Because he was so respected and loved by his students and church, countless guests came to his home to visit him, but everyone visiting him noticed an odd thing; the youth leader had an old, antique chair which he insisted on keeping close to his bedside.  The chair’s importance seemed pretty mysterious to all Brent’s guests.

Late one night, as Brent was fighting for breath, one of the elders dropped by for a visit.  When he arrived, he found Brent lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and the old, empty chair right beside him.

“I guess you were expecting me,” the elder said kindly.  “No, not really,” the youth leader replied with embarrassment.

“Please don’t be embarrassed,” the elder responded.  “When I saw the empty chair, I just figured you knew I was coming to visit for a while.”

“Oh, yeah…the chair,” the youth leader said quietly.  “There’s a story behind this chair, but I’ve never told anyone about it.  Why don’t you shut the door and I’ll tell you why this old chair is so important to me.”  Puzzled, the elder shut the door and sat down to hear what Brent was going to share.

“You see, as a youth leader I knew I was supposed to be a man of prayer, but for years of my ministry, I really struggled to feel like my prayers were getting anywhere. So eventually, except for when I occasionally prayed with a kid, I just stopped praying.  I never told anyone because spiritual leaders are supposed to know how to pray.”

Then about 6 months ago, a close friend said, “Brent, you’re making this prayer thing too tough.  Prayer is just like talking to me. So, I’ve got a suggestion for you.  Why don’t you sit down and put an empty chair in front of you.  By faith, picture Jesus sitting in that chair and then start talking to Him, just like you talk to me. Prayer is nothing more complicated than having an honest conversation with Jesus.”

“So I tried it,” Brent quietly confided in the elder.  “And cheesy as it sounds, it worked. I haven’t told many other people because I don’t think Christian leaders are supposed to struggle with this stuff, but it’s really helped me out.  Now that the cancer has gotten pretty bad, I sometimes talk to Jesus in that chair for a couple of hours a day.”

The elder was so moved with the honesty of the youth leader that he was personally challenged in his own personal prayer life.  Two nights later, the elder was told that the youth leader had slipped into eternity early that evening.

“Did he seem to die in peace?” the elder asked.  “Yes,” Brent’s friend answered.  “When I left the house around four o’clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me one of his old jokes, and laughed as I walked out of the room.  When I came back from an errand about an hour later, I found him dead, but there was something strange.  In fact, something really pretty unusual.  Apparently, just before Brent died, he leaned over and rested his head on the chair beside his bed.  Crazy, isn’t it?  Somehow he had a strange attraction to that old chair.”

As youth leaders, it’s really easy to “talk about prayer” and yet rarely make personal time to pray ourselves.  So maybe this is your reminder from Jesus that He is lonely for you.  Why don’t you pull up a chair and start the conversation?

I easily “believe something” about youth ministry.  I bet you do too.  But often, as my passion wanes, I admit to myself that I’ve lost a “sense of conviction” about my ministry.  And there is a world of difference.  Belief agrees with the facts.  But conviction brings persistent action to my belief.  So let me reach inside myself and tell you a couple of things I do when I sense my own passion about youth ministry beginning to wane.

1.   I remind myself that true identity isn’t about “finding” myself.  Instead, it’s about “creating” myself. And with that simple realization, I’m reminded that my passion is a choice, not an emotion. It’s often said that the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon—but that most of us wait so long to truly begin it.  So when my “passion tank” dips low, I summon the will power to be bigger than my junior high emotional mood swings.  I reach inside myself and CHOOSE to keep investing myself into teenagers, no matter how phony the Enemy tries to make me feel.  I refuse to allow the growing emotional blahness to overtake me.  After all, I can always ACT MYSELF into a right feeling far quicker than I can FEEL MYSELF into a right action.

2.   I spend some extra time with a student I find motivational and guard myself from heavy interaction with “the depleters.” Take yesterday for example.  An eternally “needy” student came up to me after church and inwardly, I wanted to run the other way.  Relate?  After a few depressing minutes of conversation, my eyes caught another student who is sharp and spiritually growing.  For my own good, I slipped away from the first conversation and connected with the second student.  We firmed up a Coke appointment this week and I walked away, internally smiling again.  I’ve learned that too many “EGR’s” in youth ministry (Extra Grace Required) can suck the passion out of even the best leaders.

