Organisation – Life and Faith

On Planning Your Youth Ministry

I have to admit that I often enjoy the planning process of youth ministry. There is something about the start of the year, when the calendar is fresh and empty, that inspires creativity and excitement about the ministry year ahead.

Over time I’d like to think I’ve grown in my understanding of how to plan a youth ministry year. This growth has helped in solidifying my process and systems in preparing an event, a curriculum, or even gaining a grasp on the coming 12-months. It’s not always easy taking the ideas and inspiration for youth ministry and making them fit into an already busy year. However, I’ve found it helpful to put my planning in perspective as I look ahead to the year.

(1) Make A Plan To Plan

There needs to be some time set out in your calendar to actually plan.

This will require planning itself.

But as the saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. With this in mind I’d encourage you to look at your calendar over the next couple of weeks and block out a whole afternoon to plan the coming months (or more). First and foremost, there needs to be time set apart for planning our youth ministries.

Go.

Do it now.

(2) Put Planning In Perspective

When I haven’t planned well I can get into an anxious and stressful state.

But when I have planned an event or a meeting to the best of my ability I am considerably less anxious. Even when my planning fails, knowing that I’ve done all I could have in the lead-up allows me to reconcile the failure. It puts me in a better position to evaluate what is happening while things are going wrong and also gives me the metrics to learn what I could’ve done better.

It’s also helpful to be reminded of the words in the book of Proverbs, that while

“…the hearts of humans plan their course, the Lord establishes their steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

With this kind of thinking my planning is put into perspective.

I can do as much as I can, as well as I can, but at the end of the day I need to recognise God’s hand in these plans too.

Keeping this in mind helps me from relying on my own skills, abilities, and self and turns my heart to praise as I know I’m part of God’s wider, global, mission in youth ministry.

(3) Move Those Plans To Action

We could spend a lot of time planning and little time actually implementing those plans.

Remember to make sure you have the time and energy to put these plans into practice. Each year that goes by I always find an adjustment is needed in my schedule to move the youth ministry forward.

At the end of the day I am hoping to implement the plans I make, having a heart for the Lord to use them in whatever capacity he chooses.

May it be so for me, just as it may be for you as you serve God and his people.

7 Evernote Tips For Youth Pastors

FYI: This is a very old article, written in 2011. I no longer use Evernote, but you be you.

Evernote is one of the most used apps on my phone and computer.

Here’s seven tips on why Youth Pastors should be using it.

7-evernote-tips-for-youth-pastors

1. Evernote Helps A Youth Pastor Organise Events

Anything from camps to small group socials to the stock standard youth night. Evernote helps you keep organised and plan an event coming up.

Writing lists, storing information about what needs to purchased, and delegating which leader is responsible for what. All these things can be stored in various notes.

The helpful tagging option allows you to bring up all the notes about “Awesome Camp”, which can then include details about registration, budget, what to buy, and the contact details for the campsite itself. There are a number of ways to put together a particular youth event but having them all in one central place is helpful.

Once the event is done and it’s time to debrief this is where notes can be kept and help you improve the next time it comes around.

2. Evernote Helps A Youth Pastor In Designing The Youth Ministry Programme

Young people and youth leaders are full of ideas about youth events. Nearly every week there will be one person that comes up to me and says, “We should do […insert event here…] next term.”

Evernote enables you to store information about future youth ministry activities. This can include details of what it is, contact information, and the links to the websites. When coming to organise the next term’s programme this will make the process a lot easier. Pull your phone out, have a look at what’s there, think about whether it achieves what you’re after and put in on the planner. Easy.

A local roller-skating rink posts me information every now and then with their information for youth groups. All I do is take a picture of it, store it in Evernote, and boom. It’s sorted and searchable for when I need it.

3. Evernote Helps A Youth Pastor Remember A Good Game

Games + Youth Ministry = Fun times.

How many times do you find yourself, perhaps at the end of a night, where there is 15 minutes to spare and you’ve run out of games?

No Youth Pastor should be without a few games up their sleeve. They’re the bread and butter of many traditional youth groups and youth ministries. Evernote allows you to store heaps and heap and heaps of games on your phone and computer, easily accessed in seconds.

Storing games you’ve come up with yourself, finding a few gems on the net, and even taking a few notes from games some of your leaders come up, can all be stored in Evernote. Tagging them into what kind of games, i.e. Adventure, Messy, Group, Ice-Breaker and the like becomes extremely helpful too.

