Guest Post: Brian Mills on Multi-Site Student Ministry

Today’s blog post comes from Brian Mills, Student Pastor at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, TN. Brian and his team are doing great things in advancing the Kingdom in the Nashville area, and are reaching thousands of students with the gospel! You can keep up with Brian over at www.brianmills247.blogspot.com

A student ministry that works together wins together.  That is a hard statement for those who have larger student ministries where the Jr High or Middle School students are divided apart from the High School Ministry, and both are staffed with youth pastors.  It even multiplies more when you take that dynamic and add to it multiple campuses.

In this blog I want to raise the question how do you stay efficient with so many moving parts?

1. We are all ONE TEAM!

I know this sounds redundant but it might be the hardest thing to remember as you get larger and multiply your campuses.  It is easy for each campus and each ministry (Middle School / High School) to function on their own on those campuses.  Think about it, the MS pastor has his team and the HS pastor has his team then the campuses have their teams.  This creates diversity in your ministry if you do not continually teach your staff and volunteers we are 1 team!

2. Work Together!

Long Hollow Student Ministry has taken the approach that we are all on the same page with our curriculum and sermon series on all campuses.  You can attend any of our campuses and have a completely different feel yet be on the same page with the whole ministry.

I believe this is very important, and I was encouraged by Jeff Borton at Christ Fellowship in Miami to think this way.  When you work together the cost goes down, the unity goes up and the focus is greater.  Some of our campuses are not large enough to have a budget to produce videos, “cool” graphics and other creative elements, but if we are all on the same page we can share and use the same video or creative elements and ideas.

This is also very helpful in sermon preparations.  I sit down once a week with all our campus youth pastors, high school and middle school pastors and we unpack the sermons series, upcoming Wednesday night details and all creative elements in our student ministry.  Each sermon is more in-depth, stronger creatively and more challenging due to us all working together.

3. Win together and lose together!

Each ministry and campus within our student ministry always set’s goals.  We set weekly goals, yearly goals and event goals.  Each ministry is held accountable for their goals.  I believe healthy competition is good, however, the second it moves to just being competitive and not supporting each other is the second we get focused on ourselves, and our own ministry, instead of what God has called us to do.  If your high school team will not sign up a middle school student for an event, you have a problem.  If one of your campuses is so against the other campus you might have a problem.  Never forget the main thing!  We are all on the same team so win and lose together.  During a good game of football the offense might play better than the defense, but at the end of the game they all get a W or an L!!!  They win and lose together.

4. Attend each other’s campus!

This might be one of the hardiest things to do but I do believe it is important at least once or twice a semester for each pastor to visit and even preach at one of the other campuses.  We do a few events a year all together and if the students have seen all the youth pastors it draws us much closer together and does not make us many different youth ministries but one youth ministry on many different campuses.

Multi-Site Student Ministry…Part Trois

Last week, we unpacked a few mistakes I’ve made in our journey in being a Multi-Site Student Ministry. Today we continue.

SYSTEMS

Let’s just state the obvious: When we started doing Multi-Site Student ministry, I didn’t have a stinking clue what I was doing! Nowhere on my resume did it say Student Ministry Expert in a Multi-Site Church. The craziest it ever got for me in ministry in the beginning stages was if our church did a Contemporary and Traditional Worship service, added a Sunday School hour, or if we decided not to take our student to the same camp as we did the previous year! When I trusted God’s calling to The Summit Church, I never thought that I would end up overseeing a Multi-Site Student ministry, but now that I am…..I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

All of that to say is this: I walked into multi-site blind. I had no structure to implement (just a hunch!) and no systems to operate out of that directly related to Multi-Site. Yet, God was still gracious.

Here’s the thing; there are so many great resources out there that you do not have to walk into it blind. (Please know this, no system or structure ever replaces God’s grace and passion for His church, and no system will ever accomplish the mission of God in and of itself, but it helps get your people from one place to the next.) I believe whole heartedly that those resources aren’t books, but people. Ask around. Find out from guys who have been doing multi-site now for a few years. Here from them on mistakes they’ve made. Find out from them on how they’ve reached students with the gospel, discipled them well, and equipped them for living out the mission of God. The best resource you have is an email/text/phone call away. Learn from others.

Tomorrow, you’ll get to hear from a good friend of mine here on the blog who is doing multi-site student ministry very well out at Longhollow in Hendersonville, TN. Check back tomorrow for some great insight!

The Mistakes Keep On Rollin

Yesterday we began a new mini-blog series on “Mistakes I’ve Made in Multi-Site Student Ministry.” Today, we continue my demise.