I wish passion for youth ministry and teenagers were a vitamin we could take regularly.  But the tragedy I often see is that after a person has done youth ministry long enough to have wisdom to give, they unplug because they no longer “feel it.”  I refuse to allow leadership’s “worst bankruptcy” to shorten my run.  So I’ll keep “acting my way” into passion and knowing that heaven is celebrating my guts.

1.  There are countless avenues to secretly access questionable media.

2.  Society defines an affair as intercourse, but an affair truly begins in the emotions long before it hits the bedroom.

3.  Our dating system in America is dress rehearsal for divorce.

4.  We now have a frightening ability to live private lives.

5.  Marriage in our society is no longer seen as sacred.

6.  We allow ourselves to have our emotional needs met by other people apart from Jesus and our spouse.

NYLC12 Canvas: “Superstar Come Down”

Why Great Men Fall, is an amazing book by Wayde Goodall that tackles this issue of why incredible leaders fall into moral failure.  I want to highlight just 3 of the minefields that he talks about in his book that make us more susceptible to allowing ourselves to fall into some form of moral failure.

1.  Do I have the ability to compartmentalize my moral choices?

This is the big one!  It is incredibly dangerous to bottle up sin and allow it to be pushed out of our mind.  In ministry you have to compartmentalize.  You can’t wear your pastor hat home to your wife and kids, or even around your friends. But when it comes to moral choices, it becomes incredibly frightening.

2.  Do I handle stress in a healthy way?

Stress might one the biggest catalysts that lead to moral failure.  Nothing else drains our tanks much more than stressing out.  Often times, when we don’t have healthy ways to de-stress, we unload our stress in compromising ways.  For me, I have to find healthy ways to relieve and refill my personal energy.  I don’t know what it looks like for you, maybe it’s sitting on your back porch reading a book, or taking a drive by yourself on a nice day, but whatever it is find it and follow through with it.  Getting rid of your mental stress might be one of the most proactive ways you can safely guard against moral failure.

3.  Do I handle power well?

A lot of people these days can’t survive their own success.  Jesus nails the idea of being, “powerful” by saying that whoever is going to be great must be the servant of all.  I would hope that people who knew me years ago knew me as a loving person who served other people and 40 years later they would still see that genuine love and willingness to serve others.

It would so make me smile if you took the next couple of minutes to reflect and journal on these questions.  In a society that does not put much weight on morality, thanks for being leaders determined to be wholeheartedly devoted to living a life of integrity.

You don’t have to be a clinical psychologist to know the “why behind the what.” Today’s youth culture is surrounded by broken families, broken friendships, and broken hearts.

So the unspoken message is, “I need a FAMILY ROOM more than I need a CHURCH AUDITORIUM.” Unfortunately, that’s a little tougher than it sometimes sounds. So let me share with you a few key principles that have helped to build a sense of “family” in our youth church.

1) Talk “family” on a consistent and purposeful basis in front of your students.

Your words really are creative. I’ve lost track of the number of ways we reference “family” in 212 (our local youth ministry), but let me give you a few of the phrases you would hear around here often:

• “Here in 212, we’re more than just people who show up in the same room a couple of times each week. We’re family.”

• “In 212, none of us are perfect, but we’ve got each other’s backs because we’re family.”

• “Our life groups (small groups) are the way we make the larger family feel more personal.”

Though those words may stick in your throat the first few times you say them, they are more powerful than you could realize. They are especially powerful when stated from a man because of this generation’s emotional hunger for an adopted dad or big brother they can look up to and feel connected with.

2) Eat together.

I think I’ve maybe changed the Scripture just a little, but I often quote, “Where two or more are gathered together in His Name, there is food.” Don’t make this too tough. It can just be a stop together at the “Golden Arches” on the way home from a trip or a picnic on the 4th of July.

Jesus modeled this concept as He created His discipleship family. The New Testament is filled with times that He “broke bread with them.” It’s no coincidence that His last bonding time with the disciples before the Cross was not “The Last Teaching,” but rather, “The Last Supper.”

