Youth Ministry Booster
Welcome to the Youth Ministry Booster podcast! The most honest and hilarious podcast in student ministry. Hosted by Zac Workun and Chad Higgins. We are the biggest fans of youth ministry leaders like you!
We are here for you with the humor and the help to engage, entertain, equip, and encourage.
Youth ministry is better together. Learn more @ http://www.youthministrybooster.com
Youth Ministry Booster
Lessons For First Year Youth Ministers
What if the fastest way to build a strong student ministry isn’t a bigger stage, but a crowded living room? We pull back the curtain on our biggest do-overs: why we’d start with relationships, not programs; why a right-sized room beats a flashy setup; and why coaching volunteers weekly will outperform any event on your calendar.
• starting in homes to build belonging
• coaching volunteers rather than just filling roles
• using the 80 percent rule for room choice
• fast handoffs from staff to leaders and peers
• connecting new families to adult community quickly
• becoming the storyteller to senior adults
• reframing criticism with real student wins
• choosing joy and hospitality as strategy
Make sure to drop a comment below or email us at chad.higgins at lifeway.com your stories of what it's like to be ministry in the new place that you are, or the wisdom that you would give to be featured on an upcoming episode
Uh snap.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Youth Ministry Booster Podcast. My name is Zach Working hanging out at the Etch Stage with the one, the only, the very like dapper dressed Chad Higgins.
SPEAKER_02:I got breakouts to lead today, Zach.
SPEAKER_00:I got people to talk to. Yeah. You do, I mean, you look sharp today.
SPEAKER_02:You're gonna also, you're speaking a little bit of a.
SPEAKER_00:I got a couple things to say today. We'll see. We'll see. I'm talking about middle school ministry, hospitality, uh, and joy. So, you know, the old Zach trifective. If you had to rank those three in your life, we'll let the audience do that. I don't know. Fair enough. Uh yeah, middle school, hospitality, joy, which matters most to you? Hard to say. I want to talk about today, though. So it's been a minute since we've been doing this thing. Um, both of us are now back involved in church ministry, but from a new angle, uh, you're doing college ministry. I'm doing jay high. So we have literally like gone either side of the slope of student ministry uh to see it from, you know, a new view, new perspective. But we haven't talked about in a while what we would do because we've talked about what we're doing now and what we're learning. Shout out to my Jehha dogs. Oh. Uh what barking continues. Listen, they're gonna find listen, they found out I had a podcast and they asked if I talked about them, and I lied because I don't want them to know because then they're gonna start feeding me the non-truth. It's it's funny now because it's all true. Everything that I've shared about them has been true, but they're gonna start performing just to try to get a story on the podcast. That makes me nervous.
SPEAKER_02:I need all of our listeners to just pray for me because I don't know how much barking I can continue to listen to on a podcast.
SPEAKER_00:It gets their attention when they're acting silly if their adult leader barks. You're barking at children on Sunday morning. Not adult Wednesday night. It's fine. It's fine. It's Wednesday night. It's after dinner, it's before bed. It's fine. That's an appropriate hour.
SPEAKER_01:Today is the like come like come over the the You're like before 2.15. No, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:After 5:30, it's okay to bark. That's it. 5 30 to 8, you're fine. That's the inflection point for middle school boys.
SPEAKER_02:It's 8 33 in the morning, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00:That's not when they're gonna listen to this. Like this is pre-recorded material. That's right. Oh, okay. Like you the guy that played high school football didn't have a coach that barked at you. Well, not a lot of barking happens. Okay, sure. Okay, grunting at you. Fine. Okay, yeah, it's grown up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those are your alternatives. I love a multiple choice test.
SPEAKER_01:Looking back at it. I wish they were barking.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, thank you very much. So, okay, so we're gonna talk life theories. Okay, now I'm getting in trouble with my wife. Uh, so we joke in our house, there's three kinds of dads. Okay. There's dads that when they get upset, they swear. Okay. There's dads when they get upset, they scream. Oh. And then there's dads that get upset, this dad who scats. So when I when I get upset about my boys, get your shoes off, please. Come on, come on, get it. You gotta go now. Yeah, that is how we handle frustration in the working household. So I don't know if that's positive masculinity or not. But we're trying to sort out our big feelings by scatting when they're late to school or they're not listening. That's how we get chores done in our house. With scatters. We love a scat man. It's good. It's good.
