Video Transcript: Context Matters

So let's talk a little bit about context. As I mentioned before, sometimes we don't  pay enough attention to the context in which we are doing ministry, and yet  context matters, and especially since the medium is the message. So why is  context important? Stephen Covey talks about a time when he was catching the  subway and he is, there's a man sitting there, and he's with his children, and his  children are running wild on the subway. And at first he tries to ignore it, and  then he starts thinking, wow, this guy really is being irresponsible. He's just  sitting there and allowing his kids to just bump into people and run all over the  place. And so finally, he gets up and he talks to the guy, why don't you control  your kids? And the guy responds, oh, I'm I'm sorry. I just came from the hospital  and where their mother just passed, and I I'm sorry, just and at once, Stephen  was he said, Oh, wow, I am so sorry. But he didn't understand the context of  what was going on. And many times we don't pay attention to the context in  which we are in which we are leading. But as leaders, we are responsible for  establishing contexts that are conducive to healthy ministry. Again, as Max  Dupree said, the first task of leadership is to define reality. Robinson had  Robinson wonderful teacher of homiletics, of preaching, he would make this  statement, a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew. If you if you aren't clear about  what you are saying and what you are you if you're not clear in setting the right  context, it will be a fog in the pew and Bob Beal says focus always precedes  success. Without focus, there is no success. If you don't have a well defined  context, then it's going to lead to difficulty, and it's because the medium really is  the message. The medium is the means by which something is communicated  or expressed, and so what we say does not excuse or override what we do the  setting that you set for I've been in meetings where youth have gathered and  there's no clear focus for who they're going to be talking to. The meeting is set  up like they want to have a dialog with youth, but their set is set up as if they're  sitting in pews. The the flow of the meeting does not fit. The games have been  so wild that the by the time they want to get kids to listen to a talk or engage in a dialog, they're set up to not do that, they're going to be too wound up. And so  the how you set up your meeting, how you set up the circumstances, how you  set all that up, the medium is the message, and the leaders responsible for  setting that early on, we first started in ministry. I was running my youth clubs out of my home, and I’d just gotten married, and we moved we moved in. My wife  had set up the set up the house, and a volunteer had picked up the kids from  the neighborhood and brought them to my house. One of them, his name was  Pookie. Pookie was a wild one, and he, I mean, I was a little nervous about him  coming to my home, and what kind of what kind of havoc he might bring on my  wife's, you know? Well, you know, she kept the house really nice. And so it was  interesting. I'm sitting there, and I knew Pookie would hit the door. First I see him hit the door. He runs in, and then he stops and he looks around, and then he  calmly goes to his seat, goes to the seat, and sits down. And I just that was so 

striking. But I think what happened was he walked in, and he did not expect  order, everything in its place, and it just shocked him, and it changed his, his his  demeanor and his and his behavior. And that was a clear case to me, of how the medium became a message of there’s order here, sit down, relax, talk about  defining reality. Max DePree calls it the first task of leadership, one of the  challenges that we face is the urban and suburban dilemma of filling the  leadership void. I remember when many of my colleagues would have people  from the suburbs come into the neighborhood to work with their kids or work in  their programs. And I discovered one of the dilemmas was that when they came  in to the ministry, they would come into if the ministry was not well led, ordered.  It's as if the urban, suburban people wanted to work together in partnership, but  it was so easy for the suburbanite to come in and fill a void, and if that void was  leadership, they would fill it. I used to say, I used to be very I was I was pretty I  was pretty critical of my colleagues and of myself. I felt that if we're going to  partner, then we have to provide adequate leadership so that when they come  it's a true partnership. I found that to be the case with young people, I found that  I needed to take enough time with our emerging youth leaders to get them  established, to say they knew that they could lead, so that when others came in  to assist them, say, a summer day camp where our youth leaders designed,  designed the camp and led, led the taught, that taught The classes that if  college interns would come in and work alongside them. They had to work  alongside because it's our youth who were, who were the leaders. But there  were some humorous times when these, uh, these high speed, these college  leaders would come in and they kind of want to take over, and the problem was  they couldn't do it because they were not the leaders our high school leaders  were the leaders. And it showed. It showed and so it, it raised the key point for  us when it comes to defining reality, and this is especially true in the urban  centers of our world, and as we seek help from people outside, if you do not  define who you are, others will do it for you. If you do not define your  organization, your ministry, and its focus and its mission and its direction, okay,  and its leadership. If you don't do that, then there's almost an assumption out  there that you haven't done that, and so people will come in and they'll do the  defining for you. So how do we do that? I find that with youth leaders, one of the  greatest challenges is that of organization. We may have a tremendous passion  for young people, but we're not as good at organizing ourselves or pressing  what we believe our principles into how the organization operates. It was years  ago that I was introduced to Bob Biehl and his master planning materials, and it  just changed my life. I was a seminary graduate before I was introduced to this. I have been taught a tremendous amount about about theology and pastoral care and all the rest, but I did not know about how to lead a Christian organization. A  master plan is a group's written assumptions about its direction, its organization  and its resources, and it basically takes you through a very simple process. I 

called it a doctor process, direction, what is your purpose, your objectives, your  goals, organization. How do you define your organization, cash resources,  where is it coming from? How are you going to generate it? If you have those  three things, you have a master plan, but then it's the other three that keeps that plan alive, tracking that's that's dealing with. How do you how do you know  what's going on in your organization? Are you on are you on track? And then  overall evaluation. How do you evaluate your your organization, one has to do  with with quantity. One has to do with quality. And then the last is refinement.  The phrase you never recreate the wheel, but you never stop refining the tire,  and so you you're constantly This is a process that when you go through this  process, you have defined your organization, you've defined your core values  and defined this is why we exist. This is our purpose, and then this is how we're  going to flesh it out and carry it out. It is a wonderful, simple process to help  people, perhaps like you. I know I was like this. Here I am. I grew up in the  neighborhood. I become a Christian. I get thrown into into leadership and into  ministry, and I do not know about how to how I don't know how to think  presidentially about an organization. Yet, I have this passion for wanting to bring  this together for the sake of kids in my community. I found that this was very  simple to apply and understand. And later on, we're going to dive into this, into  into this process, and how you can adapt this, how you can take that, you can  use this to help define and strengthen your ministry. So implications for youth  ministry. Context matters. It does matter when you look in the context of which  you work, the organization, its values, its assumptions, its expectations, all of  those have an impact on how you work with young people. It matters and the  context that you create matters. You can create it even if you're in a, even if  you're in a bad organization, you can create a ministry that you're like an island  of calm in a sea of of confusion. You can do that, and as a leader, you must do  that for the sake of the young people you serve. The medium is the message  you we have to pay attention to what we are doing, to step outside of ourselves  and say, what are we saying, what are we doing? How are we coming how are  we coming across? Do our behaviors match the values that we profess? The  first task of leadership is to define reality. You are a leader, and it's your job to  define this is what we do. This is why we do it. This is how we're going to get  things done. And understand that if you do not define your ministry. Context,  then others will do it for you. They will define you. Either they'll come into your  ministry and redefine you, or they will tell other people, this is what their ministry  really is, because you have not given it proper definition. Some books I would  encourage you to read Are any of Bob Biehl's books, or particularly strategic  planning, which is formerly master planning. And then again, Max Depree, he  also has written a number of wonderful books. Leadership as an art is one of  them, and I would encourage you to gain some some insight and some training  from Bob.