Building the right culture in your ministry

Many people look at a church they think is successful and ask me “How do they get so many young people?” Or they see the good ministry and believe that it is because of the music or fun activities or pizza or whatever. Whenever I have spoken to effective youth ministry leaders it is clear to me that they are as much about building a culture as they are about building a ministry. It is who they are as a ministry that attracts people, their culture is attractive more than their program.

In our last post we looked at the concept of ministry culture, so how do we build the right culture in our ministry? Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:

1. Get the big stuff right: Any ministry in the Church is guided by the church and takes on a big focus such as youth, young adults seniors, social justice music etc. Your ministry should sort out the big focus first so that the parish will know how your different to another ministry in the parish. Within your big focus area you need to sort out the spirituality of the group so that you can create a culture that achieves this spirit. The key question is “how is our ministry culture helping our members to be a disciple of Jesus?”

2. Laser focus on the little things: News flash – your ministry can’t do everything. Your will have to define the culture of your ministry by picking between the little things that you have a say over. An average ministry will try to do a lot, a good ministry will be involved in the right things but a great ministry will have laser focus on one or two key things. For example, a social justice ministry will have to focus on local or overseas, charity or developmental, support or campaigning; it can’t do all of these well. What are the little things that don’t matter to others but define the culture of your ministry?

3. It comes from the top down: Everyone looks to someone for leadership of the group. If the person in the position of leader doesn’t lead everyone will look to someone else. People want to see how they can behave, what they can say, what they can get away with. There is always someone who tell newcomers “we don’t do that here” whether in words or by their actions. The person that everyone looks to is setting the culture of the group. So if you find yourself in a position of leadership, as an intern that should be the case, then you are setting a culture in the ministry. Ask yourself these questions:
1. What do you think is important in your ministry?
2. What would others say about what you think is important?
3. What statements are you making by what you are not doing?

4. You can’t give what you don’t have – if you want the people in your ministry to take on the right culture, then you have to expose them to it. You will have to teach people about the culture that you are setting for your ministry. Be proactive at answering the “why?” question for people you are leading, “why do we do it that way?” At times you might even have to correct people who get the culture wrong. Ask yourself “do people know why we do the things we do? And can they repeat it to others?”

5. What is celebrated is repeated – The ministry culture will be enhanced if you celebrate the wins in your ministry. You can do this making role models out the people who get the culture. You can do this by rewarding people who go “above and beyond the call of duty”. Have a party in your ministry, not to have a good time but to celebrate and enhance the culture of the group.

Please leave a comment about how you have enhanced the culture in your ministry. Join us next week for another interesting ministry thought.