SPEAKER_01:Your kids are gonna grow up to have such a weird relationship with music.
SPEAKER_00:Joe Choir is killer. They fear it. Yeah. They fear it. Westside story is Westside horror story for them.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, these are gonna be husbands one day, and their wife's gonna put on scat music and they're just gonna get really weird.
SPEAKER_00:Wicked is wicked. That's right. Yeah, scatting is too much. It's too much.
SPEAKER_02:Thankfully, you don't run across a lot of scat just out in the wild.
SPEAKER_00:It's a rare group. A lot of when we we call ourselves bandits, big fans of Bluey. Yeah, I feel like bandits a scat dad.
SPEAKER_02:That's a Wow man.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry.
SPEAKER_02:That it caught me off guard. I wasn't ready for that.
SPEAKER_00:Listen, the truth often does.
SPEAKER_02:It's weird to me that the only other options are very negative for you. Screaming or cussing, or now you got to get it. Do you got a fourth? You have a fourth way? I don't know. Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, when you have an eight-year-old boy that just won't listen, holler at me. Yeah. You talk it out with him. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not a grown-up. He can't have a grown-up boy.
SPEAKER_02:I love that they can't put their shoes on and you're doing a little dance number in the vestibule in front of the house.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's right. Come on, we gotta get out of the house now. Come on, we'll get the shoes gone.
SPEAKER_02:What were we talking about?
SPEAKER_00:We were talking about our younger selves. Okay, fair. Uh what would your younger you do if you were involved in ministry today? So the older of you of us is uh leading uh volunteer leadership in Jay High Ministry and college ministry. Shout out to you, my friend. How's college ministry life going? You know?
SPEAKER_02:We really need a college pastor fast.
SPEAKER_00:You've never joined a search team faster. You're like, actually, I'd love to help find my replacement.
SPEAKER_02:I'm like, we will be using my podcast and every airwave channel and distribution we can get.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So shout it out. No, it's good. I'm glad you're doing it, though. It's good for you. It's good. Uh, but we want to talk about if we were to start in student ministry today, uh, at the place that we started with the wisdom that we have to go back in time. So 40-year-old you, through the time machine, Marty McFly, back to that first church that you were at. So the first Baptist church that I was at and the church plant that you were at, what would what would you do? How would you start? How would you proceed? January 1, new year, new you, you got the exact same tools and budget you had then, but the wisdom, yeah, the wisdom of now.
SPEAKER_02:Um so where I would start is eventually where we ended up, but I had to learn it. So I would say, I would say, man, I'm just gonna do it. Did you do a job by the end of it? How long were you there? Um what was your what was your seminary hard knocks there? Yeah, several years, okay. Yeah. Um I would say okay, so I had experience being doing part-time and like internship before for basically all of college at a much larger church. Okay. And some good exposure. Very good exposure. I had a very good foundation understanding student ministry. And so I would say I too quickly from the very beginning started building programs instead of relationships. People. Your program is over people. Well, because we were a church plant, and so there wasn't much of a foundation. You had like the pastor's son and his cousins, yeah. Um, and then a few other, you know, families there. And so immediately I was like, we've got to have a Wednesday night, we've got to have small groups, and none of those were wrong. Right. It was just I was trying to fast forward from the very beginning of like building out all these things. So it's like we need worship, and then all like from day one.
SPEAKER_00:Student leadership team. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and and I two thirds of the group was on the student leadership team. A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think our first Wednesday night we had more kids on stage playing worship, right? Um and and I Jet Higgins and his very big band. We were doing scat. Yeah, it's cool. Um jazz band. Uh and and so just for me, I I think opening up my house a lot sooner of just hanging out those valuing the group for the size that it was. Yeah, because I mean, you know me. I can become very like systems structure, systems. And so it's like, even from the beginning, and we needed this, so I wouldn't like throw it out.