3) Play together.

If you don’t have time to occasionally “play” with the students in your youth ministry, you might want to re-think your priorities. I often say that the youth ministry that “Prays together and PLAYS together, Stays together.”

Playing together is more than fun sports competitions. It’s creating fun in spontaneous ways all along the youth ministry journey. I often remind my students that, “Fun is not an activity, it’s an attitude.” So create a party in the unexpected moments of life.

4) Consider launching some form of small group strategy within your youth ministry.

Even if your youth group has no more than 15-20 students, a small group approach would make a world of difference in creating family and the larger the youth outreach becomes, the more vital a strategic small group approach is.

Launching a small group ministry is not as challenging as it might sound. In “Thriving Youth Groups,” I devote an entire chapter to this topic entitled, “Small Groups Made Easy.” That chapter alone makes the book truly invaluable to the most sincere youth leaders.

All in all, this business of creating a sense of family in youth ministry is one of the most vital components to any significant ministry. Truth be told, it’s a challenge for many of us in youth ministry because we never had anyone do it for us. Yes, it’s tough to give away what you never experienced yourself, but I will tell you personally that there is a mountain of fulfillment in giving away to others what you perhaps never had yourself. So with that in mind, go be Youth Leader Bill Cosby and change your world.

I’ve always been the “overly conscientious one.”  Relate?  I mean, I try too hard to “be good” and not disappoint people.  Way too hard.

And so I’m not surprised now, looking back many years later, that I also made my Christian life way too complicated.  One of my lifetime core values is authenticity.  After all, none of us want to be phony.  But not long after coming to faith, I became overwhelmed with the impossibility of living the Christ life…“correctly and fruitfully.”  I came very close to walking away from my faith when a New Testament verse and simple story changed my perspective in a life-giving way.

One evening after church, a wise old man, sensing my anguish, lovingly quoted 1 John 1:6 to me.  “Anyone who says he is a Christian should live as Christ did.” Tears quickly sprang to my eyes.

“That’s just the problem,” I exploded to the old guy.  “The world is going to hell apart from Christ and I want to help, but I don’t even know where to begin!  And I sure don’t know how to make my friends and family want to follow Him.  I’m pretty much useless.”

The old guy pointed to a pew nearby. “Sit here for a minute, Jeanne.  I’ll make Christianity and evangelism a lot easier for you.  Let me tell you an old story.”

And so Benjamin began to tell me about a little girl who was very frightened of the dark.  Night after night, her patient mom would sit by her bedside until she finally fell asleep.  But then one night, the mom became very ill with the flu.  She couldn’t sit by her little girl’s bedside that evening.  So lovingly, she explained to her daughter that though she couldn’t be there herself, she would leave the nightlight on to calm her fears.

“No, Mommy, please,” the little girl begged. “I’ll go to sleep really, really fast tonight.  Just please don’t leave me in my room alone.”

The loving Mom paused to give more assurance.  “Listen, Sweetie,” she said.  “I’ll be right in the very next room, but most of all, you just need to remember that Jesus is right here with you.”

Crying, the little girl said immortal words, “But Momma, right now I need JESUS WITH SKIN ON!”

My wise old story teller, Benjamin, paused to allow time for those words to sink in.  “You see, Jeanne,” he said gently.  “Christianity and evangelism are not nearly as complicated as you’re making it.  You just try to be Jesus with skin on to the people around you.  Sure, you’ll have highs and lows, but if this becomes your mantra, you’ll make heaven smile with your life.”

Old Benjamin was right. 1 John 1:6, coupled with this simple story, have made countless decisions and turning points ever so much easier.  Granted, the question, “What would Jesus do?” has become archaic and trite these days.  But the essence of those words still echo with profound significance.  When I’m promoted to heaven someday, I hope my life will have earned this epitaph:

Here rests Jeanne Mayo…“Jesus with skin on.”

Take a minute to read it.  The names have been changed to protect her identity for obvious reasons.  But remind yourself that SEED you are planting eventually WILL come to HARVEST…even if  RIGHT NOW, your efforts seem to totally unproductive and worthless.

