Video Transcript: Building Cathedrals

We're continuing our class on urban youth discipleship, and we are now in the  doing part the Praxis, part of building cathedrals urban youth discipleship that  works, and we're now in the phase one. And phase one is context, establishing  a context for ministry. There are three dimensions involved here. And the first  one is identity, defining who you are. There are four areas I want to talk to you  about, concerning defining your ministry. It has to do with your purpose, your  program, your values and your organization. First, your purpose. Why are you  doing what you what you're doing? Why do you exist? Why is it important? A  purpose statement is a clear statement of purpose that fosters team unity in  pursuit of shared goals, having a clear purpose is going to allow you to foster  other people sharing in that those goals. Having a written statement helps clarify assumptions. Again, assumptions are anything you believe to be true without  proof. If you have a statement of purpose, it can help everyone understand or be joined together around the same, the same, the same purpose. Let me give you  an example of that. Say you're in church, and there are 50 people in the church,  and a third of the people say, you know, this church is so wonderful. I can't wait  until this church gets to be 5000 strong. It has that kind of potential. Say you  have another third of the group says, Wow, I love this church. It is such a  wonderful church. And I really see us moving to a really comfortable size of 500  people. And then another third, the last third says, Wow, this is a beautiful  church. I love it. I just love the fellowship. And I think that that 5, 10, years from  now, I'm looking forward to this being the same, a wonderful church of 50  people. Well, if you've got three different groups of people with different kinds of  assumptions about where you're going, what happens when you get together  and try and make decisions, it's a difficult time, and so you want to help clarify  assumptions. The things underneath, if there's miscon, if there is  miscommunication, then look for the assumptions someone has said that all  miscommunication is a result of differing assumptions, and that leads to all kinds of trouble. So that purpose statement helps you. It enables interested outsiders  to respond with a strong Yes, this is something I want to be a part of, or no, this  is not for me, and also it reveals your uniqueness, the specific role your mission  plays in God's larger Kingdom agenda. Now, defining who you are is important,  because once you define your purpose, your purpose will define you when  you've gone through the hard struggle of figuring out, who am I? What is this  ministry? What are we about? What is our focus? What do we do, and what do  we not do? Once you've defined your purpose and you've put it on paper, you  put it in writing, then it's as if that purpose turns around and it begins to define  you. It begins to say, well, if this is who you are, then you should consider this  and consider this, and do this and do that. This fits with your purpose. This does  not fit with your purpose. And so once you define your purpose, your purpose  will turn around and it will define you. We'll talk more about that a little bit later,  when we get into master planning. The second area is your program. You need 

to define your program. How do you define a program? Well, certainly your  program can consists of content or specific things that you do, but it also should  be about the process. The content are activities that make up your program,  various activities that fit in with what you do. But the process deals with the  sequence and the outcome. It explains how activities fit together, the logic  behind the progression and the anticipated results. Let's give an example. This  is four parts of a youth ministry. I got this from one of the para church  organizations, but many youth ministries have this kind of format for their youth  club gathering. Well, you first have the icebreaker. What's that icebreaker? It's a  game. It's group fun. It's something that that that kids can get involved with,  engaged in, and they will have fun. But why? What's the purpose of the fun?  Well, the purpose of the fun is to get that their minds and their thinking from  where they've been to where they are now. And the idea is to create group  cohesion. That's the that's the primary result of having the games. And so it's not just any game that you play. It's not just any kind of fun that you that you have.  You have to come up with a game that's going to allow for group cohesion to  take place. Another part of it would be discovery. The purpose would be to  introduce a topic. It might be a game, or it might be some other activity, but the  idea is that it relates to the topic of the evening. And so you can do that. But the  result is that you want to begin to stir their thinking. You're starting to plant seeds about the topic and about what do you think about this? Then you have the  discussion. And the purpose for the discussion is to have honest this honest  dialog. You want to surface the youth perspective, and the result is engagement, honest questions and answers. And so you just don't want a flippant  conversation. You want it focused on hearing and understanding where young  people are coming, are coming from. And so you don't want, you don't want God talk in there. If a kid wants to throw you off, they'll just throw some some spiritual phrases at you, and then you can move on thinking that they know what they're  talking about. So someone will say, Oh, that's about faith. Well, instead of just  saying, yes, you're right, you ask, What do you mean by that? What do you  mean by that? Define that for me. So the result is engagement, and you're  moving toward honest questions and answers, and then to talk to is the purpose is to summarize the discussion and present God's perspective a single idea with the result of rethinking perspective in light of God's Word. And so you have your  you have your content, but then you also have your your your results. What are  you looking for? Then there are values. Every organization has a set of values  that defines them and sets them apart from other similar businesses or  organizations. And the same ought to be true for ministries. And the reason why  values are so important is that values drive actions. They answer the question,  why? Which is defining element of identity? And they are our assumptions, the  things we believe to be true about ministry. Years ago, I went through this. And if you have your your books, building cathedrals, you can see this on page 174 

how we had to wrestle with what are our core values. The question I ask and the question you should ask is, what values need to be in place, if I'm going to be  here over the long haul, what values must be in place. So for us, it was God  defines world view. Motivation for ministry flows out of commitment to the great  command. The primary people group we exist to serve is the at risk youth  population and strategies and the methodologies are shaped by the incarnation,  the Incarnation being both miracle and model. We also put together a list of  unifying principles because I had a staff. And what are those principles that are  going to unite us in our common goal. Well, we wrote them down. Motivation  was the glory of God. Our relationships was affirming mutual dignity, finances,  stewardship with integrity, work a faithful pursuit of excellence. And the purpose  was to restore a community. And so all of these values, these values are what  anchor us, and they are what drive us, and they characterize us because of  shared values. Organizations are different because they have a different set of  values. They may not some of them may share the same values, but not the but  not the collection of values. Each one makes an organization unique, and it  makes a ministry unique. And then, there's organization. Bob Biehl said, focus  always precedes success. Without focus, there is no success an organization  thinking organizationally. I know you may have just a small youth ministry that is  meeting in your in your in your living room. But even there, there is an element  of organization there, and there is an element of focus. And focusing on your  strategic thinking applied to your ministry will make a tremendous difference.  And so the next time we're going to talk about master planning, the the strategic  planning process that really helped me become able to be able to organize and  focus and move the organization forward. We'll be talking about that in a  moment.