SPEAKER_00:You're the only guy that probably had like a standard operating procedure binder, like an SOP for a volunteer team of three. You're like, and Susan and Maria and Tim, here's your three-inch three-ring binder that has all the protocols for youth ministry leadership on a Wednesday. Tim's like, I got four guys. And you're like, do it right.
SPEAKER_02:Dude, I you don't know how much I love a three-ring binder color cover page that I will print out our like student ministry logo. Did it have a graph?
SPEAKER_00:Did it have a graph? What do you mean? Like a graph. Like you love a graph.
SPEAKER_02:Oh. Pie chart?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, pie chart. Yeah, pie chart. Yeah, come on.
SPEAKER_02:We got three kids and they're represented by these three colors. Thirds. Third, thirds. This is our entire student ministry broken up into these three charges.
SPEAKER_00:People at Office Defoe love to see you come. Yeah, just come on, come on, in coming, man.
SPEAKER_02:I love a staples. Uh anyway. Uh no, but so uh for me, I mean just too quick to the structure. Yeah, because we I was trying to do both at the exact same time. That's hard. And I think that's what I would change. Okay, is it a little bit goes back into that um I need everything now instead of realizing like this is going to be messy for a season, yeah, and that's gonna allow us to build momentum and mass to actually create a student ministry. We got there, yeah. Um but probably a little bit to my detriment, uh more internally, because I don't know that it was externally affecting our student ministry. Yeah, it probably looked very put together.
SPEAKER_00:You were just feeling those pressures.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, dude, I was working non-stop.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, because you're trying to do all the relational stuff. I didn't have a team of volunteers yet. So, like all of that bandwidth of like going and having coffee and meeting those college students quicker, you know what I mean? All that kind of stuff. Because eventually we built a team of because we had a college in our back, you know, yeah, backyard and all those kind of things. Yeah. So we're able to build a team that then started to really connect with students. Um, and we were getting connected into the schools and all that kind of stuff. I wished I would have just relationally connected, yeah. Hosted a Bible study in my house until we couldn't filled the house and then expanded to the next one. And then we then we brought it into the church and launched a Wednesday night and those type of things. I think, and we talk, we've talked in previous episodes about how important space is.
SPEAKER_00:Again, a full room, regardless of the room, always feels better than a big room that's half full. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and if you don't have the mass of people to fill the room, even if you have, let's say you have 12 people, yeah, but your room's too big, yeah, it feels like no one's there. Right. But you host 12 people in your house. You're like, this is popping off. It's popping off. It feels exciting.
SPEAKER_00:I gotta get chairs for the church and bring them to my house. I don't need more seating. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. Um, and it can feel very dynamic, and that creates a different just excitement in being in the room that kids want to be a part of and they want to bring their friends to.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and again, most of them experience a lot of life either in school classrooms, in rows and desks, or in home environments that do when the house party's exciting, that's where most folks want to be. So starting in the right size room is not wrong. Obviously, like if you have the space to do some fun big gym games or outdoor rec things, use those for what they are. But I think always matching the right size space to those environments, whether it is a small group discussion around a table or in a cozy room or in a home, or if it's a large group moment, like be in the right size classroom, not just the biggest room you have available to you.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I I've always believed in the 80% rule. Yeah. If you're not familiar with that, is once you hit a capacity of a room of about 80, you need to start looking at either a larger room or multiple services. And the re the reason 80 is so important is one, it allows space for guests. Yep. So it's like either still a seat for them, but you have a critical mass to where it like it feels full and happening and those type of things. Um so for you, Zach, yeah, what what would be one of the things that you would look at and go, I would definitely do this different.
