“I ended up in youth ministry by accident really. I’d done the standard formal education and then went to university to study psychology. It was an intensive experience, but God wanted to tell me I wasn’t doing well. After four years I left, but without a degree. I honestly didn’t have a clue what to do. A friend of mine was a volunteer in a youth center and he invited me to join him. I loved it. After that I found out that my home church was looking for a youth worker and I did that as a gap year. That was in 2004 I think. I’ve been employed by that same church, my home church ever since.

I went back to University to study youth and community work, a three year degree. When I had finished that, my church felt it was time for me to move on. So in 2009 I really started looking for jobs. But I ended up applying for the position of youth worker in my own church again and I got the job. I felt I had come full circle.

The original intent was to offer youth work for 11-18 year olds. But in the last years we’ve seen the upper age limit move and older youth are coming as well. We’re trying to reach 22 and 23 year olds who come back after having gone to university. In short, I have an ever broadening job description.

Youth worker Dan Crouch (left) with one of his young people.

The church I’m in is a Church of England in the town center of Keynsham. I joined this church when I was 12 or so, through the choir of all places. The membership of the choir hooked me. There was no structural youth work at that time. When I went to university, I commuted to Bristol and I lived at home. That makes this church very much my home church.”

Working in your home church

“Working in your home church has its distinct advantages, but also some disadvantages. I know the town very well for instance, people know who I am and I’m connected everywhere. I was at a supermarket recently and one half of an elderly couple said to the other ‘that’s Dan Crouch over there’. I’m high profile that way and that works well. When we got married a year and a half ago, many people from our church were present. I’m not a ‘professional’ youth worker in that sense, we’re really a church family.

On the other hand it’s very hard to break certain assumptions people have about you. Most people make mistakes when they’re young and growing up, but I’m working in the same place where I made this mistakes. Also, my wife grew up here, my father and her parents worship in the same church I work in. There are all kinds of very personal connections. That makes it hard when you face issues, like the decision to reduce my hours last September.”

An unexpected gift

“I worked 37 hours on paper, but in reality it was more like 50. It’s probably not healthy, but that’s the reality of being in youth ministry. A minister is never working 37 hours a week, it’s not a 9-5 job. The issues young people have don’t wait until a more convenient time. In September the church had to reduce my hours to 29, but I still work about 40. That decision was awful for me, I wrestled with the practical consequences for the youth ministry, but it also made me question my calling. I felt I was called to this place, but how was it possible they then had to reduce my hours? It was a real challenge.

I wanted to do something positive with these hours, so I decided to study for my Master’s degree in ‘leadership and mission in youth work’. My church is supporting me 100% and that’s really good. I’ve always wanted to do an MA, so this is an unexpected gift. Sometimes we have to journey through the dark times to get to the other side.”

Youth ministry as a calling

“My wife Sarah is also very involved in the youth work, especially as a teacher. One of her gifts is that she’s very logical in her approach to situations, she’s a good complement to me in that sense. You can’t do youth ministry without the support of your partner. But I realize we have to be careful here. There will be times and seasons in life, when we start a family for instance, when her involvement will change. Right now we can minister together, but it won’t stay that way. We want to be clear about that, it’s not two youth workers for the price of one.

A question that really frustrates me is ‘when are you going to be ordained, be a vicar’. It’s the expected ‘career’. People feel you can’t be called to youth ministry all your life. My answer is always the same: ‘when God calls me’. I’m doing everything people expect a minister to do, only I do it for young people. That is just as valid and just as important.”

Biggest challenge

“My biggest challenge for the future is to look outwards, to reach out beyond the internal structures. We are blessed with a significant youth group of 30-40 young people. But most of them are from within our church family. We want to engage with the young people in our community, it’s one of the reasons why we’re buying a building specifically for youth work.

It has made me wonder if we are ready, if I am ready, for the challenges this engagement is going to bring. Young people from church families are, generally speaking, reasonably well behaved. They know the church culture, they know what’s expected and they have a certain respect for our traditions. But young people from outside the church don’t have that. They’ll bring unrest and change. As we reach out, is the church ready for this?”

Want to get to know Dan better? You can find him on Twitter via @dancrouch where he’s part of the wonderful #ywchat community and he often tweets really thought provoking quotes. Would you like to share your story about life as a youth worker? Send me an email at rachel(at)youthleadersacademy(dot)com or contact me via Twitter (@youthleadersac)

Here’s a guest post by Matt Murphy about breaking confidence in youth ministry, it’s actually a fragment from his recent book so check out the details at the end of the post!

