What Is The Formula?

When I was getting my Certificate of Youth Ministry, I had to read a book by a very popular youth minister to learn all the “how to’s” of building a youth ministry. It was a thick book, full of a lot of great information, and I was excited to read it because I needed help.

The problem was, this particular book did not apply to my situation.

One chapter of the book outlined several teams your youth ministry should have: A worship team, a greeting team, a tech team, an evangelism team, a mission trip team, a team to pick out the candy they would throw from the stage, etc. etc.

All that is well and good, when you have a youth ministry of 50+ people.

I had a crew of 6.

Even if I tried that formula, it wasn’t going to work. Every kid would be on every team. That wasn’t going to fly with us.

It was then I realized that we are all different. Churches are different, learning styles are different, cities are different, and people are just different.

Not every style works everywhere.

So, why do we strive to find just the right formula?

We want something proven.

If you lost weight doing a specific program, everyone else in the world should too, right?

Not always.

Just because it works for some people, doesn’t mean it works for all. But, that is what we are meant to believe.

So much of what we want to accomplish is life is experimentation; trial and error.

You try something, it doesn’t work.

You try something else, hey, that worked!

You keep doing that until it doesn’t work.

Then you try something else.

You keep working until you get the result you are looking for or until you realize that was not the way to go.

This is why it is important to evaluate your life and goals based on where you currently are. Forget social media groups and instagram pages. While I am sure there are some genuine people, a lot of those pages are just curated for their successes and never showcase the trials. It doesn’t show all the experimentation, just the payoff.

I think the formula for making progress is this:

• Decide what you want

• Make a plan to get there

• Blow up that plan

• Try another plan

• Realize your plans are not that great

• Keep experimenting!

Find the things you need to do get where you want to be and be consistent with those things.

Learn from failure.

Get a little better every day.

You will get there.