In the words of my immortal husband and hero, “KEEP ON KEEPING ON!  AND IF YOU GET TIRED, KEEP ON A LITTLE LONGER.”

Dearest Jeanne,

You probably don’t remember me.  I used to attend your youth ministry, Cross Current, over 20 years ago in Illinois when I was a teenager and accepted Christ there.  I wanted to let you know what has come of the “seed” you planted many years ago inside of my heart.

In August 2011, I went on a short term mission trip to Rwanda and Ethiopia.  At one point while I was at Noel orphanage in Ethiopia, I glanced over and saw about 6 teen girls leaning against the wall just staring at us.  I felt this tug on my heart to go to them.  So I did.

One of the girls, named Angelique, noticed the scars on my arms from when I used to self-harm myself as a teen and asked me about them.  I told her about my upbringing and how I used to cope with it all.  Then I told her how I now have hope in God and I have freedom.  Her eyes never went from me, and when I was done, she wept in my arms.  I spent the entire next day with her and she told me how she grew up in the orphanage, how her parents died, what her dreams are, and how she struggles with God.  I encouraged her and thought that was that.  Then we were off to Ethiopia.

After I got home, I found out that Angelique was being thrown out of the orphanage. She ended up living with her elderly, widowed, ill grandma and slept on a dirt floor. But she told me, “But she loves me.”  I never wept before the throne for someone more than her.  I would roll out of my comfortable bed, read her emails, and fall face down on the floor, sobbing, petitioning at the throne of grace for her.

I ended up getting her in a good boarding school and set up for someone in Rwanda to start taking her grandma clean water and food every month.  I went back to visit Rwanda in April and I fell in love with even more teens, more kids.  So, I did the next logical step.  I went home, sold all my possessions, and moved to Rwanda.

Angelique now lives with me, along with 9 other girls.  When I first moved here, I learned from my girls how horribly children are often treated in the orphanages. Several of my girls even told me that they were forced to call themselves dogs.  This led me to start a Bible study with the teen girls in Rwanda, which has grown to 40 girls. We are studying our identity in Christ.

I am also currently working on starting a day care in Rwanda.  There is a great need for this, because 1 in 35 mothers die in child birth and about 90% of the time the father cannot care for the infant and still work.  So, the baby is brought immediately to the orphanage.  I want to give those who want to be self-sufficient and raise their own children the chance to do so.

Also when I was here in April, I met this sweet 2-week old boy, who had been left at the gate of an orphanage in a box.  I call him Moses.  I visited him often on that trip in April and I still go to see him every day.  The house mamas would joke that I should put Moses in my bag and take him home.  I would always respond “Oh, I wish.”  I never entertained the thought until recently, when his aunt, who has refused to see him, came to me and begged me to take him.  I was not sure about all of it, but after much prayer the aunt, house mamas and even the director of the orphanage are writing to the local government to petition for me to have temporary custody of Moses.  I am currently applying for citizenship in Rwanda and once I get that, then I can officially adopt him.  Who would have known? Rwanda is closed to adoption, yet government, the orphanage, and even his family is helping me!  If it all happens, I will be the second American in 5 years to be able to adopt a Rwandan child!

And it all began when I sat in your youth ministry, Cross Current, many years ago with a bunch of gang members, and went down to that altar.  My life might not have changed overnight, but that seed was planted and I saw something I hungered for.  And now I get to live out my relationship with Jesus in Rwanda, with a bunch of orphans who call me Mum, and it’s all because of your impact 20 years ago and the seeds that you planted in my heart.

My phone just rang again with another agonizing report of a leader who’s out of the game due to some agonizing personal choices. My mind races with other names who have joined that sad list—people who could’ve given so much to kids. Allow me to briefly “preach to the choir” with the reminder that it’s far too easy for our charisma to outstrip our character.

Oswald Chambers said, “The future is with the disciplined, and without discipline, the gifts of a leader, no matter how great, will never reach their maximum potential.” Let’s take his wise advice one step further. Without discipline, the gifts of a leader can become highly dangerous. We can become so verbal that we begin talking rings around the people we should be listening to. We can become so influential that our influence slowly erodes into manipulation. We can become so much a public representative of God that our private relationship with Him becomes past tense.

