Last week I spent an hour on the phone with a youth worker talking about multi-site youth ministry. His church is new to the multi-site model and he’s tasked with figuring out what that looks like in the youth ministries at each campus. His primary question, which I believe is always the primary question, revolved around alignment. Specifically, how much, and in what areas?
My gut response to that question is always the easy way to answer: Follow the lead of the church at large. Try to create a youth ministry structure that closely resembles the structure of the rest of the church. If you are way tighter or way looser in your alignment strategies than the rest of the church, the lack of clarity and inconsistency will cause unnecessary tension and conflict for everybody. In essence, you will be asking your youth ministry teams to play by a different set of rules than everybody else. So contextualize the church-wide structure in a way that makes sense to a youth ministry context.
If you can’t get clear direction from your senior leadership, or the clear direction you are given is, “Hey, figure it out in any way that makes sense” then I’d suggest a “Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light” strategy.
RED LIGHT: Red Light areas are things that require 100% alignment. These are areas that aren’t up for debate. The more important a particular piece of your ministry, the more likely it is to fall into the Red Light category.
Here are some of the Red Light items in our multi-site youth ministry strategy:
– Our ministry purpose statement
– Our strategy and paradigm (because these fulfill our purpose statement)
– Our logos, branding, etc.
– Our volunteer application and background check processes
– Our safety and protection policies
– Our weekend lessons
YELLOW LIGHT: Yellow Light areas are things that the various campuses have some freedom to flex. It’s in these areas that the campus youth pastors should “proceed with caution”. They have freedom, but they should make sure they don’t veer too far away from what is normative in our setting.
Here are some of the Yellow Light items in our multi-site youth ministry strategy:
– How small groups are structured, when they meet and where
– Frequency of volunteer training meetings
– Parent ministry strategy
– Social media strategy
– Our weekend programing (use our lessons, but program as you wish)
GREEN LIGHT: Green Light areas are things that are almost entirely under the discretion of the individual campus.
Here are some of the Yellow Light items in our multi-site youth ministry strategy:
– Almost everything that isn’t listed as Red or Yellow Light!
I’ve learned that if your church expects any level of alignment, then consider creating something that is clear, somewhat simple to implement and fairly easy to point back to in times of conflict. This works for us; what’s worked for you?
– Kurt / @kurtjohnston