4. Evernote Helps The Youth Pastor Remember Conversations With Young People, Parents And Leaders

Last year I held a Parent Afternoon Tea and jotted down some of the feedback given. There were a few new ideas floating around and also some encouraging things being said about the youth ministry. At the end of our time together I took a photo of the discussion notes, uploaded them to Evernote, and they became searchable using their technology. This has helped me remember what we talked about and we we could implement in the future.

After a conversation with a Youth Leader I type out some brief bullet point notes in Evernote so that I remember what was said and the action points decided upon. This helps me to know where my Youth Leaders are at with a variety of matters and also helps me in following up the next time we catch up.

This is so much more useful than some form of text file stored on the computer. Here I have them all in note form and in my hand.

5. Evernote Helps The Youth Pastor Store Contact Details Of Other Youth Pastors, Young People, Leaders, And Churches

The amount of ‘networking’ events for those in Christian ministry is quite extraordinary. Every week there are multiple emails promoting different organisations, churches, and leadership events. It gets confusing and tiring.

Anyway, Evernote helps me to store the contact details of those I actually want to stay in touch with. Sometimes it might be the dreaded business card (Does anyone actually use these anymore?) , take a pic, snap, upload, sorted. Sometimes it is simply me entering the information of the person right in front of them, or even handing the phone over and asking them to enter it themselves.

Having knowledge and contact details of those in my area, those I wish to continue a working relationship with, and organisations who could be helpful for our youth ministry is handy to have. you never know when you might be of support to someone or they to you. Having their details on hand and in an easy to find place is awesome.

This could easily apply to people in the youth ministry, church, and others.

6. Evernote Helps The Youth Pastor With All That Ridiculous Administration

Every job has administration, the Youth Pastor can’t avoid it either. However, Evernote provides a great solution in storing what’s important and also the not so important.

I get sent a fair few things via snail mail and these things can easily be scanned and uploaded to Evernote directly. It was only the other week where I read an article in one of the Christian papers and then took a picture of it for Evernote and future use.

But there is other stuff too. Receipts and invoices, important emails you want to keep in one place, and even those rare thank you notes you receive from people. These can all g into Evernote, be made searchable, and like that you’ve cut down on paper, reduced the need for a filing cabinet and stored them forever.

7. Evernote Helps The Youth Pastor Write Talks For Youth Ministry

Every youth ministry should have some form of talk that is Bible-based and aimed at encouraging, equipping, or evangelising youth people. I regularly do them, as do my Youth Leaders.

With Evernote I can write up that talk in plain text then take my phone with me to the front of the group and go bang. Granted, I do prefer paper for that purpose but if I was to ever lose or have my talk stolen by one of our members then I can easily retrieve it on me device.

Evernote provides heaps of editing options to helps highlight important things to say and remember for delivery. Using the search and tagging function also provides good reference for the future. For example, when speaking on the Rich Young Ruler from Luke 18:1-18 I can have my notes in Evernote and tag them, “Youth Talk”, “Jesus”, “Wealth”, “Gospel”, “Cost”, “Works” etc.

In sum, Evernote is a great app for Youth Pastors to use and enables them to be better organised, which I think produces a better Youth Pastor. It helps in ‘doing’ ministry, and we all know we need help sometimes. There are plenty of other things I’m sure we could come up with. But hey, seven is a godly number. Let’s leave it there.

Are you a youth pastor that uses Evernote? How does it help you?

10 Evernote Tips for Pastors

FYI: This is a very old article, written in 2011. I no longer use Evernote, but you be you.

I’ve been converted to Evernote. Evernote is a note taking application that enables you to capture and organise everything. It’s available on pretty much all devices that you can think of, from phone to computer and syncs all notes up into the cloud – sounds heavenly doesn’t it!

Anyway, i began to use Evernote around 12 months ago. Within a month i had moved to a premium account which gives me much more space to upload per month, image recognition, and offline notebooks for my phone to name a few.

I have found Evernote has revolutionised the way i store and organise information that comes my way, everything from paper to verbal communication to ideas that pop in to my head. As a Youth & Young Adult Pastor i have found Evernote extremely valuable and so below i have noted 10 ways in which any Pastor would be able to use the application.

1. Create Prayer Lists

With Evernote it is simple to organise items that need prayer. Lists can be made, even with little tick boxes if you so desire, that can continue to be used for prayer. These can be lists of people within my congregation, topics or events that need prayer, and praise points that have occurred over the last couple of weeks/months.