Loose lips sink (relation)ships

Parents and youth wonder without asking ‘Are you trustworthy?’  Teens look to see how you handle who they are and if they’re safe around you. One key that I use to help me know that I’m breaking confidence is that if my heart is telling me “This is too good not to tell someone else (drool)…” then it is confidential.  Keep in mind, breaking confidence unnecessarily will sink your relationship with that person and anyone else who hears of it.  Unless you have permission directly from an individual to share a story, just don’t.  While loose lips sink relationships, sharing stories that are ‘too good not to tell’ are the torpedoes of effective caring.

Loose lips sink relationships. Do you know when to squeal on your youth and when not to?

Not seduced by secrets

When asked, “Can you keep a secret?” it means you are about to get hit with some pretty deep material.  Never promise to keep a secret.  In most cases you have an obligation to get help for that person if they are going to 1) harm themselves, 2) harm someone else or 3) cause damage to property.  Assure them you will walk them through whatever they’re going through no matter how ugly.   Often this involves getting in touch with your Senior Pastor and determining who needs to know this information (parents, police, paramedics, etc.).  Never do this part alone.

When sharing IS caring

Sharing with staff/supervisors

Generally, going up the ladder to a direct supervisor is not breaking confidentiality when they need to do their job and for you to do yours. If the situation may turn legal, keeping the information confined to a need to know basis is crucial for a fair investigation and away from creating a witch-hunt and media circus.

Sharing with your spouse

Sometimes you’re both part of a ministry team and sharing is collegial.  However, there are times when I’d advise against sharing with your spouse.  A big one is when there’s no benefit to your spouse’s soul to know information.  Another is when the potential for the information you’re keeping confidential may cause tremendous damage to your ministry or youth if it gets out in a poorly handled manner.  I would share confidential information with my spouse when they need to be protected from and alerted to potential danger.

Sharing with parents

Confidential conversations with minors who have parents who have a vested interest in their children’s well-being is tricky.  Adolescents are entering an age where they begin to have some expectation of privacy and legally may have claim to it.  When you need to break confidentiality, parents often need to be in the loop.  However, there are times when the information is not “harmful” to the extent where confidentiality would need to be breached (see above).  I find in these situations it is best to encourage the teen and their parent to talk with each other.   If a parent comes demanding information, encourage them to talk directly with their youth.  Let them know it will help build a stronger relationship.  My disclosing the conversation could harm their relationship with their teen (by being a nosy, busy-body, helicopter parent) and the youth and their friends will no longer trust me.  Affirm your support for the parent and evaluate if you could help by offering the student to mediate this conversation.   If you ever find yourself in one of those meetings, try to brief both sides separately on what is about to happen, then work to have them take turns talking. Stay as neutral as possible.

This post is a fragment from Matt Murphy and Brad Widstrom’s new book, 99 Thoughts on Caring for Your Youth Group: From Coffee Shop Counseling to Crisis Care. Matt Murphy is a 14-year veteran of youth ministry across multiple contexts. He is married to his wonderful wife Darcy. He combines his background in clinical social work, education at Denver Seminary with his passion for helping hurting teenagers and youth workers. You can find more about him on his blog at EngagingTheShadowsofYouthMinistry.com or find him on Twitter @MattMurphymswym

Besides being able to lead discussion, hospitality is the most important gift for a small group leader. But with teens, hospitality may look a little different than it does with grown-ups. Here’s what you can do to make teens feel welcome in your home:

1. Make it comfortable

While adults may appreciate interior decorating skills, teens for the most part don’t. They care most about being comfortable. A comfy old couch, a bean bag, big cushions on the floor, they may not make your house look tasteful, but it’ll earn you gratitude from your teen small group.

2. Don’t mind the mess

Where teenagers are, it always gets messy at some points. There will be crushed potato chips on the floor, soda stains on your coffee table and leftovers of marshmallows on your couch. Being hospitable means not minding the mess. While it’s perfectly okay to set rules for your small group to protect your belongings from too much damage, accepting a little tear and wear goes a long way.

Sharing a meal together is a great way to show hospitality and make your youth small group feel welcome

3. Share a meal

We’ve always shared a meal with our small group before having the ‘real’ small group session and it’s made a big difference. Teens love food, they love the sense of togetherness and community that eating together brings and they love the chance to just chill. It doesn’t really matter what you cook, we tried a lot of different things (most of them healthy, we’re not fans of always doing fast food) and most of them worked out just fine. Just make sure you cook enough, some of them eat like a horse!

