I have often been asked about how I keep fresh in youth ministry which I started some time ago!!
It can be hard to start yet another year of youth ministry even if you’ve had a month off to recharge your batteries. I always found it hard if I simply started a new year in exactly the same way as I finished the previous year. All the routines and meetings were the same and everything we were doing was predictable. So what’s the alternative?
Take a look at the previous year. What did you do that really produced fruit and blessing? Keep doing it ! Maybe it was your small groups or your weekend away or your one-to-one discipleship. Whatever it was keep doing it, but not until the idea is worn out. Change before you get tired of something. Without endless introspection be honest about things that didn’t work. Was it because it was mis-timed or were you too short of leaders to pull it off? I love Nehemiah’s response to the chaos of Jerusalem. ‘You see the trouble we are in ... Let us start rebuilding’ (Nehemiah 2.17,18).
