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    my journey to purpose
joshua griffin
I quit youth ministry once.
Actually, I quit it about a thousand times, but only had the guts to tell the elders of our church once. When I felt it was time, I used the old excuse of more education to hide the real issues of pain and frustration working in the church and with students. I was out of there--youth ministry is incredibly difficult and for me, enough was enough.
Fortunately, God had other plans about me leaving this great calling.
We first visited Saddleback Church after reading the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. Reading the book was one thing, I really felt I had to see this whole thing in action - I had to see it up close. I remember sitting at that first PDYM Conference, wondering if they had visited my church before we arrived in California. Every skit, every drama, every video made my wife and I knowingly poke each other with our elbows. It was like they had somehow looked inside our marriage, our ministry our lives really - and put it up there on stage.
The principles behind everything are fully transferable. We went back and began to develop our purpose statement. We picked words like STRENGTH and SHINE to describe what we would be the foundation of our student ministry from that point forward. We cut more than half of the programs clean off the calendar and went from babysitting and entertaining to challenging students spiritually and seeing lives truly changed. We would come back to visit PDYM time and time again to renew the vision, bring volunteers and to ask for God to tell us what was next.
God was good; he helped us discover what a student ministry could become. I don't think I've ever laughed and learned as much as have during the weeks of PDYM. It is the philosophy that has changed my ministry forever. There's tremendous power in recognizing God's calling to the greatest mission of all; being a leader to students. I discovered the purposes and rediscovered my calling, all in that same moment.
If you're early on in the youth ministry journey, if you're about to quit, if you're a long-term veteran looking for something more perhaps your journey just isn't complete and discovering biblical purpose holds the answer like it did for me.
http://www.simplyyouthministry.com/community-articles-from-the-field.html
joshua griffin
I quit youth ministry once.
Actually, I quit it about a thousand times, but only had the guts to tell the elders of our church once. When I felt it was time, I used the old excuse of more education to hide the real issues of pain and frustration working in the church and with students. I was out of there--youth ministry is incredibly difficult and for me, enough was enough.
Fortunately, God had other plans about me leaving this great calling.
We first visited Saddleback Church after reading the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. Reading the book was one thing, I really felt I had to see this whole thing in action - I had to see it up close. I remember sitting at that first PDYM Conference, wondering if they had visited my church before we arrived in California. Every skit, every drama, every video made my wife and I knowingly poke each other with our elbows. It was like they had somehow looked inside our marriage, our ministry our lives really - and put it up there on stage.
The principles behind everything are fully transferable. We went back and began to develop our purpose statement. We picked words like STRENGTH and SHINE to describe what we would be the foundation of our student ministry from that point forward. We cut more than half of the programs clean off the calendar and went from babysitting and entertaining to challenging students spiritually and seeing lives truly changed. We would come back to visit PDYM time and time again to renew the vision, bring volunteers and to ask for God to tell us what was next.
God was good; he helped us discover what a student ministry could become. I don't think I've ever laughed and learned as much as have during the weeks of PDYM. It is the philosophy that has changed my ministry forever. There's tremendous power in recognizing God's calling to the greatest mission of all; being a leader to students. I discovered the purposes and rediscovered my calling, all in that same moment.
If you're early on in the youth ministry journey, if you're about to quit, if you're a long-term veteran looking for something more perhaps your journey just isn't complete and discovering biblical purpose holds the answer like it did for me. |
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