Tomorrow I will be spending two days with a group of people I first met a few years ago in the Youth Ministry Coaching Program through what is now The Youth Cartel.  It was one of the best years of leadership investment I made and would highly recommend it for personal growth if you’re considering a tailored leadership experience.

One of the things it taught me was a great way to get idea input from a team, something all leaders need to do from time to time.

There were two ways we did this.  Both are leadership tools I have implemented in meetings ever since.  They keep things moving.  They cut to the chase. Because they are all timed (like for reals with a watch or phone app or whatever), they also keep a meeting from taking forever, something meetings are notoriously bad for… wasting time.

So here goes, my favorite 2 ways to get great feedback on an idea or problem in a team leadership setting:

#1. QUICK INPUT BLOCKS.   (5-6 minute power feedback moments)

As a presenter, you are given 2-3 minutes to share your issue of concern that you want feedback on.

After your 3 minutes is up, the group has 60 seconds to ask any clarifying questions they may have.  Only questions.  No commentary.

Then the final 2 minutes are brief sentence feedback on what team members think you should do or what they would recommend.

The “presenter” or communicator takes notes on the feedback and then leaves the meeting to follow up on the feedback they received and act on it.

We would usually allot about 15-20 minutes for these and simply open it up for anyone who has something.  Once the 3 or 4 quick input blocks are claimed, the presentations begin.   (BTW, this is an awesome format for a “small group leader meeting” where someone has an issue in their group they need some help or ideas in resolving)

#2. PERSONAL PRESENTATIONS   (30-35 minute planned feedback presentations)

You might only have 1 or 2 of these in a meeting.  They are not “wing it” moments. Instead, they are planned and prepared, often with a handout that has details and such.

The assigned person who is looking for input is given 15 minutes for their presentation.

5 minutes for clarifying questions only where the team can only ask questions to get more details.

10-15 minutes for feedback from the group on the presentation where they can ask more questions or offer suggestions.   In our case, both the presentation and the feedback were audio recorded on a laptop.  However in the times I’ve done this since, they are simply recorded via note taking.

THERE YOU GO… hope you find one of these methods to be a leadership win for the meetings you inevitably will have in the weeks ahead.

While teaching on As For Me and My Crazy House last weekend, I reminded my peers [as I reminded myself] that the healthiest thing that any of us can do for any relationship is bring the best and healthiest “me” to the table.  In other words,  if I want my relationships to reflect the character of God, then I should bring the most Godly “Me” possible to the relationships.  The truth is, two broken people don’t make a beautiful mosaic, they simply make a mess.

To this end, I told them that if someone asked to meet with me, and I had scheduled in my calendar that I had a meeting with a friend, that I would naturally tell them “NO”, that slot is taken.  However, if that same slot had something that was just for me, I would likely bump “me” every time to meet with them, as if “me time” was unnecessary.  But, this reflects a practical pattern of my unhealthy life, not a theological reality I believe.  I don’t think it’s more Godly to ditch my own soul care to tend to the care of someone else.

This “aha” came for me when I discovered that in the second greatest commandment, Jesus actually called me to “love others as I loved myself” [Mark 12:31].  At which point, I began to realize that “loving others like I loved me” would be a horrible way to love someone.  This needed to change.

So, rather off-the-cuff I told them to avoid feeling guilty, they should just “name their soul” and schedule appointments with it in their calendar like they do other people.  This way they wouldn’t feel guilty protecting that time as sacred and telling others they were already booked.  It sounded so fun to me, that I wrote it down as an impromptu gift from God.

So, when someone says, “Hey Brian, can we meet Wednesday at 4pm?”, I can look at my calendar to see if it is empty.  If it is, then YES, we could meet.   If however, I have scheduled that slot as a time to go for a run or take a nap or read or spend some time in solitude to shape my soul and remain healthy, then I need to be able to say “NO” and not feel guilty like I’m bumping that which can simply be rescheduled and should be secondary in importance.

Thus, I have decided this is an idea from Jesus.  From now on, I will call my soul “Haus”.   He and I will be meeting often.  🙂

We had our annual parenting summit at JCC a couple of weekends ago and I keep getting requests for the videos we showed.  So, I decided to post them and some of my others here.  Go grab them and use them to encourage your parents at your next parent meeting.  Or if you’re the parent… well just enjoy them.

PARENT RAP:

 TEENAGE SONG:

BIRTH CONTROL COMMERCIAL.  warning #1. if this is your kid, I’m sorry.

PARENTING BY THE BOOKS:  warning #2. This one has one “naughty word” in the last .3 seconds.  Stop before then if you are easily offended or maybe cut the clip if you’re gonna use it with your entire church or something.

This last weekend I went to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Indianapolis to teach, bond, learn from, and hang out with some old and new friends.  While there, I was reminded how much I LOVE meeting with, encouraging, and equipping people whose heart is for God and whose passion is to see teen’s get connected with him in life-altering ways.

So… all weekend I made a running list of observations of stuff that prompted my soul to move.  I boiled it down to my top 5 reminders for myself and those who do this thing called youth ministry.