2. Store Contact Details for People or Organisations

I find that almost every person who works within a mission, a church, or some sort of para-church organisation has a business card. Also, websites, music artists and bands as well as community contacts all have details that i need to remember. Evernote gives me a great space to keep all these details. I can simply take a photo with my phone and instantly their details are uploaded which i can access in a number of forms. It certainly saves me mucking around with business card holders and random little bits of paper on my desk

If you were really keen you could also PDF your church’s contact list/directory and store it on Evernote. It then becomes completely searchable and easily accessed wherever you are.

3. Keep Note of Personal and Pastoral Conversations

Being a Pastor requires meeting with many people during the week and talking about a variety of things. Sometimes these may be about particular pastoral issues that are important to keep in touch with, other times it may be about deciding on what’s happening in the coming months regarding some program. Either way, Evernote enables me to take note of these conversations and keep them organised so that i can look back and see what we talked about in preparation for the next catch-up.

Another way of entering this sort of information can be through the voice functionality. Through my phone i can make a verbal note that will be uploaded to Evernote which i can listen to later on. This is also relevant for a number of these tips.

4. Give Space for Creative Ministry Ideas

Through conversations with those who come to the church or perhaps while reading articles and blog posts i quite often find ministry ideas floating around my head. Rather than have heaps of little notes on paper or in different text files i simply enter them into Evernote and tag them with relevant triggers. Even though some of these ministry ideas may not be able to begin now they can be kept for future reference.

5. Write Up Sermon Notes

While the feeling of writing notes in a journal is great Evernote helps in storing all my sermon notes together. When working on a message from a particular passage i can again tag them with relevant references. While reading a commentary i can transcribe notes from it for future reference. I can keep writing and thinking without having to delete the notes later or store them in mucky files on my hard drive. They are all kept together in one note and notebook and are completely searchable using Evernote’s amazing search function. My work on main points, structures and notes from parallel passages or other resources come together in one place. I can even write the whole sermon in a note and then copy and paste it to a document later on for printing.

6. A Place for Sermon Illustrations, Quotes, Links, Blog Posts, etc.

How often do you think of a sermon illustration or see a quote that you like and have nowhere to store it? Evernote is perfect for storing these sorts of little notes, quotes and illustrations that can be used for this week’s sermon or one in the future. They can all be kept in a notebook or be tagged with the appropriate reference. When i find a great quote, read a great article or blog post or find a picture that could be useful i clip it into Evernote and then tag is with the author’s name, the topic or theme and classify it as a ‘quote’ or and ‘illustration’.

Due to my use of Google Reader i find that emailing in blog posts to Evernote an especially good feature. I also find that scanning or taking pictures of illustrations from magazines or newspapers very useful.

7. Organise Events, Programs and Services

So, Christmas is coming up and there are always heaps of ideas about what carols to have, who’s doing the readings, how the children can be involved, and what items are available for the service. If you have a particular program, event or service that is coming up Evernote helps you organise all the information into one place. This could range from what needs to be done in order for the youth group event to go ahead to what topics should be up for discussion at the next deacons meeting.

With this comes the topic of weddings and funerals. Evernote enables notes, thoughts and ideas to be put down in one place that helps in structuring the weekly gathering, a wedding ceremony or a thanksgiving service.

8. Reading Heaps Means Lots of Notes

A Pastor is generally a reader. From commentaries to theologies to dictionaries to Christian living books, Pastors are usually across a variety of books. I find that i can copy down quotes and ideas that are significant in a book and then keep that easily accessible through Evernote. I find that taking a picture or scanning a couple of pages can then be easily searched through Evernote’s OCR capabilities.

9. Clip Links and Other Electronic Information

Evernote allows easy clipping of websites. While having time to search for youth group games or find a few youth ministry websites i come across a lot of information i’d like to keep. By clipping the site and the information into Evernote i have it forever. I can always go back to the site, as it keeps the link, and also search for particular games or information in Evernote. This means Evernote becomes a solid bookmarking application as well as storage for notes.

10. Take Photos of Books, DVDs and Other Resources

I can’t afford all the resources that are available at my local Christian bookstore. Books, DVDs, CDs, music resources and more are quite expensive. However, i do come across some very good resources that i might be able to use in the future. Many times i have taken a picture of the cover of a bible study guide or a DVD series that we might go through and its immediately uploaded to Evernote.

That’s my conversion to Evernote, I’m not sure how you use it, but it’d be great to hear how it helps your ministry too. The more i think about it the more ideas on how Evernote can be integrated into ministry come to me.

If you’d like to read more about Evernote i have also written Evernote Tips for Youth Pastors