In August I sent off for my first Blue Apron box. If you are not familiar Blue Apron sends a box of portioned ingredients for 3 meals. Once per week a box of vegetables, spices, meat and recipes came to our door. By following the recipes I madras some awesome, healthy meals and learned a lot about cooking. As I look back on the experience I realize that Blue Apron also taught me several lessons that I can apply to youth ministry.
1. Prepare Everything First
The first thing you do with every Blue Apron meal is prep. You are instructed get everything out for the recipe, and wash and cut all of the vegetables. This way when I cook I can focus on putting it together, adding ingredients at the right time, and everything times out correctly.
The same idea applies to your youth ministry program. Whether it is Sunday school, game night or weekly youth worship service, it pays to have everything ready to go before students arrive and you begin. In one of the DYM training videos, Josh Griffin at Download Youth Ministry talked about the 10 minute rule. Have all your copies made, slides created, game supplies ready, meal prepared or whatever you need for the event done at least 10 minutes ahead of time. This way you can spend time with students as they come, and you will not be scrambling to do things while the event is already in progress.
2. Timing is Everything
When I cooked before I never had a good sense of how to time a meal. My rice would be done, sitting on the stove getting cold while my chicken was still cooking. The recipes taught me that there is a specific order to do things, and if followed everything comes out, hot and ready at the same time.
In ministry timing is key as well. It is one element that we have begun to spend more time on in preparation for our Wednesday night program. With different elements of a program to be included, and often limited time, it is important to know how everything will time out, as close as possible that is. For instance we have an hour and a half on Wednesady nights. We know that we want to spend 30 minutes in small groups, and about 20 eating dinner. We also add 1 game, short worship and short message, including travel time. This means we are very deliberate about what games we play, making sure they are simple but fun. While the game is going on the youth band does sound check so that they are ready for worship.
3. Just Try It
I do not like beets. Yet one thing my wife and I decided when we began Blue Apron was that we would try everything just like the recipe called for. When the recipe that included beets came around I cringed. However, I prepared them as instructed, and added them on top of the chicken, rice and goat cheese. They were wonderful. They added just the right amount of citrus bite that pulled the meal together
If you have more than one volunteer or staff person, or even youth in your ministry, there will be beets. That is, there are things others suggest that you do, that you will not prefer. It might be a song to sing, or a game to play. You may try it and it may not work out. You may also find that the thing you thought you would not like, adds just what was needed for the program or the adult that drives you up the wall may speak the perfect word at the right time to that one student.
4. Take a Break
Summer is a busy time for me with youth events, retreats and mission trips. We will be taking a few months off of Blue Apron. This means we will spend some time going back to some old recipes we used to do often, and finding new ones, as well as trying to recreated some of our Blue Apron favorites.
Summer offers the same opportunity for our youth ministry. We stop our weekly Mid Week worship and small groups, and opt for smaller, more relational weekly events like poolside Bible studies. Our Sunday evenings become filled with group games, bonfires and movie nights. It gives us a chance to reconnect as a group, spend more intentional time building relationships and try some new things.
It’s interesting to me how much I have been able to apply about my lessons learned doing Blue Apron, to my ministry.
What lessons have you learned from something in your daily life that apply to youth ministry?
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