Some simple warning signs let me know when I’m getting out of touch with Christ in my personal life. See if any resonate with you:

• I speak often from my head but rarely from my heart.

• I speak about yesterday and have nothing fresh from today.

• I speak about what I’ve learned rather than what I’m learning.

• I cease to answer my own altar calls.

• I long more for the approval of people than of God.

• I internally resent those around me who question my decisions or authority.

The ultimate bottom line for me is the stark realization that it’s much easier to get followers than it is to be worthy of being followed. Our talent can become deadly—kind of like an octopus on roller skates. From the outside, we produce plenty of movement but never know which direction we’re really going.

Recently, I received a sincere compliment. “Jeanne, your character is so consistent that predicting you is a little boring,” someone said laughingly. I paused and then said thanks. I’m not sure I’ve ever been called boring before, but in that context, I celebrated. By God’s grace, I’m determined to be better at leading myself than at leading others.

So this year, aspire to be consistent enough in your character that people will someday call you a little boring. While they may be yawning, Jesus will be smiling.

I just spoke for the closing night of a weeklong youth retreat for one of my old youth ministries, “Revolution.”  Forty years ago when I launched it in Nebraska, we called the youth ministry “Spireno” (“Spiritual Revolution Now”).  Sam and I pastored there for FIFTEEN fulfilling, life-altering years.

So what made this night so epic?  You see, forty years later, they are still hosting the same life-altering “weeklong retreat” each summer that I began four decades ago.  And rarer still, forty years later, the same unmistakable touch of God is genuinely on this yearly event to transform lives and hearts.  The 2012 “Weeklong” was themed “INHERITANCE” and they focused on celebrating the spiritual inheritance they had received through the years.  Earlier in the week, some of my spiritual sons who ran the youth ministry after I left flew in to speak to the 200 teenagers and leaders present.  But on the closing night, my assignment was to challenge the students to live a “LEGACY LIFE THAT GIVES THE INHERITANCE AWAY.”

The spiritual DNA that the Lord helped us to launch 40 years ago was still vibrantly obvious.  The atmosphere was electric with the marked presence of Jesus Christ.  Worship was whole-hearted and roof-shaking.  Laughter was authentic and frequent.  Friendship was contagious and inclusive. Spiritual hunger was aggressive and radical.  And prayer was intense and sustained.

The current youth pastor, Corey Demmel, unselfishly coached them to make the night an evening of “payback” for me.  And privately, right before I went up, he whispered to me, “None of us will probably ever experience a night like this again, so take your time…and let them feel and sense their spiritual DNA from you.”

And so I did.  I told a few of the countless crazy stories from “Weeklongs” of the past.  I reminded them that I piled teenagers and college kids onto buses that went on 24-hour-trips one way, complete with buses breaking down constantly and hysterical happenings along the way.  I told them about the “port-a-potties” that we dug, the huge circus tents we pitched to sleep in, and the countless holes in the old tent roofs that brought the frequent rain down-pourings inside our tents. We laughed until our sides hurt.

And then, in typical SPIRENO style, they easily allowed me to “flip the switch” and share my heart seriously with them.  I didn’t want just to “preach” that night.  It was far too historic…far too rare and epic for just “another sermon.”  Instead, I wanted to reach into what 42 years in full-time youth ministry has taught me…and try to put biblical, pragmatic handles around living a “legacy life that gives the inheritance away.”  They listened, took notes, responded, and most importantly, THEY PRAYED.

And prayed…

And prayed…

And prayed.

But my own “slice of heaven” went even further than the waves of love and honor they so generously lavished on me as the ministry’s founder.  My most epic moment was when I began to meet student after student whose parents had been in the youth ministry 40 years earlier with me. Most of them had come to faith in Christ during that era.  And now, 40 years later, they were raising their own teenagers to pursue that same wholeheartedly abandoned relationship with Jesus Christ.