4. Don’t clean up beforehand

Seriously, it’s no use at all. I can be a bit of a neat freak sometimes, but I’ve learned that is really is senseless  to try and clean before small group. They don’t notice and you can start again the minute they leave. So don’t fuss about the dust, the crumbs on the floor or the dirty windows. Just open your home and enjoy the invasion.

5. Create rituals

Whenever possible, think of something special that you can do to make your small group feel extra welcome. What works really well is a ritual that they will come to recognize and appreciate, such as:

• Always serving certain snacks (we did that with M&M’s, which was sort of our whole youth group’s special thing)
• Giving them their own mug (we had them make their own mugs from plain white mugs that they decorated with special paint)
• A standard sitting order (for some reason, we often had the girls on one side of the table and the guys on the other)
• Certain weird rules (we had the rule that those sitting with their back to the kitchen area, had to serve the others – it really didn’t make sense, but it was a lot of fun to see this repeated every week)

6. Let them stay until they have to leave

We often had somewhat older teens (16+) who didn’t really have a time they had to be home. We had no set time they had to leave either, but we made a very clear deal with them: they were welcome to stay until we kicked them out. They never had to worry if they were overstaying their welcome, we were always very clear when it was time to leave. It meant they felt really welcome.

What do you do to make your youth small group feel welcome?

As youth workers, we’re often doers. We want to change lives, impact young people, help them make the right choices. Our hands are itching to act, to do. But what if not doing anything is better? What if ‘just’ listening is what we need to do?

Rebecca Hamer is youth worker in Harrow, a borough of London. This is her story.

“Harrow is the fourth most ethnically diverse borough in London. There’s a huge cultural diversity. For me, it’s an exciting place to live and to work. The people are very warm, hospitable. I love it. It’s also a very mixed area where deprivation and affluence co-exist, where there are some gang issues and drug and alcohol problems. Basically it’s just normal young people wrestling with life, with this world.”

“I’m involved in the SPACE-project, a listening service for young women. Girls can just come in and talk. We use the Acorn Christian model for reflective listening which is about listening without waiting to speak and without interpreting. We take the time to listen, to just be with someone in what they’re saying. Something we listen particularly for are ‘feeling words’ that describe how they are feeling. We reflect these back and try to summarize what they are saying in their own feeling words.”

The SPACE project is a listening service where young women can talk and be heard. It's a great example of the power of listening (photo and copyright: Rebecca Hamer)

“We try to avoid giving advice. At the end of a conversation we just ask three specific questions which help the person move on in their thinking. Most of the time the process of talking has been enough for the young women to hear themselves and find their own way through their issue or problem. We help them order the jigsaw puzzle so to speak.”

“The fact that they figure it out themselves is a source of pride for these girls. We empower them by just listening to them, but ultimately they do it themselves with their own resources. They’re proud of that. It boosts their self-esteem, which is also the intended outcome of the listening service.”

“The listening model is very loving. It doesn’t impose anything, there’s no action. It’s real empowerment. Everything around us is so noisy all the time that being with your own feelings can really be a shock. It’s also a relief for them to be able to say out loud what is bothering them. It’s therapeutic. But our aim is to deal with the present, not the past. If we sense someone needs to talk about the past, we refer to a counselor.”

“At first it was hard for me to not say anything, because I really wanted to help and I felt I wasn’t helping at all. But I’ve found that offering comfort or a solution often interrupts the process, rather than helping it. It deflects from the real answers. I’ve realized listening is not passive, you’re supporting the other person in being active. The only time we do offer advice is when the conclusions they draw aren’t helpful.”

“Low self-esteem really is a root problem for young women that can cause many other problems, like teen pregnancy, smoking, or excessive drinking. There are so many benefits of having a self-image that’s grounded in reality: women could dress differently, choose a desired career, wait for the right boyfriend, etc. If they are able to see themselves in realistic terms it will help them create a vision for the future, imagine a new landscape for themselves. If we influence them at this stage from the truth of who they are, we can positively influence this generation’s process of dreaming about the future. That’s why we’ve started a pilot group for a special self-esteem project complementary to the listening service.”