SPEAKER_00:So I started a first Baptist church, established church with an established ministry. I was coming in after somebody that had been there for a while. So there was already like youth facility branding, logo stuff. There was already a team of Sunday school teachers, there was already an expectation of a Wednesday night thing. What I didn't do well enough early enough was value the leaders' um opportunity role and growth. Like I had people in spots, um, but I didn't, I mean, I met, we had our monthly youth luncheon on Sundays, talk about the business of the ministry, the updates, the calendar. Like we ran the business of the ministry, but valuing like the coaching and the growth of the leaders, like I was the guy that was like, every spot's filled, my work is done. All I have to do is spend time with kids, plan the sermon on Wednesday, and figure out what camp's gonna look like next summer. Instead of doing those like one leader a week kind of coaching, encouraging conversations to find out not just that they were leading a Sunday school class or in a group, but how do we level up that experience? I think, in part, looking back at my 23-year-old, 24-year-old self, because they were closer in age to my parents than they were to me, I didn't think that I had anything to offer. And looking back, and even still knowing some of them today, I think I think I had more to offer than I realized because I was the guy brought in as, you know, man, the church trusts you and values you as a youth minister with some level of insight, maybe even expertise. Like you don't have to be the expert on them, but you might be the contributor for like the ways in which this small group conversation could be more exciting, or the ways in which we can give some vision or success to what feels like a slog of Sunday morning, right? Like, how how do I help bolster, encourage, and coach them in a way that made their time feel even more valuable beyond just like thank you for fulfilling your obligation to the next generation of this church?
SPEAKER_02:One of my uh the next one for me would be not realizing quick enough that my role wasn't to get to know new people, but to introduce new people to existing yeah, the handoff, the connector. Yes, yeah. I I think for so long early ministry, I was so worried of like me knowing new people's names.
SPEAKER_00:Or them knowing you, or them knowing as if they weren't gonna hear about you or hear you teach or talk. That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and so it was just like I would meet them and I would talk all about them and that kind of stuff. Like corner them off like they weren't shot at other people, yeah. It's in my mind, I'm like, I want to treat their guest, they're new guests, like they gotta know me. Well, I wanted them to stick in our church. Yeah. Like we're a new church.
SPEAKER_00:You thought you were the sticky element, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and for for most people, like they're just trying to get to know people. Yeah. And they're like, Can I connect here at this church? And I think for so long, it's like you have this. You're when you're new, it's like, well, I'm one of the ministers here, right? Like I got to be welcoming.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but I'm the ambassador of the church. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Part of that process is going, let me introduce you to John, who leads a Sunday school class that is roughly your age. Yeah. And so it's like, I want to make those connections. I want to connect them to these people and all of that kind of stuff. And oftentimes it was I felt like I need to be fascinated with you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:And which I am, yeah. But it was like uh I wasn't helping them connect to multiple groups.
SPEAKER_00:Connect to deep to deeper and deeper layers of the church. And that's one of the things that I mean, again, youth ministry especially, finding the quickest way, the quickest route to connecting a small group leader, Sunday school teacher to the parent of the new kid. So it's like, yes, you're meeting me, but the leaders, Tim and Rod, are these guys here, they're gonna be the small group leaders for your son's small group. They're dads, they have kids in the ministry, they're awesome. I want you to meet them, like having that facilitate that moment.
SPEAKER_02:And hear me say, even in what I was explaining, it while, yes, for students as well, my focus would have been on the adults quicker. Okay. Because remember my scenario, yeah. I'm in a brand new church plan.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so we're very small, like the likelihood of me just getting random one-off students, yeah, you're you're you're you're getting families at a time, yeah. You're getting families at a time. And so if students are, in my opinion, a little bit easier to connect, yeah. It's like, are you having fun or not?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and but for adults, it's like, do I like these people? Could I do life with them? Um, and so helping them actually find because you're gonna need multiple options, yeah, right? Like just the people that you like, they may not connect to. Yeah. And so being able to connect them to multiple people inside the church, give those handoff and make and follow up is a big piece of it. Because you gotta wear a lot of hats being on a church plant. Yeah. That's you're not just the youth minister, like, nor was I. I was the youth you're doing something else, graphic designer, sabeship.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. In the first Baptist church, the other one that I would add for this episode's purposes is a little bit contextual, but I think probably true for several folks that are in their established church as the youth minister. I was the only person at that time on church staff that didn't have grandkids. I was newlywed with no kids. And so um, the meaningful connection of other ministers in the area, but the asset that it was at an older church of folks that had grown their kids, empty nesters, uh, uh, you know, grandparents whose generations of kids and grandkids like didn't maybe live there and were out of town. They were an awesome, awesome connector as prayer partners for students in the ministry, uh, to go visit their Sunday school classes while the youth stuff was meeting to keep my face, our ministry, and our stories in front of them, to go to before them before camp and be like, here are names of students in our ministry, ways to pray. But seeing not just my youth ministry work in the bubble of youth ministry, but the internal ambassador for what's happening in the youth ministry to some of our adult ministries, notably our older or senior adult ministries that supported the church, supported the ministry, and we're just looking for those nuggets and stories and insights of what's happening over in that youth room with those kids. Like we're we we we want to support it, but give us stories to put our hands on.
