Mega Church

I have a Cadre friend transitioning to youth pastor position at a mega church. He asked for some advice. I didn't reflect too long on my email, but here were some of my thoughts off the top of my head. I did a lot of things well, but some of this stuff I figured out late in the game. I hope he picks it up quicker.

1. Remember everyone is your friend, even if you don't connect well with them … one day you’ll need them. (Ok, so that goes with any job)

2. Don’t tick off housekeeping. Just like in small churches, they are a significant decision-maker in the mega church too. Fortunately at Granger, we had the most incredible housekeeping team on the planet ... seriously, they were amazing.

3. Listen again to the Cadre conference call with Senior Pastor Sam Mayo and do everything he says to do for your senior pastor. (Sorry, most of my readers aren't privy to it. It was really good. I just wished I'd heard it ten years ago).

4. Love EVERYONE well (once again, even the ones you don’t have anything in common with). They are all probably running way too hard and fast. Staff growth in mega churches does not usually keep up with numerical growth. Your encouraging words could be all they need to go another leg of the journey.

5. Every chance you get, tell stories of what’s going on in the youth ministry. Numbers are great, but life change stories are better.

6. Work like a dog six days a week, but keep your Sabbath and family a priority. If you do that right, favor will follow.

7. Find your coaches. I had 100 leaders on the roster, with 80 showing up every week. The majority of my time was spent with 12 of them, two groups of six. One was a younger group and one was older. It kind of happened by accident, but I would be strategic about it if I had to do it all over again. Most of them were the leaders of leaders (aka coaches). Then I had another dozen or so “up and comings” that would get some of my time as well, but not as much as the first twelve.

8. I did everything in my power to talk “family” with my leaders. Sometimes in mega churches there is not a real sense of family because of the difficulty in connecting. However, if you can create a “family” environment with your youth group leaders, it will carry them through the valleys of life and ministry ... and create that "small" feel that people often long for.

9. Provide perks for leaders every chance you get. For example, provide awesome childcare for their little ones during youth service. Even if the leader doesn’t want to show up one night, if their kid loves childcare they will beg them to come. Also, if you run a café like we did, give them a couple of free items a night. I would give mine three, the equivalent of $1.50 - $2.50. We would also have incredible food during our leaders meetings.

10. Find ONE person who is trustworthy to vent to (Wayne Cordeiro called them a lightning rod). Don’t vent to your leaders. Don’t vent to your husband/wife if he/she can’t maintain confidentiality. I know way too many people who shared stuff with the wrong person, who in turn vomitted it onto others ... only to have it come back around and bite the leader.

Have a safe trip my friend.
Judy

Oh yeah, number 11. Mega churches typically do a thousand things right and a dozen things wrong. However, because sometimes those dozen things seem glaring, people tend to park on them … help refocus their vision.