Tag Archives: HSM

define your leadership commitment

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Everything I know about youth ministry, I’ve learned from serving under Doug Fields at Saddleback church. Every year, Doug had our leaders sign a commitment sheet. Even leaders who’d been serving for 15+ years. Here are a few reasons why I continue to have our leaders sign a commitment sheet:

1. A signed commitment is a step towards getting everyone on the same page. It takes more than a signed piece of paper to unify a team, but unity begins with a shared commitment.

2. A signed commitment defines success for your leaders because it clearly communicates your expectations. Not having a leadership “DTR” is like shooting a target you can’t see.

3. A signed commitment helps your leaders personally evaluate their ministry. At the end of the month, a leader can review the commitments and see if they are keeping their commitment.

4. A signed commitment makes it easier to hold your leaders accountable. At some point, you’ll need to confront a leader and a signed commitment eliminates arguments. Let’s say you have a leader who is habitually late to youth ministry events. At some point in your conversation, you’ll be able to say, “We’ve all committed to being on time, I need you to honor that commitment.” In bigger situations, such as a leader not buying into the youth ministry philosophy, this becomes even more important.

 

What have I missed? Does your ministry use a signed commitment, how has it been good? Post something in the comments below so I don’t get lonely.

DOWNLOAD HERE: HSM Leader Commitment

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what would you communicate to parents?

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As the school year comes to an end, we typically schedule a few parents meetings. I like meeting with parents, feel like we do a fair job of communicating with them through the year, but we definitely don’t have a strong parents ministry.

I know there are lots of ideas on how to make this happen… honestly, there are so many other things that need work, that building a vibrant parent ministry hasn’t made the priority list yet. I don’t feel a ton of pressure, because most of the church’s programs are geared to parents… but I’m getting off topic.

In our parents meeting, my goal is to spend two thirds of the time informing them about our ministry. I want to cover everything from a 10,000 foot view to the grass roots. I’ll take the last third of our meeting time for Questions and Answers. In all of this, I also want them to get a feel for who I am.

Anyhow, here’s the handout that I’m using this year. Feel free to use it as a spring board for your ministry and make it better!

HSM parents meeting

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how i organize Evernote

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I’m not as organized as I’d like to be. I love evernote because it’s easy to make notes, easy to organize, and easy to find them. You can even take pictures of stuff and their servers work some kind of (OCR) magic that enables you to search for text that’s ON A PHOTO. Yup. Take a picture of a starbucks cup, and after a little bit o time you can search “starbucks” in Evernote and find the pic.

I’ve organized my notes into four basic categories:

  • Communication–for research, message ideas, my personal stories, humor photos, etc.
  • HSM–for random ideas, a shared folder with my team, meeting notes, meeting agendas, life change stories, all church stuff, contact log (pastoral care stuff), etc.
  • writing–for blog stuff, random ideas, projects not related to HSM
  • personal–stuff for home, travel information, prayer stuff, etc.

My most important folder (“notebook”) is The Pile. I send everything here, and hope to organize it once every month or two. I figure if I get a note in here, I’m doing pretty good. If I can get it to one of my other folders (I mean “stacks”), then I’m the most organized person in the universe (not really).

It’s possible to set up an email address for evernote…this is REALLY HELPFUL…as I’m answering emails, sometimes I’ll BCC evernote (if I CCed it, everyone would have my email address…and then spam my evernote with garbage.) and have it captured.

IPAD and IPHONE apps both are really helpful. Last week I even taught from my IPAD with evernote.

I’ve installed the evernote “clipper” for CHROME … but I don’t really surf the web very much, so it’s not too helpful.

There is an easy way to get Kindle notes to evernote, but I haven’t done that yet… maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.

Finally, this lady has a dog inside a really nice hotel and she is talking to it with exactly the kind of voice you would expect.

 

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our summer camp student journal

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Here is our student journal for summer camp…the great design is by CHELSEA DEVIN!

HSM Sumer Camp Student Journal | Summer Camp Student Journal Cover

Feel free to use this in your ministry…please don’t use it to make any money!

 

 

 

 

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