SPEAKER_02:I I think that's the story that we in the last 10 years. Okay. I think that's the story that we've probably heard the most of youth ministers being ran off from their church. Yeah. It is it's over and over. I mean, the exact same story. I can't even count the number of people that we've met at this point. That's like, we're doing so many great things in student ministry. We got all these events, we've grown in numbers. I'm super involved in the schools, and they told me to leave. Well, and it's always the same thing. It's like there's a group of elderly people in their church that don't connect with them. And I think a lot of it is they get some bad news reporting. Well, like their grandkid came and didn't like it. Yeah. And that's the one story they have, and that's the only story they have. And for for a lot of young youth ministers, you don't see the importance of sharing and celebrating like what's been happening on Wednesday night, yeah, what God's done at camp, all of those type of things. You're the journalist for your ministry. Correct. Yeah. And so the decision makers, the givers in the church are looking at it, going, well, I have no relationship with that guy. Yeah, he's never come over and talked to me. Yep. Uh I don't even know him. All I see is this guy that doesn't seem to dress real respectful. Yeah. We've got kids running up and down the halls. Obviously, he doesn't know what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00:Because you know what the opposite side of that story is? Oh, yeah, that's Donnie. That's our youth pastor. He wears hoodies a lot because he's always up late. And there's a lot of kids run up and down our halls. And before Donnie was there, the calls were really quiet. It's a spin, but it's the truth either way, if they have relationship. And that's one of the things that's so important. Is the kids run up and down the halls is either a problem or a cause for excitement. Right. And it's narrated by you, the minister.
SPEAKER_02:Well, because if it's their grandkid who's wanting to be at church, it's a totally different story. Yeah, that's right. Um, and so I it's not spin, it's it's the ability to actually connect with some of those people and to know them, to care about them. Yeah. Because here's the real reality senior adult ministry is the exact same as middle school ministry.
SPEAKER_00:Senior adult ministers are just middle school students that can drive. That's it.
SPEAKER_02:The driving part is questioning you went and you went there.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't.
SPEAKER_02:They I have seen some of them. There's a lot of there's a lot of wrecks.
SPEAKER_00:There are two groups of the church that need the van the most. Middle school ministry for the weekends, senior adults for yes. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Zach, I feel like I'd re lead a really good like senior adult.
SPEAKER_00:Listen, man. You change that pizza to a buffet and you take laser tag and make it the Gaiters, win-win. Win-win. They love loud. Listen, listen, senior adults may not like your music, but they do love loud music if it's their music. Dude, I could go through, I could do some Gaithers in some Lubies buffet. Come on, dude. Come on. Yeah. Where the plates never run dry. Well, guys, thank you so much for being uh with us this week. We'll see you back for another one. But we want to hear from you. Uh, make sure to drop a comment below or email us at chad.higgins at lifeway.com your stories of what it's like to be ministry in the new place that you are, or the wisdom that you would give to be featured on an upcoming episode. Thanks. We'll see you next week.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
His Glory, Her Good
Amanda Mejias, Corinne Allen
5 Leadership Questions Podcast on Church Leadership with Todd Adkins and Dan Iten
Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network
The Glass House with Ben and Lynley Mandrell
Lifeway Podcast Network