Sustainable Youth Ministry Quotes

“We encouraged volunteers to think of themselves not as people who run errands to keep a program going but as spiritual directors in the lives of students. Chris Folmsbee”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“pressure to succeed is especially acute for youth ministers, who—despite their lack of knowledge, skills and experience—are expected to attract young adolescents to a life of commitment to Christ and the church. It is a daunting task made increasingly difficult by the expectations of adults and a notable lack of congregational support.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Very few kids step out of a youth ministry because the programs are lousy. Kids will actually forgive all kinds of programmatic mediocrity if they are certain they belong. Consider what most teenagers do on weekend nights. They don’t usually have brilliant, hypercreative plans (you’ve seen them meandering through Blockbuster for hours, looking for a movie to rent). They simply “hang out” with their friends. If our youth ministries don’t provide students with the opportunity to be with the kinds of friends they want, it won’t matter how spiritual, cutting-edge or outrageous our programs are; kids will not stick.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Examine your process. The first step is to start by defining exactly what you want a first-time visitor or an “outsider” to experience at each of your ministry settings. For our ministry, we look at the Sunday-morning window from the time the student’s car drives into the church parking lot until the time he or she gets back to it, including all of these steps: finding a parking spot getting out of the car figuring out where his or her group meets finding the right room stepping into the room getting connected to a “sticky friend” filling out a first-timer card finding a seat doing the program leaving with something leaving knowing how to find answers to questions about the youth ministry choosing to come another time feeling wanted after leaving”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Until structures are in place for great ideas to be implemented, even the best of them will wind up on a treadmill that may speed up or slow down but will go nowhere.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Nothing characterizes successful organizations more than their willingness to abandon what made them successful.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Imagine what would happen if schools taught with the same approach to curriculum that most churches use. One year, a teacher stumbles onto an engaging curriculum on verbs, with some really cool videos on gerunds. When the kids and teachers get bored with that curriculum, they cut it short, and the teacher runs to the curriculum store, finds a compelling study on algebraic equations (narrated by Rob Bell-Curve), and starts to teach that the next week. When that study is winding down, the teacher decides it’s time to teach on rocks or medieval knights or Christmas around the world.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Youth ministry may be one of the only professions that has settled into the pattern of handing over total responsibility for running an organization to young people just out of college. Far too often, anxiety, not wisdom, drives us.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“Churches build buildings because the cost is clear; architects can give a good estimate of what it will take. But churches have a much harder time determining what it costs to build a sustainable youth ministry.”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. The problem is that no one is coming. . . . These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no busses pass. . . . They can end up waiting forever. And that is what most people do. BRIAN TRACY   ”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It

“problem”
― Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn't Last and What Your Church Can Do About It