Use What You Got

I love college football. In fact, if God every lets me out of this Youth Ministry gig I either wanna write for a living, run a restaurant with my wife or coach college football. I love the family that can be built, the lives that can be changed through mentoring & building young men's character. I love the celebration, the history, rivalries and the game itself.

I love seeing young coaches "rise through the ranks" and go from coaching a little college to a big named college. Coaches that care about building other leaders in their staff and their players always impress me. They are men whom I'd love to spend a day with asking them life, leadership & of course football questions. However I have always seen a lot of parallels between coaching & youth ministry.

As a coach you walk into training camp/two-a-days and you evaluate what you have. The coaching staff, your personal, your positional players and you begin to see where your strengths & weaknesses are. You begin to form a plan but know it is a loose plan because you are one play away from loosing your star player(s) or going from a losing record team to a winning record type team. It is a life of being in constant change & flux, but desiring to keep as much of a foundation as possible. You use what you have available. If you don't have something available that you feel is that one player, play, ingredient to help the team get better you do what you can to get it. Recruit, train, film study, practice and sometimes wait until you can get it.

Youth Ministry is often the same. EVERY ministry has tools, assets, resources available to it. They may not be what you want or even at that time need, but how do you use what you got so you are the best functioning ministry as possible? If you don't have something that you feel is a great need to help your ministry get healthy how do you obtain it? Pray, recruit, plan, seek wisdom or even wait?

From my perspective coaching a team to a big win and leading a ministry to impact Jesus kingdom in local contextual ways are no different. Both settings you have to use what you got to be the best you can be.

Examples:

For our ministry setting we don't have the most dynamic worship through music, but we have 3 gifted students willing to lead their peers on a rotating basis each week so we go for it.

We don't have the newest, cleanest, sharpest looking facility but we use the resources available to dress it up.

We don't have a plethora of adult leaders willing to mentor young men & women as they follow Jesus but we do have a great crew of adults that sacrifice and give as much leadership as they can do our students.

We need more adults so I try to recruit.

We don't pull off every weekend gathering with efficiency or excellency, but we try to be sure love, acceptance and encouragement are communicated to everyone.

We don't have student leaders who have leadership all figured out, but they are willing to do their best, commit to the bigger purpose & serve sacrificially.

We, like many great football programs, are a ministry desiring to get better each month we operate. We try to do the little things well and work hard at what isn't so easy. We try to bring the team together through good & bad times, remembering that each season brings something different.

We are trying to use what we got, while we honor God & live like Jesus asks the church too.