“In the listening service, there’s no initial talk about God or faith, even though it’s run by a local Christian charity. The girls that come in are in a very vulnerable position and we don’t want to abuse that. But Jesus is always present in each conversation, and all the volunteers are from local churches.  (CUT) After about three or four sessions we offer to pray for them, again using their own words. The primary aim is not conversion, but God is there nonetheless. Those that are interested in discovering faith and exploring their spiritual identity, we signpost to various Christian outreach events and groups.”

“I draw some inspiration from two stories from the Bible. When Elijah was facing the Baal priests on Mount Carmel, he had to rebuild the altar first before God could come down with His fire. I feel that young people often need to rebuild their lives first as well. I also think of Jesus when He healed the ten lepers. He didn’t talk about God or anything with them, He just healed them. One of them came back and asked him who he was. If the young women we love and heal and serve want to come back, than that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s not something we have somehow forced. “

(if you’re interested in the listening service and want to know more about it, you can contact Rebecca via rebecca(dot)spaceproject(at)gmail(dot)com)

Communication is over 90% non-verbal, which suggests that talking is just a small part of what we’re supposed to be doing, yet many people continue to talk until everyone’s exhausted. It’s as if they wake up each day ready to talk at everyone instead of learning about others. They spend their time telling everyone about themselves and their perspective rather than learning about others.

Think about your own communication style: Do you talk or listen more? Effective communicators understand that interacting with people is as much about understanding someone else’s point of view as it is putting their own ideas into the mix. The key is to understand when you’re talking too much and might benefit from adding some listening.

Here are some practical tips to help you practice effective workplace communication:

1. Listen more than you talk.
2. Ask open-ended questions when you don’t understand something the other person is saying, not to interject your thoughts.
3. Focus on the other person rather than thinking of the next thing you want to say.
4. Stay away from trying to rebut or contradict the other person.
5. Avoid asking questions that lead to a yes or no answer or steer the conversation in a pre-determined direction.
6. Allow people the time and space to say what they want to say.
7. Listen actively by paying close attention to the other person and trying to understand what he or she is saying without adding your point of view.
8. Did I mention listening?

Listening is so frequently ignored in the workplace that leaders can spend their entire careers talking over people. What they may not realize is that they can lead more effectively when they take the time to really listen to others. Listening offers them an opportunity to understand people better and make decisions based on deeper information. They avoid misunderstandings and connect with people on a more meaningful level.

Listening improves your work life because it allows you to breathe. You don’t have to talk all the time and work hard to fill up space. You don’t have to think of the next brilliant thing you want to say. You get to sit back, relax and encourage others to share their ideas. You’ll build trust and encourage people to participate in the conversation. What will you do to listen more in your workplace?

Take care,

Guy

Effective Communication and Workplace Communication Advice

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The ability to look at oneself is important because it allows the person to make positive adjustments and become an even better leader. Here are some practical ideas to help you take a look at yourself:

• Think about your behavior. What works, what doesn’t and what might you do differently?
• How do your employees view you? If you don’t know, then ask them?
• What type of work environment does your leadership create?
• What situations keep coming up in your workplace and how does your leadership style affect them?
• What type of results do you get and at what cost?

Think about questions like these and you’ll begin the process of taking a look at yourself. Leaders who take a look at themselves are able to grow and adapt because they’re open to changing their behaviors. They have the ability to deal with change and improve their skills. They also get to be happier because they can let go of the things that don’t work and focus on approaches that do.

Self-reflection doesn’t mean tearing yourself down or being a failure, it’s a tool you can use to become stronger and more proactive. What will you do to take a look at yourself?

Take care,

Guy

Leadership Training and Team Building

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Thank you to the talented experts who have taken the time to share their team building knowledge. Here are their thoughtful articles.

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We can become so engrossed in living life at a rapid pace that we forget that we can enjoy things better if we pause occasionally to relax, recharge and reflect. The only caveat is that you have to deliberately carve time out of your day to refocus and regroup. Take some time in your day to not do anything. Look at a sunset, sit by a stream, go for a walk with no particular goal. Life becomes more enjoyable when you take time to regain your balance. It also has the effect of making your employees happier and happy employees create more productive workplaces.

Balance helps you be a better leader. It helps you relate to others from a position of calm and understanding. It helps you do away with the constant putting out of fires and working in crisis mode. Balanced leaders tend to live better lives, create happier workplaces and produce more consistent results.

Balance helps you maintain a generally positive course that will help you connect with your employees in ways no amount of directive supervision can. It grounds you and helps you make decisions based on careful forethought. How does you achieve balanced leadership? By working on it starting today. What will you do to become a more balanced leader?

Take care,

Guy
Leadership Training

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