Defining the Culture of your Ministry

Programs define what you do; Culture is determined by who you are.

Recently a friend asked me to define the culture of Broken Bay Youth Ministry.  Whilst I was able to share a few thoughts off the top of my head, I realised that there is no definite answer at the moment.  The challenge for us at the moment is to define the culture that we want to develop in our Diocese.  The challenge for you is defining it in your ministry.

The reason this is so important at the moment is because we have a number of parishes that are looking to begin a youth ministry.  What will the youth ministry feel and look like?  What will the parish begin with and what we will recommend they don’t do?  Ministry is more than a program it is relational, it has a look and a feel.  This look and feel is the culture of a ministry; it is this unique culture that makes your ministry different to the one down the road.

Here are four questions to ask about the Culture in your ministry:

1. What will you begin?  When you are sitting down looking for ideas, some ideas are attractive and you would like to give them a go in your ministry.  Perhaps you have seen another ministry in your area that has a better feel or a more positive attitude than where your ministry is at the moment.  In your ministry you could begin a whole number of activities or programs, but which ones would support your mission, your style or culture?  In your ministry what behaviours or attitudes could you begin or encourage that would strengthen your ministry?
2. What will you promote?  When you look at your ministry there are things that you are good at and you should promote them more.  We all promote our events or programs but we should promote the strengths and passions within our ministry.  There are also behaviours that you want to encourage and celebrate.  Perhaps you can celebrate people who “go the extra mile” in service so that you promote a culture of service. In your ministry what is the behaviour and attitudes that you could promote to new members?
3. What will you stop doing?  When you look at your ministry closely you will see things that you don’t like.  You need to stop doing those things and teach people what you do want.  For example you may have a culture of lateness, so teach people about the value of being on time by starting meetings on time, even if people are not there yet.  You may have a culture of “it is will be alright on the night”, so change the culture by asking people to submit their program a week before an event.  You just have to stop certain behaviours so that new people will pick up the behaviours that enhance your culture.
4. Major on the Majors and Minor in the Minors.  What ever you repeat as the leader, others will think is the Major thing.  If the leader of a youth ministry majors on social activity, then young people will think the major focus of the youth group is having fun.  If the youth ministry leader focuses on Bible study or catechesis, the young people will see that as the major focus.  If people keep referring to your ministry as “small” and talking about the attendance then people will think numbers are a major issue.  Remember to keep you focus on the major reason your ministry exists.  For example, Broken Bay Youth Ministry exists to assist parish based youth ministry, so social events or mission trips are nice but they are a minor part of our focus.  What are the behaviours and attitudes that enhance the major focus of your ministry?

By reflecting on these four areas in your ministry, people will pick up more of the positive behaviours that you want to develop in your ministry.  Your ministry will feel more like you want it to feel and look more like what you want it to look like.

To read a practical example of how this might look in a parish, read Part II of this post

Mark McDonald

Mark McDonald is the Diocesan Coordinator of Youth Ministry for the Diocese of Broken Bay.  You can follow Mark on twitter @mrmarkmcdonald

Defining the Culture of your Ministry – Part II

Programs define what you do; Culture is determined by who you are.

In a Part 1 we had a look at four areas that build the culture of your ministry.  In this post we will look at a practical example of what that might look like in an imaginary parish.  This practical example might help you understand more about applying the general principles in your ministry.

Our made up parish will be called St Luke Parish for this example.  St Luke is a parish with one primary school, one Catholic high school and one government high school in the area.  The Parish has had a part time youth minister for two years as a trial.  The parish has three parish interns who are volunteering in the youth ministry team that we will look at in this example.  Imagine that you are also part of the Youth Ministry team at St Luke Parish.

Here are the four areas of Culture that we will reflect on in this youth ministry:

