Upon my arrival at Trinity UMC-Waycross in February of 2006, I started making changes. I changed the format and content of the Sunday evening UMYF meetings. There would be more interactive programming, more singing, more audio-visual content and more games. Lots more games. Because for the previous couple of years there had really only been one game. It involved dodge balls, people getting smashed in the face, and the word "kill." It was not difficult to understand why many of the high school girls had lost interest in youth group. It had become completely testosterone driven. This had to change.
I had discovered at my interview with youth and parents back in January that there was a small group of parents that had exercised a tremendous amount of control over both the youth ministry and the youth pastor. When I had shared stories of some of the mission trips and other events I had led in the past, the "ring leaders" of that parental group had explained to me in no uncertain terms that "they didn't do that at TUMC." The best I could tell, they seldom traveled outside of Georgia, and it was explained to me that I would never be able to get parents to chaperon trips like I was talking about. I think my response that "maybe parents shouldn't be the chaperons" almost cost me the job- but it was worth it. The attitude had to change. By the time I actually arrived in late February, I already had two trips in mind. We would take a summer mission trip to Chicago with the Center for Student Missions, and then in September we would take a group to Night of Joy at Walt Disney World. I announced these ideas rather quickly, and they were met with almost unanimous approval and excitement. Almost. I was told by the "parental powers" that Chicago was too scary, and that no one would go. I was told again no parents would chaperon. Immediately, two TUMC staff members stepped up to help lead the trip, and a core group of 10 students were fired up and ready to go. The Night of Joy trip would go on to be one of the biggest groups TUMC had taken on a trip in years. Like it or not, they had hired me to be a leader- and I was going to lead!
Thus began one exciting year of student ministry in Waycross. We'll come back to some more of those stories later on, but for the next 10 days or so it's time to get ready for the 2 year anniversary of this blog (August 26) with some special posts. I hope you will join us!
Because of Jesus,
When you enter a new ministry situation and see things that need to happen or that need to be changed, one of the more difficult decisions you must make is, "How quickly do I move?" It didn't take me long to come to a decision on that question at Wesley Memorial UMC in 2001. A number of their student leaders had left with an associate pastor just before my arrival. Another very important family had moved away. We were soon to learn that we were losing our pastor to another church, which also meant losing our youth choir director (his wife) and two more key student leaders. The time for action was NOW.
I began to roll out some of my plans to our Youth Ministry Team in a November meeting at my home. Aside from (for the time being) minor changes to the Sunday evening youth group meeting, I had a couple of things I wanted to to do immediately. I wanted to start a bible study group on Wednesday nights. I wanted to get a monthly SHO-Time (Senior High Only) fellowship night started. I was going to throw a major Christmas party at my home. I wanted to plan a Winter Week of Wonder (WOW) for the week after Christmas. And I wanted to plan a Ski Camp for January of 2002. My new team of Youth Counselors were supportive of these ideas, as they understood the need to build relationships and excitement levels given all that was going on. I remember one particular volunteer asking several dozen questions about the value of a Ski Camp and how I would go about planning it. After a long period of Q & A, Robyn Smith spoke up and said something along the lines of "Look; we went to all of the trouble and expense of hiring a full-time youth pastor (the church's first) with a lot of experience. He's done this before. Let's let him do his job." And that was the end of that discussion.
