Chris is the youth pastor down the street from me (and also a coauthor on this blog, if he ever manages to post anything!). We’ve done events together and I consider Chris to be one of my good friends. So it seems natural that we would want to team up to do this.

Our first meeting of the new school year is this Sunday. Here’s what we’ve got on tap:

• Any leader in the area can come and bring their entire volunteer team.
• These training times are for both student leaders and adult leaders.
• We’re using the Deep Leadership curriculum that the Fuller Youth Institute has developed. (They have since sold the rights of this curriculum to Youth Specialties and they’re releasing it in January 2010 as Essential Leadership.)
• The first half of the meeting will include worship, devotional, and training. The second half will involve breaking out into smaller groups for each individual church to discuss issues important to them.
• Personally, I want to show the Youth MiniStarZ video and dance to it, but we’ll see how far that goes.

Doing these meetings together seems like the most logical way to allow our volunteers and leaders to connect with each other. As I learn more about networking, I see the importance of having volunteer leaders connect with other volunteers, not just youth pastors.

Also, we save each other time because I do not need to prepare the entire meeting by myself. One month I might do the training, another I might be doing the devotional. This allows me to relax some months and know that my leaders are still getting the training and encouragement they need.

Additional Reading

• Balancing work and play in a youth ministry network from Travis Deans’ blog.
• Guest posts by Mike DeVito, What Should A Network Meeting Do? and 7 Things a Youth Ministry Network Meeting Must Have.
• A couple of posts over at More Than Dodgeball: Getting the Most out of Meetings: How to Start and Getting the Most out of Meetings: When to Cancel

What About You?

What other ways can we team up with other youth leaders to save time?