Hey guys, these days I'm blogging at mikelovato.wordpress.com - update your links if you've got them!

I'm teaching a breakout in a little over a week at Lifeway's National Youth Worker Conference. The breakout is called "Working with Parents as a Younger Minister." I asked for some feedback via Twitter/Facebook and was asked if I could share people's responses. The question I threw out there was "what's your one piece of advice to a youth pastor in their 20's when it comes to working with parents?" Here you go!

Twitter:
joshtreece@mikelovato There is no such thing as OVERcommunicating! There is more parent ministry in youth ministry than you think! Talk to them!
mikekell@mikelovato Keep bringing it back to Biblical Truth. Stand on that authority.
samgamgee@mikelovato build strategic relationships...they can be your best of allies
kenleslie@mikelovato Advice: They must acknowledge they DO NOT know how to RAISE a teenager, but they can help parents UNDERSTAND their culture
thespiderman@mikelovato remember that they are probably pretty set in their ways and change comes hard when they've been parenting as long as they have
stephenperryParent ministry can't be viewed as a program but a mindset.
also-constantly challenge your thinking and process to figure out ways/outlets for dialogue to happen at home based on what you teach...

Facebook:
- when talking about their children, use lots of profanity... just to catch them off guard.
- Get them on your leadership team so that you learn from them, develop rapport with them, and get their support for the ministry.
- Realize that your "20s" are quickly becoming a thing of the past! They don't see you as a kid anymore, so don't see yourself that way.
- don't think you know it all...don't be arrogant...cause you will learn in time young jedi
- Let them know you found out they were right. Whatever the question was...just let them know that you now know they were right. It is amazing but they will then admit when they were wrong. It works.
- Ask them to be involved in their kids lives. Ask them where they would like to help, food, sponsors, leadership. Tell them your goals and plans and ask them to get involved.
- Constantly communicate that you are their ally; that you don't have any desire to take their place but only to supplement their best efforts to disciple their children. Also, that you are a constant student of students and want to be a resource of information & support for them as they negotiate the challenging (& terrifying to some) task of leading their children through the maze of adolescence and into responsible adulthood.

Labels: parents, youth ministry

This session is on fellowship.

- Smaller is better.
- Volunteer is better than paid.
- Shepherds are better than chaperones.
- Better is better - tweak, twist, don't settle.

Our ministry has a sunday school style smal group structure that works to an extent but is not truly accomplishing the purpose of fellowship. I am trying to process what our next step is - tweak sundays, start groups new, or something else.

Blogging from my phone....two takeaways from session 3.
- The crowd program is all about relationships. We are not doing great at this right now.
- A lot of the reason our ministry seems to be hanging right now is that I am kinda just tackling stuff as it comes rather than intentionally looking ahead with my planning and leading.

I will try to unpack this more when I am at a bigger keyboard.

Last night at the PDYM conference kicked off great. If I had to sum up the night it was "It's not about the building." Saddleback has one of the best youth ministry facilities in the country, but until recently they'd met in portable facilities, tents, etc. Lucas and I were talking about it on the drive back to Riverside last night and both of us feel like we don't walk into an amazing youth facility (I've seen a few now) and go "Oh....well they can do great ministry because they have a great facility." Don't get me wrong, I definitely say "Oh, this would be sweet to have." But at the same time youth ministry is not about a building, just like church is not about a building.

Stoked for the rest of the conference. Nicole and Addie are coming down with me today. If you're at the conference I'll be the guy in the bright green shirt with the the hot wife and super cute 8 month old daughter.

Labels: family, PDYM, youth ministry

I am heading out in a little bit to the PDYM conference at saddleback. I am pretty excited about this week. Here are a few reasons why.

- I get to hang with lucas, our jr high pastor. Should be some fun times and good thinking together.
- I will get away and meet with God. I am in the middle of a crazy season right now - ministry is busy, we bought a house, and I am still trying to figure out how to be the husband I need to be. I need this time this week.
- I want to refocus on the core of what we do in our ministry. In some ways I have coasted in ministry lately and I hate that. Its time to re-energize the biblical purposes in our student ministry.
- I want to connect with some other localy youth workers. I am a PDYM mentor in southern california so please find me if you are at the conference....especially if you're from the IE.

I will try to keep posting here all week as well as on twitter.

Enjoy

Labels: family

I've been trying to think through ways of how our student ministry staff can work better together. So often we end up duplicating the same stuff (particularly in our Wednesday night program). During the month of May we're going to team up our efforts. We'll still meet separately (jr high and high school at the same time, different rooms).

Here are three ways we'll be teaming up:
Creating message outlines together- Lucas and I will develop these together and then tweak them for specific JH or HS audiences.
Creating games together - we're going to try to develop games and other fun elements that will work in both settings. When one game is more high school or junior high specific, we'll try to help the other one come up with a good option.
Creating graphics, etc. together- self-explanatory

Labels: youth ministry