1. What will you begin?  Recently you heard about another Youth Ministry in the Diocese that has been running the Youth Alpha Course and you will look to run the course in a few weeks after a period of promotion.  This will encourage the young people in the ministry to develop a culture of learning (catechesis).  You want people to learn more about their faith and Alpha will enhance this.  One of the Interns heard about another parish that has some hospitality after their youth mass.  The Interns think this will work in St Luke parish.  This will develop a culture of hospitality and friendliness around the Youth Mass.  This will also keep the focus on the Youth Mass which St Luke’s have been working on for 12 months.
2. What will you promote?  Whilst the team have been working on the Youth Mass for 12 months, you haven’t really promoted the music ministry.  You will look for ways to promote the music ministry with young musicians as a way of drawing them into the ministry.  This will create a culture of inclusion where everyone can add their gifts to a ministry.  You also want to develop a culture where young people prepare for the Sunday mass during the week.  The Facebook group is one way of developing this culture.  An Intern will update the group page with links to the Sunday readings each week.  By providing links to Biblegateway.com the young people will become familiar with one tool that will help them study the Bible themselves.
3. What will you stop doing?  After months of social outings the Parish Priest feels this is distracting from the focus on the Youth Mass.  A culture has developed where people turn up sometimes and don’t RSVP at other times making events hard to plan.  Also people are choosing the social events yet say they don’t have any “spare time” for serving at the Youth Mass.  So the Youth Ministry will stop offering social activities on Friday nights and build a culture of staying after the Sunday night youth mass as a way of keeping the social connections.  The music ministry also decided that they will stop music rehearsal 30 minutes before the Sunday mass so that musicians can socialise with people arriving for Mass.  This will give space for CD music which will create a more vibrant atmosphere than the last minute practice.
4. Major on the Majors and Minor in the Minors.  After reflecting on your ministry, the Youth Ministry Team realise that the Youth Mass is important to the ministry, it is your Major.  The ministry team will work with the Interns to create a culture of service around the Youth Mass.  The attitude that you want to develop is that the Youth Mass is the high point of your ministry, not just something that we have to do.  So everyone in the ministry will place a major focus on building a culture of serving in the activities before, during and after the Youth Mass.  It is also important to develop a culture of invitation (Evangelisation) that encourages people to bring their friends to the youth mass not the social activities.  The social activities are a minor part of the culture so as a team you decide to reduce the emphasis on this for a few months.  The Interns suggest that the annual Christmas party be seen as a chance to celebrate the success of the youth ministry over the year.  This will be an “open mic” night where people share the stories of the year and the success of the ministry.

Now this is just one example of building culture.  In your ministry go beyond the programs you are offering to have a look at who you are as a ministry and what you are inviting new people to join.

Mark McDonald

Mark McDonald is the Diocesan Coordinator of Youth Ministry for the Diocese of Broken Bay.  You can follow Mark on twitter @mrmarkmcdonald

Creating critical mass

We have been reflecting on the role of culture in your ministry. Ministry culture is the way that the people in your ministry live their lives rather than the activities they engage in. As a leader you work hard to create the right ministry culture in your setting. The hope is that there would be a core group of people who live out the values and teaching of the Gospel in your ministry. Once you have this core group the culture of the ministry infects everyone because it is lived rather than taught. This core group becomes a critical mass through which the entire group is transformed.

Recently in the Broken Bay News, Bishop David Walker wrote an insightful article called “Living our Faith in a Mature Way”. There are a number of issues in the article which you should read, but the two sections quoted below link in with this discussion of ministry culture:

There are five million Catholics and millions of other Christians in our society today. Yet, our society does not feel, in a significant way, the love that God has shown us in Jesus. We have a majority of Christians in Australia, but our country is not a Christian society. Is the implication that we need more Christians? No! The implication is that we do not have a critical mass of disciples of Jesus that is capable of transforming our society. How do we achieve this critical mass? . . .

. . . To achieve the task outlined above, we need a critical mass of mature disciples of Jesus. This maturity is not simply achieved by going through the practices of our faith, but by a conscious and deliberate effort to work at transforming our own life by the power of the Gospel. The critical mass that we need is sufficient mature, committed disciples who can make the Gospel present effectively within our society. Then the power of the Gospel will be more operative and effective.

As a leader in your ministry you can only have so much influence. The key to making your ministry successful is to equip others with the Gospel values so that they can also influence others with the way they live their life. Your ministry culture the “conscious and deliberate effort” to pass on the values you want others to pick up. Your ministry should be an environment where people can transform their lives not just engage in a lot of Christian activity.

We hope that this series on Ministry Culture has helped you look at the lives of the people in your ministry, not just the activities you run. As an intern or ministry leader your focus should be on creating a culture of transformation rather than a culture that is driven by activity. We hope that this has assisted you to create a culture in your ministry where Gospel values are highly regarded and people feel loved by God.

Changing your ministry culture

Out the front of my house I have a five year old Japanese maple tree that is dying. After years of shaping, the tree used to look very beautiful but at the moment it is looking quite poorly. So I have a few options; pull the tree out or try my hardest to save the tree. If I decide to save the tree I would have to do some heavy pruning and recondition the soil. If I decide to replace the tree I will have to start from scratch again with a younger tree, spending time shaping it to the look I want. Both options are going to require hard work.

What if we look at ministry in the same way that we look at the dying Japanese maple? When a ministry is in its prime there is very little work require maintaining the ministry culture because everyone lives the vision. Last week we looked at building a ministry culture but what if your ministry culture starts “dying” or is heading in the wrong direction. Perhaps the culture in your ministry was better a few years ago when everyone seemed positive and energetic to see the ministry succeed. Perhaps your ministry has taken a few hits lately and people have developed a survival culture where they don’t try anything new.

