All ministries in a church
will normally be pulled in four directions which are the history of the
group, the current commitment ability of the group, the goals of the group
and the reality of that the group is. In more detail these are
HISTORY
How the leaders, members, past
leaders, past members and those outside perceive the background of the
group. Some of these pulls are negative and some positive. For example
a negative pull maybe "when I was a young our youth group had picnic every
weekend." or " when I belonged to youth group everyone was a Christian
why not now."
The pull can also be positive for example "our Church has always preached
a clear gospel" or " the group has always supported the 40 hour famine."
THE AIM AND GOALS OF THE GROUP
Aims
are what the long term philosophy of a group is. For example to run a group
for year 7 students that will explain the gospel and provide opportunities
for them to respond. The group will grow and reach out to non churched
youth.
Goals are when you set specific measurable targets eg. 50 youth in the
group, 30 % of the group go to church by fourth term.
The goals and aims of a group may be arrived by
1. What we can do.
2. What we have done.
3. Plan before the actual
direction desired.
4. What the kids want each
week.
The obvious answer is Plan before the actual direction desired. However
many groups never do this. Goals and aims need to be fine tuned regularly
and be clear statements
THE CURRENT COMMITMENT ABILITY
Is what the actual group can
do. For example to lead a group effectively you need about one leader per
seven members plus one leader. That means if you have 35 youth you need
7+1= 8 leaders to run effectively. Secondly you need a number of leaders
who can run games, follow up give talks, prepare material organise social
events etc. So when someone comes to this group and want it to grow to
50 the group would need an extra 2 or 3 leaders. Also as groups get over
40 the whole nature of the group will change in how it is run. Thus a big
tension is what type of program can we run with the present number of leaders
involved and what are they capable of.
Thus a goal of the group
maybe to grow but the reality is there is not enough leaders to cover the
current group.
THE REALITY OF THE GROUP
The reality of the group is
what does the group currently look like. Is it the same size or at the
spirituality level as the goal? Is it keeping up with its tradition? The
reality of the group can be the hardest tension. For example imagine a
large youth program which in a 12 month period lost nearly all its
key leaders through them moving out of the area or going off to full time
ministry or training, the result was the program that was left fell to
bits due to lack of leaders and experience. Many people may blame the current
or the past youth leader but this are two factors that would not have been
forecast. This is a common problem for country areas where many of the
youth leader type people move to the city.
These tensions are always
present but when we recognise them it can be a step towards understanding
where we are coming from, why is there stress, and where we are trying
to go to.
HOW TO WRITE DOWN A CLEAR SET
OF GOALS.
1. Stated in terms of end results,
as past events.
2. Achievable in a definite
time frame.
3. Definite and clear in
what is expected.
4. Practical and reasonable
5. one key goal per statement.
The aim of the goals is to point the direction. Once they have been made
the next step is will it be achievable. For instance you may say we want
our group to grow from 10 to 100 in 3 months this would involve each current
person to bring 10 people. One or two may be able to do this but probably
not the whole group. Secondly with an aim like this would the group have
the 15 leaders needed to run a group this big.
AS A GROUP LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING
QUESTION?
1. What are the positive
aspects of our groups history?
2. What are the negative
aspects of our history?
3. What is the overall
aim of the whole youth program?
4. What is the aim
of our group?
5. How does this fit
in with the rest of the program
6. What are some goals?
7. What do we need
to learn for this to occur?
8. What changes need
to occur for this to occur?
9. Who will be affected
by these changes?
10. What can we realistically
achieve?