There were about FIFTY of them who hung around after the service for our impromptu “spiritual grandkids’ meeting.”  We huddled near the front of the meeting area about 1 AM after most everyone had finished praying.  And I easily guessed who several of them “belonged to.” Wow…Genetics and DNA are no joke!  Time and time again I heard myself saying, “You look just like your dad (or mom) looked when they were your age!”

They told me stories their parents told them about their own youth ministry days…quoted “Jeanne-isms” that their parents had shared over and over as they raised them…and even told me that some of their parents’ attributed their strong marriages to what Sam and I had been privileged to model before them.  I told hysterical stories on some of their parents, reminded them that many of them owed their sheer existence to my “matchmaking” anointing, and paused with some of them to take a group picture before they scattered at about 3 AM.

So allow me to share the specifics of our future.  We both officially “crossed the finish line” as Senior Pastors to our treasured congregation, The Tabernacle, in Atlanta.  We have served them for nine fulfilling and memory-filled years.  Now, due to health reasons, my hero and husband needs to move into a ministry role which will carry with it less pressure and an easier responsibility load than that of the senior pastorate.

Our Deacon Board at the Tabernacle and local church family have been WONDERFUL IN EVERY WAY TO US.  They were sincerely saddened by our decision.  With joy we tell you that there is no painful “story behind the story.”  It really has been a “DREAM RUN” these past 9 years.  But we are determined NOT to be people who “clutch” to power and to a paycheck…at the demise of the local church. In an honest moment, we admit that the personal financial realities of this decision are a little concerning to us.  But we believe that the Lord will honor the integrity of our hearts and the purity of our motives.  Our message on Sunday morning when we shared our resignation with the church family three months ago was called, “The Grace Of Yielding.”

So what are Sam and Jeanne Mayo doing now? WE ARE NOWHERE EVEN CLOSE to wanting to “retire.”  Even that term sounds pretty depressing to us!  But we are also not in a position to be able to sell our home and begin a different ministry role somewhere away from Atlanta.  Thus, we have searched for a church which is LARGE ENOUGH that Sam will not be needed to preach on Sunday’s…thus, never being any sort of influence to our present congregation to “follow us” to another church.  We view such as disloyalty and a lack of integrity. We remain IMPASSIONED about not wanting to do anything to fracture the treasured congregation we have served for the past 9 years.  (That’s why I didn’t even post this blog until we had officially “crossed the finish line” at the Tab.)

Thus, the church we have chosen to give our hearts to next is a progressive and exploding church named Victory World Church in Norcross, Georgia under the leadership of Pastors Dennis and Colleen Rouse. The church runs approximately 10,000 people on a weekend with all of their services and satellites.  Sam will fill the role as one of the church’s “pastoral care pastors,” which is right in his “sweet spot.”  I am humbled to again serve as “Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries.”  It will be my honor to oversee the college and career outreach, high school outreach, and middle school ministry as well.  For the immediate future after September 1, I will also serve as the Senior High Pastor and be the weekly “boots on the ground.”  Are you laughing at what the Lord must be thinking?  I’ve been throwing my heart into full-time youth ministry for nearly 43 years now.  And here I am STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN at the “grass roots level”!  Surely the angels are thinking about making this a new reality TV show!

The CADRE and YOUTH LEADER’S COACH will continue to flourish…and to be the epicenter of my ministry journey as never before.  I’m never more fulfilled than when our living room is stuffed with about 40 Cadre youth pastors from all over the nation and I’m getting to pour the guts of my life into them. My 6^th National Youth Leaders’ Conference this past March, “CANVAS,” was off the charts, thanks to our faithful Lord and so many of you.  The travel and writing ministry also continue to bring much fruit. For real…I am living in the middle of my MOST FULFILLING MINISTRY SEASON.

MASTER’S COMMISSION ATLANTA also continues to also be at the forefront of my heart. We are merging our own 90 MC students together with Victory’s awesome present Master’s Commission of approximately 25 individuals.  Pastor Jordan Marcon and I will continue to “lead the charge” in the MC Atlanta world. The present exceptional Victory MC Directors, Matt and Angel Rigsby, will join forces with us to form our MC Atlanta Executive Team.  Adam and Lucy Hulme will continue to lead the discipleship focus for our incoming first year students. The program will be off the charts!  (Check out MASTER’S COMMISSION ATLANTA for more information regarding this life-changing post-high school discipleship and leadership venue.)  Our Master’s Commission Atlanta students will enjoy an AMAZING EXPERIENCE at Victory due to the large and talented pastoral staff that they will now have pouring into them from a local church of nearly 10,000 people.