1. WE NEED EACH OTHER:  youth ministry is not a solo thing.  Yes, it requires God. It also requires one another.  It’s so mission critical that we work with others and team with people to sharpen and encourage one another.  Life is hard. Youth Ministry is hard.  We all need soul mates in the journey.  To that end, national and local gatherings like this one are mission critical and so worth the time and effort.  Some of my greatest ministry lessons and life-long friendships have been birthed out of youth worker training events like this.  However we do it, we must continue to gather.
2. PRAY A LOT:  I made a commitment this weekend. I’m never teaching another sermon to high school students without telling them they are loved, reminding them they were created by God to reflect God’s image, and then praying to invite the Holy Spirit to move among us.  I KNOW we need God.  I simply cannot do this thing without God.  None of us can.  I will remind my students in prayer every week with this.
3. WE CAN’T LEAD STUDENTS TO DEPTHS WE HAVE NOT GONE:  caring for my soul and taking care of my own connection with God is not a luxury for those whose life moves at a slow pace. It is a mandatory requirement for all of us who seek to lead students to connection with God.  If I want my students to experience intimacy with Jesus, then I have to go out of my way to ensure that I too experience God in incredible and life-altering ways. This won’t happen by osmosis.  It requires effort and intentionality.  Daily. Hourly.  Constantly.
4. OUR DOING MUST FLOW FROM OUR BEING.  Order matters. A lot. My ministry must flow out of my identity with Christ, if it does not, then my ministry will become my identity.  I will find myself the quintessential example of Matthew 7: those who appear Godly on the outside, but find themselves doing that which was disconnected from God and held no value beyond religious pretending.  I so don’t want that.  I never want to turn my youth ministry into an idol.  I love God.  Then I serve students. NOT the reverse.
5. THE END IS NOT NEAR:  There is a dualism in this for me:  First, there has been some talk from time to time that the sky is falling on youth ministry.  Perhaps this is true if you’re talking about methods and practices.  I think those change all the time.  But if you’re talking about the desperate need in our culture for people who love God to help those in their adolescence to connect with God… well, then that is still very much alive and well. The end is not near.  Secondly, it is also all too clear that youth ministry is not a short term deal either.  Life-change that lasts is change that happens like a tortoise.  Slow and steady. The end is not near.  So buckle up people, we’re going for a long, slow, life-altering ride that is guaranteed to make you weary and remind you of #1-4 above.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a book review on this blog, though I have told a couple of friends I would love to.  This is predominantly because for the last 8 years, just about all I’ve read has been seminary books.  So the ones I said I’d blog about are still not read. But recently I’ve felt prompted to break this trend in my life and get some books off my shelf and into the real world.  So, as I’m nearing the end of seminary, I’m trying to open up my non-seminary mandated book reading again and begin to blog some responses to them.

So I decided to start small and read a mini-book that I was confident I could read in one sitting from the five part Parent’s Guide series published by Simply.  I took 45 minutes of my SD to Indianapolis plane flight and read one that two friends of mine, Adam McLane and Mark Oestreicher, wrote entitled, “A parents guide to social media.”

I tried to be as objective as possible, so here goes my thoughts:

ONE SENTENCE REVIEW…  This short book should be mandatory reading for all parents of minor age children today.

IF THE TITLE SAID IT ALL, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TITLED…  Before you give your kid access to the internet, buy them a cell phone, or let them have a facebook page, read this!

QUOTE THAT MADE ME CHEER:

“Don’t forget the end game: As parents of teenagers, we are trying to raise adults. We’re more interested in wisdom than compliance, more interested in responsibility than high walls or protection, and more interested in healthy parent/teen communication than maintaining a veneer of good appearance.”

THE MISSING CHAPTER: I loved this book. That said, if I could have added a chapter, it would have been titled. ““Practice What You Preach”. This book is chocked full of great principles and wisdom for internet and social media use. But as I read it, I kept asking myself as a parent: how well do I do that? This book can’t just be advice for parents. These pages have to become values as a family if they’re going to actually make a difference. Marko and Adam say it in sentences here and there in this book, but I would love it in a dedicated chapter really calling parents to personally set the bar high. So as a parent, when you pick this book up, I’d encourage you to read it twice. First for you. Then for your parenting.

MY TAKEAWAYS:

• Internet Privacy is an oxymoron. They write, “There is no such thing as internet privacy; there is only perceived privacy… everything you post or send online creates a digital record that may one day become public.” Everywhere you go, everything you search, all that you post, every advertisement you ever click on is tracked, recorded and held onto somewhere. Simply put, we need to treat everything we do online like something we’re doing in the front yard and not something I’m doing in the bedroom. As a general rule, secrecy breeds sin: for parents and kids and everyone else.
• NOTHING replaces honest, open, regular connection with my kid. In a chapter entitled, “Stuff Teenagers Need to Understand” they write, “Maybe you should just read this section of the book to or with your teenager.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s like it should be required whenever a child is given permission to have a facebook, a cell phone, or a laptop. The truth is, if I don’t want my kids to be one person with me and another person online, then the absolute best thing I can do is have constant, open, and investigative conversations into who they are as I do life WITH them.. including their digital life and mobile life.
• Start Early: Those who will have the hardest problem implementing these ideas are the ones who have been virtually absent from their kid’s lives up ‘til now, allowing them to live under the same roof but essentially exist in autonomous lives like ships passing in the night. If you don’t want a terrible online teen, then invest deeply in the life of your kid today and never stop. Be a present parent.

So seriously, if you’re a parent in the 21st century, then the world is never gonna go back to a pre-digital age. Don’t stick your head in the sand and complain about it: just go get this book. It’s short. It’s cheap (ie: probably less than what you will spend on lunch). It’s worth your time. It just might save you headaches and a lot of money in counseling fees in the long run too.