So how can you deal with change in your ministry? How can you change the ministry culture in your environment to get it firing again? You have three options:

1. Do nothing: you always have the option of continuing the ministry in the way that it running at the moment. Every ministry goes through ups and downs and sometimes you just need to ride out the storm. Changing the culture of your ministry during a rough time may rob your people of the opportunity to learn the ministry survival techniques they need to last in ministry over the long haul.
2. Do some Pruning: perhaps the basics of your ministry are correct but the culture of the ministry went a little off course. Perhaps people became lazy and the culture turned from commitment to a culture that says “we’ll be ok”. Perhaps people lost sight of the vision and the culture of going through the motions developed. Some ministries have times when a lot of new people come into the ministry and the culture was never explained to them, so they picked up bad habits.

If you get to the pruning phase there is going to be some dead wood that needs cutting. Once you prune a tree it never looks the same again. It won’t be possible to get the same ministry culture that you had when you first started, but keep the best parts of that and remove the dying programs or activities. The positive side to pruning your ministry is that cutting back on the programs or activities give your team time to focus on new growth strategies.

3. Start fresh: there is something about a new ministry that gets people excited. Every ministry has a start and sometimes a ministry fails. Just like some trees, some ministries won’t grow again no matter how much hard work you put in. Sometime you need to let a ministry finish so that you can start a new ministry in its place. A fresh start is never easy; it involves:
1. Communication - you need to be very open in your communication so that people develop a culture of trust and inclusion.
2. Planning – you need time to create the new ministry culture, people need to own the new ministry, take time so they catch and live the new vision.
3. Prayer – remember that your ministry should give glory to God, so pray for direction and blessing from God.

Change is never easy, hearing how others have dealt with change helps. If you have tried to change the ministry culture in your parish let us know by leaving a comment.

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.

What is your Ministry Culture?

If “vision” is where your ministry is heading, then “culture” is the way your ministry is behaving. The culture of your ministry is lived by the people rather than the direction they are headed. The activities you as a group build the ministry culture but culture is in the people not the activities. So what do we mean by ministry culture?

Firstly we are talking about spiritual culture not pop/youth culture: Sometimes people think that youth ministry is built on the latest fad or being up to date with pop culture. For example, having a Facebook group may be a useful ministry tool but your youth ministry won’t grow just because you are on Facebook. We want to look at the spiritual culture in the lives of the people in your ministry.

Types of Ministry Culture: Let’s face it you ministry can’t do everything. When you take a particular focus in your ministry, the activities you choose develop a culture within the people. The old say “what you reward gets repeated” is true with ministry. Here are a few examples of how a particular focus can create a ministry culture:

1. Bible focus – groups that focus on the Scriptures develop a ministry culture that develops disciples who understand the Word of God. An example of a culture that develops when your ministry has a bible focus is that members bring their own bible to the meetings.
2. Discussion focus – groups that are based on discussion develop a culture where everyone wants their say. Usually discussion focused groups thrive on the culture of being known. An example of a discussion based culture is that people feel “ripped off” if they haven’t had a chance to say something during the meeting.
3. Prayer Focus – groups that focus on prayer can develop a more reflective culture. The prayer focus develops disciples who are open to God speaking to them in the silence. A prayer culture can develop around a ritual or series of prayers. An example of a culture that develops from a prayer focus is that the group will light a candle or have a “sacred space” or focal point in their meetings.
4. Charism Focus – often a group will develop its ministry culture around the particular charism of the ministry. A Legion of Mary group will have a devotional ministry culture and everyone will bring their rosary beads, that’s culture. A St Vinnies group will have an action based culture and include visitation as part of their program. A youth ministry such as Lifeteen will develop it’s culture around the Sunday Eucharist and Catechesis. Your ministry culture might be past down from a previous generation. A good indicator of this Charism based culture would be seen in things that you think are “normal” for Catholic’s but not many other people “do them”.

So what focus do you take in your ministry location? As an Intern or Ministry leader how is the focus you are taking creating a culture in the ministry? Your ministry culture may not be right or wrong, you just need to be aware of the culture you are developing. The key culture you want to develop is a focus on discipleship and a connection with the Church. In the book Essential Church, Thom Rainer states that young adults drop out of the Church because they don’t see a connection with Church as essential to their life. In your ministry are you creating a culture that helps young people to see the Church as essential in their lives?

Next week we will talk more about developing the culture, so until then reflect on the ministry culture in your location. Please leave a comment.