Obviously, the transition is “bitter-sweet” because we so deeply love The Tabernacle and the OXYGEN youth gang.  But in all honesty, we have “left it all on the field” these past 9 years at the Tab, so we close this chapter with a sense of the Lord’s pleasure on us as He surveys our ministry years here.  We have tried to model the value of true pastoring in an era commonly filled with “ministry CEO’s.”  And it has also been our honor to continue living out our Mayo Family mantra from Jim Elliott:  “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep…to gain what he cannot lose.”

The last portion of my exciting news is that our oldest son, Josh, along with my beautiful daughter-in-love, Monica, have also accepted Victory’s invitation to come on staff as well. Josh will serve on the Victory team for a short time in order to gain the heart and DNA of this great church.  Then he will plant a church in Atlanta with the huge help of Victory.  This obviously blows my mind because I will have the PRIVILEGE of living near and working with part of my family…AND our awesome two grandsons, Elijah and Judah!  To say that my “Nana-heart” is jumping up and down would be a RADICAL UNDERSTATEMENT. Josh and Monica will also add their BREATHTAKING leadership/discipleship skills to the upper level of Master’s Commission Atlanta.  It will be a “dream team” of rare proportions.

So again thank you for even taking the time to read this blog post.  As you might expect, your prayers are coveted.  In truth, we feel that we are entering one of the MOST FULFILLING AND FRUITFUL SEASONS OF OUR MINISTRY LIVES. Youth Leader’s Coach, The Cadre, my traveling and writing, and Master’s Commission Atlanta continue to be at the very forefront of our priorities.  And Sam and I will once again throw our energies, passion, and lives into the local church. We are both PUMPED and determined to “Finish the race with the wind in our face!”

Deep Love And Gratitude For Your Spot In My Heart,

Jeanne

1) Focus on building a destiny—not a dynasty.

• A destiny deals with people, but a dynasty deals with programs.
• Destiny tends to focus on significance, but a dynasty focuses on success.
• A person of destiny prioritizes servanthood, but someone focused on a dynasty prioritizes servitude.

All along the youth ministry journey, there will be the temptation to focus on the more visible, the more spectacular, and the more sensational.  But from my vantage point of over 40 exciting years in full-time youth ministry, I can assure you that those things won’t build a ministry that will last.  It will be the non-glamorous moments of personal discipling, laborious planning, and behind-the-scenes praying that will come together to create a ministry that will really last.  Don’t get too impressed with the spectacular.  Jesus isn’t.

2) Choose or lose.

In other words, be a person who doesn’t just stumble into his priorities, but a person who very purposefully chooses his priorities.  Thoreau once said, “It is not enough to be busy.  So are the ants.  The question is ‘What are you busy doing?’”

The busier you are as a youth leader, the more strategic you have to become about living a “choose or lose” lifestyle.  We’re all familiar with the Pareto Principle that tells us “20% of our time efforts will usually produce 80% of our results.”  So if you want to create a lasting ministry impact in students’ lives, you will continually be asking, “Where can I put my energies that produce the most results?”

3) Preach louder with your life than you do your pulpit.

I’m pretty skeptical about how much real truth is transferred apart from a living, up-close model.  So if you want to build a youth ministry that will last, prioritize living your own messages with more fervor than you ever publicly communicate them.  Students will catch your attitudes, your priorities, and your responses.  And over time, that haunting Scripture from Proverbs will become a reality:  “When a student is fully trained, he will be like his teacher.”

I’ve been privileged to be the youth pastor for 13, 15 and 9 years respectively at different locations.  On my farewell nights, no one mentioned my sermons or brilliant program ideas.  But countless students talked about quietly watching me, noticing my attitudes, and internally being shaped by the Christ I tried to model.

There were a few more ideas I shared with him…we’ll save those for the next blog.