church in their monthly newsletter about twentysomethings. We use it here with his permission.

Have you stopped and looked around at all the faces in church on Sunday morning? If you haven’t noticed, we have many children, teenagers, 30-50 year olds, and 50+er’s. What you will not see is a large amount of twentysomethings. On record, BUMC has 94 people in our database that are ages 18-29. What is shocking is that only 28 of the 94 have attended church this year more than 5 times and only 5 have attended 25 times or more. This means that out of the roughly 350 people we average on a Sunday morning, only 5 of them are between the ages of 18-29 and are considered regular attenders. Quite frankly, this scares me.

Our congregation is not out of the norm when it comes to the disappearance of our twentysomethings. According to the Barna Group only 3 out of every 10 twentysomethings attend church regularly, with every 6 out of 10 claiming they have a relationship with Jesus Christ. This means that a lot of twentysomethings believe in Jesus, but do not find it important to be a part of a church family.

So you may be asking yourself “why is this happening”? I suppose this is something that I have bit of insight on since I am a twentysomething and have many twentysomething friends. It seems my generation is absent from the church for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is the twentysomething’s themselves. With most of them going off to college, church seems to be the last thing on their mind. With studying, partying, and working consuming most of their time; church and Christianity are usually just topics of debate in a current events or philosophy class. With much focus on their own needs and wants, the church is far from the “I” centered culture in which they dwell. Some churches cater to this consumer mentality and do a good job of raking people in with a self help seminar for a sermon each Sunday, but in turn no real transformation occurs because the Gospel is the last thing that is actually talked about. (The consumer church point is another article and could be belabored for pages!) I have a friend who was a leader in a para-church organization and I occasionally ask him when the last time he’s been to church; his usual reply is with an answer that is counted not in weeks, but in months. Church is last on his list of priorities. Being plugged into a diverse body is no longer a priority to him, and for most, if they aren’t getting something out of it, then it is a waste of time. Many twentysomethings have divorced the bride of Christ (the church) from Christ himself. They have cut the body off of Christ. This is serious, but the blame must not solely rest on the twentysomethings.

The church is just as responsible for severing the twentysomething part of the body as the twentysomethings themselves. We must only look as far as the defined “ministries” most churches have. Most have a children’s ministry, youth ministry, elderly ministry, singles ministry, and shut-in ministry, but rarely do we ever see a young adult ministry. Many churches have small groups, but seldom do they consist of anyone between the ages of 18 and 29. Most churches have very strong youth groups and then cut the members off cold turkey after graduation from high school. This leaves the youth group member an unprepared fish out of water that was once used to having church catered to them and handed to them on a silver platter. An occasional visit back to church only reminds them of how irrelevant the church is to their life. From a distance the twentysomething longs to find a group of people they can relate to, but the church appears to be a dried up well.

The reason this is so frightening is because in ten years when church leadership will begin to change, we will find few Christians ready for the task. We must find a way to call this twentysomething generation back to the church and most importantly back to Christ.

Ministry in Motion has launched a new blog for readers just like you at http://ministryinmotionnet.blogspot.com/. It is a place to ask questions, exchange ideas, and encourage other ministry leaders in our growing network.

McNair Wilson is a former imaginer with Walt Disney and consultant for rediscovering, recapturing, and expanding your creative spirit. McNair has given us the privilege of republishing some of his writing in Ministry In Motion. You can catch more of his work at www.TeaWithMcNair.typepad.com

By C. McNair Wilson

The redoubtable comic actor, Sid Caesar, pioneer of television sketch comedy, performed 90 minutes LIVE every Saturday night on his ground-breaking television program in the 1950s, Your Show of Shows.
Network “suits” demanded Sid & Co. submit scripts by Thursday. Scripts were usually not ready. The “suits” pushed.
Sid rebuffed, “Do you want it Thursday or do you want it good?”
That's why I wrote my next book, DONUTS ON THE MOON, Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer. With the tools in this book I believe it can be both “good” and “Thursday.” One of those tools–at the heart of my 7 Agreements of Brainstorming–is the necessity of making a clear distinction and separation of the two very powerful, but necessary activities of Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking. Most of what we do in the corporate world (and with working teams everywhere) that we call "brainstorming" just isn't!
Someone throws out an idea, a thought, a whim, and immediately some else offers a criticism, an analysis, a rebuff to shoot it down. It can even be a disapproving sigh. This not only short circuits the creative thinking process; it sends a message to whoever offered the idea that they are not valued. That is what they think and certainly feel no matter their intentions of their critic.
One the most frequent excuses for all the analysis and criticism, to every idea, is, "We just want to eliminate bad ideas as we go along so we can get to a good solution more quickly."
Impossible! No one will have the idea, the solution. It will be an amalgam of several ideas, from various sources. You won't know it until you start playing with several ideas, hundreds of ideas. Don't eliminate, create.
If we say everything that comes to mind and write down everything said, we can imagine, invent, create, solve, virtually anything. Instead of having a handful of ideas in thirty minutes--that we shoot down, stomp, choke the life out of--we can have 300 ideas in thirty minutes.
Whatever the topic: think it, say it write it. You never know where a great idea will come from unless you consider everything. Every idea can be an inspiration to others thinking.
I want your work to be “good” rather than “Thursday.” I believe it can be both.
McNair

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DBMIM Ezine February 19, 2008