Correcting Mission Drift
This month’s emphasis is aimed to help you lead your ministry more effectively. The summer is a natural time to evaluate and refocus, and we want to help you with that! Read our other articles on Leadership in Youth Ministry.
I remember one time, while hiking in the woods as a teenager, I lost my bearings. My pulse started to race as I thought about all the terrible “lost in the woods” stories I’d heard. But then I remembered something important — I’d been attending this camp for as long as I could remember. I knew these woods, surely there will be a familiar mark if I stopped and looked carefully. So that’s what I did, and within the next hour I was able to find my bearings and get back to camp. If I kept charging forward, I would’ve unintentionally gotten myself more lost.
People don’t get lost on purpose. Ministries don’t either. Usually, it happens one good ministry opportunity at a time, incrementally leading you away from the vision you have painted onto the wall. What you should do next is what most people who are lost should do: stop, look around, pay attention, and remember where you were trying to go.
Stop
This is hard. If you never stop then you are never going to realize you’re lost. C.S. Lewis’ saying from Mere Christianity about progress is instructive here:
“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."
What do I mean by “stopping?” I mean taking a short break from the busyness of ministry to intentionally evaluate where you are and where you are headed. You’ll probably still have your core programs running, but a focused time like this can allow you time to invest in relationships and see what others are noticing about the youth ministry.
Stopping is especially difficult when ministry seems to be going well. Attendance may be up. Volunteers and parents may be happy with the ministry. Things are comfortable, so why rock the boat by stopping to evaluate mission or vision?
Look Around
When you stop, what should you do? You should “look around” to get the lay of the land. Do this by asking a few key questions:
What are the peaks? These are high points in your ministry that are going well and bearing fruit in line with your vision.
What are the valleys? These are areas in your ministry that consume a lot of time attention or resources, but they aren’t really bearing fruit.
What are the fields? These are areas in ministry that are simply “there.” They’re neither peaks nor valleys, but may be meaningful places for rest and recreation.
What is the climate? Are there factors to consider in the church, your community, the schools, or relational issues within your group culture? These all factor into the way you carry out your vision.
Pay Attention
I got scared when I was lost in the woods because I didn’t even know I was drifting. Stopping and looking around enabled me to see the high points and shape of the hills, which enabled me to roughly estimate the general direction I should take.
Similarly, mission drift can happen without you noticing. “Mission drift” is when a ministry or organization has a clear mission, but they slowly begin giving their time and attention to initiatives that do not explicitly lead to the fulfillment of that mission.
Here are two common examples that I’ve struggled with in my own ministry:
“Hanging out” with students who are spiritually hardened, while rarely initiating any spiritual conversations with them. Meanwhile students who are spiritually curious are marked as “healthy” get very little one-on-one mentoring.
Hosting lots of games nights to foster an atmosphere of joy where they can invite their friends. Meanwhile there’s “no time” for a deeper discipleship group for students who are either wrestling with doubt or who want to grow in their knowledge of Scripture.
Your desire to say, “But that’s not all bad!” about these examples is my point. Good youth pastors hang out and play video games with students, and game nights infuse joy into your ministry culture. Mission drift doesn’t happen through bad or fruitless ministry. It happens right under our noses, when we focus our efforts on good things at the expense of the ministry’s core mission. Don’t stop meeting with students or playing games, but resist the temptation to allow these things to overtake your core vision. If we aren’t paying attention to our mission and vision then we’ll become blinded to the ways we’ve drifted from them.
Remember Your Vision
This is where teaching and leadership come into play. It’s good to take time with your trusted volunteers and parents to have an invite-only discussion about the ministry (and it may be wise to mix up who’s invited to this meeting each year, to avoid favoritism and echo-chambers).
During this conversation, it’s important to clearly cast the vision for your ministry: Why does your ministry exist? How do you know if you’re successful and healthy? What are you hoping to see in these students over the next two, five, ten years, and how are you setting them on that trajectory today?
You need to be able to clearly teach from Scripture about the mission of youth ministry, and to anchor everything you’re doing in God’s calling for the church and parents to raise up the next generation in the fear of God. If you don’t have a biblical foundation for your ministry then everything is open for debate and will be determined by the most passionate or charismatic personality in the room. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to biblical youth ministry, but there are loads of unbiblical and pragmatic approaches to guard against.
Notice that by “teaching” I haven’t yet mentioned teaching during youth group meetings. Your priority is to teach leaders and parents about the mission of youth ministry. It is helpful to occasionally teach in youth group about the mission and purpose of the ministry so they can see why the ministry is structured and carried out the way it is.
Correcting Mission Drift
The way you correct mission drift depends on how far you’ve drifted.
Slight mission drift can likely be corrected with a few conversations among your leadership team. Together, you can identify where and why you’ve drifted and discern how to get back on track. This will probably mean you make a few small changes here and there, but it won’t be too costly.
Moderate mission drift will take more time. If you have stopped, looked around, paid attention, and notice that you’re more off-course than you realized, then it would probably be wise to invite your core leadership team to do the same thing. If you simply take your observations and solutions to them, then it can lead to shock and possibly even hurt. Some key leaders over the areas you’re labeling “drift” may feel accused of misleading the ministry, and they’ll be grieved that you don’t value what the Lord is doing through there are a of responsibility. Instead, be honest and vulnerable about what led you to evaluate, share a few general observations, and then lead them into a season where you can allow them evaluate things as well… in order that you can remember your mission and correct the drift together.
Significant mission drift is costly and painful to correct. Often, this has happened across your church, not only in the youth ministry, which complicates things. You’ll want to ask for time with your senior pastor to walk him through your process, being very careful to avoid finger-pointing or blame-shifting. This may even lead to conversations with an Elder board or Vestry, to discuss and pray together about how to resolve the drift — or if this is genuinely a change in the church’s mission that you can’t get on board with. This type of drift didn’t happen overnight and it won’t be corrected overnight, either. It’s also good to remember it took you a long time to identify the drift, so don’t be frustrated if others don’t recognize it immediately. Correcting it will likely feature regular conversations with various groups of leaders (elders, youth leaders, parents, and students) and patiently making changes over the course of 1-3 years.
Evaluating your ministry is hard on multiple levels. It’s hard personally, because we can feel like failures and fools. It’s hard relationally, because it requires trust to have these conversations without accusation or defensiveness. It’s hard spiritually, because we either see the ways God has worked through programs we need to change or because we feel like God hasn’t been at work anywhere. Be patient and gracious towards others and yourself. Lead well, but remember that your hands aren’t so strong as to guarantee the future of the church nor too weak as to usher in its demise. After all, if God can speak through Balaam’s donkey to accomplish His purposes, then He can use our ministries despite the mission drift we’ve experienced.
