Why vs. What

When I first started working in the youth department at Hope Valley, I made some good decisions and some bad decisions. I knew that God had called me to work with teenagers and I felt my heart for the congregation growing bigger. So, the decision to join the Hope Valley team was easy. The hard decisions came after!In my first few months I made one crucial mistake. I had seen many youth ministries and networked with a number of local church youth pastors and, unfortunately, assumed that all youth ministries were the same. I assumed that our young people had the same passion, desire and longing to love Jesus as the other youth groups in our area. Oh boy was I wrong!

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever run an event that failed? I mean really bombed out?! I have and I trust that I’m not alone (well… hopefully not!).

Our youth ministry had a big turn around when we started to focus on the why behind the what! Let me explain… The volunteer leadership team, which I have the privilege of leading, has a long history of running excellent events. However, our focus had gradually shifted away from asking, “how can we help our young people fall more in love with Jesus?” and more towards “what cool event can we run this term?” We were running events without questioning the purpose!

This steep learning curve taught me one valuable thing… PURPOSE IS EVERYTHING!

What events is your youth ministry running? Are these events strategically designed to inspire your young people or do you, just like I did, need to ask yourself some tough questions?!

I often feel God tug at my heart to be asking the right questions… What are we doing and why are we doing it?

I pray that, in your ministries, you would always seek to answer the “why” before continuing on with that “what”. I strongly believe that God honours Christians that have the boldness to ask the tough questions.

Much love,

Carl Robinson