Mistake #2 Trying to Make All of Our Campus Gatherings Look the Same

The fact of the matter is this: When you become a mutli-site church/ministry, one of the goals is that the church would be contextualized to it’s city, or area of the city. Parts of our city are completely different than others. Some areas are a bit more organic than others, you know where all the kids drink soy lattes minus the latte (that’s just soy milk for you geniuses out there,) order produce from the local farmer, you know, those types of things. Other areas are a bit more redneck, where the kids go muddin on the weekends, listen to Jason Aldean and deer hunt or pick up road kill for their evening meal. Those two areas do not have to have  the same environment.

So now the question becomes this; What does stay the same at each campus in your student ministry gatherings?

Know what your purpose is and find the best way to accomplish it in each context.

That means that the ministry as a whole has a goal (a north start if you will) that it is trying to accomplish. But in the pursuit of that goal, allow your ministry at those campuses some freedom within a certain set of boundaries. Don’t feel like you have to spit out an exact replica of the ministry at all of your campuses.

 

ps: If you want to know what our Goal and Boundaries are, we’d be glad to send them to you.

Multi-Site Student Ministry

We’ve been neck deep in this now for over 3 years, and let me be the first to tell you; it’s hard…but worth it. We’re still working through many things, working out the kinks here and there, but believe we are on the right track to understanding our DNA as a Multi-Site Church. With that being said, rather than telling you all the things you should do if you are in the Multi-Site Church (or seeking to go there,) I’m going to share with you some of the mistakes I’ve made in leading a Multi-Site Student Ministry over the next several blog posts. Buckle up, the journey is long because I’ve made a lot of them!

Mistake #1: There is a Standard Formula for Structuring Multi-Site Student Ministry

You know what I’m talking about right? You find one church that’s doing something really well and you think “THIS IS IT!!!” Been there. Done that. Let me be the first to tell you; it’s the furthest thing from the truth. There are so many models of Multi-Site Student Ministry that God is using to reach and equip hundreds of thousands of students. So which one is right? In my opinion, it’s the one that God is leading your church to implement that is grounded in a biblical understanding of what the church is to be, specifically in your community.

I have so many friends in ministry that are currently doing Multi-Site Student Ministry, and many of us are structuring it differently. Some have Student Ministry at every campus, others don’t. Some have Student Pastors who teach at every campus, others pipe in their sermon via video. Here are a few for you to check out for yourself:

• Brad Cooper, Student Pastor at Newspring Church (Anderson, SC)
• Brian Mills, Student Pastor at Long Hollow Baptist Church (Hendersonville, TN)
• Shaun Blakeney, Director of Student Ministries at Christ Fellowship (West Palm Beach, FL)
• Jeff Borton, Student Pastor at Christ Fellowship (Miami, FL)

Space Issues?

If anyone is familiar with a space issue…it’s probably us here at The Summit. We’ve had to figure out ways to move people to other venues, offer more services, and create new spaces. But what if your “space issue” isn’t that it’s too small, but rather too big? That’s a real issue that needs to be addressed. Here are some thoughts:

1. If the room you are meeting in is the only option, try your best to break it up a bit. Create a section for your time of music/teaching, a hang out/cafe area, a lounge, etc… Do whatever you can to break up the size of the room by creating many different environments inside of it.
2. Is there another room you can meet in that is available that is better suited for your size group? A smaller room with more people in it creates more buzz. Plain and simple.
3. Do you meet in the sanctuary/worship area/fellowship hall where there are already more chairs set up than you need? If the answer is YES, recruit a set up and tear down team and only set up what you need. As people begin filling up the chairs you have out, have someone ready to add more when it’s needed. Northcoast Church out in San Diego does that really well.

In essence, do what you can to keep the room from feeling “empty.” An empty room creates an empty feeling, which translates into your worship time.

Nexus Bumper

Bumper Video from The Nexus Project 2011. God rescued many from death and brought them to life, and the life change that took place is unmeasurable.

Food For Thought for Leaders

“What makes people work, is  an idea worth working for, along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done.”- Michael Gerber, E-Myth Revisited

 

Just finished that book last week. Should have read it a long time ago.

Immeasurably More

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations…” – Ephesians 3:20-21

I’m often challenged by this verse that Paul writes in Ephesians. I can’t shake it. It runs me down week after week. I constantly find myself asking these same questions over and over again.

• Where am I believing God to do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine in my family?
• Where am I believing God to do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine in The Summit Church and in our Student Ministry?
• Where am I not believing God to do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine, and in turn, trusting in my own efforts to accomplish something.
• Where am I building my kingdom and not pursuing God’s? Let’s face it, my era ends when they put me in the ground…but God’s endures and reigns forever, throughout all generations.