3 Next Gen Leadership Shifts Needed When We Re-open
Style and technology have shifted over my nearly 20 years being involved in youth ministry either as a student or a leader/pastor. But to be honest not much else has changed. The “cool” youth pastor has always kind of been the charismatic guy or girl who dresses a little trendy, has the coolest new boots, and is maybe half a step ahead of the curb on technology and more recently social media. But generally, the typical leadership style has orbited around the ability to get engagement from a stage or in some cases a social media platform, it has been very much personality driven. Success was often measured by how many students you can get in your audience at once. But now things have shifted. I believe the church will never and should not look the same. In the same way, the skills and abilities of leaders will need to shift as well.
Here are 3 leadership qualities that will be needed to thrive when church opens up again.
1. Online Assimilation Planning.
If your YouTube video looks like I was filmed by Christopher Nolan, but no kids connect into community it isn’t worth much. The same way that if your in-person Sunday is amazing but nobody ever joins a small group or takes a next step in faith it also isn’t worth much. The best leaders in our post Covid-19 reality will be able to design an online assimilation plan. I always like to draw the picture of getting people across a river as a metaphor for an assimilation plan. Each event or program is a steppingstone across. How do you move people from digital services and fun content to community, to faith? It likely will look different to each group, but each group needs to develop a plan. What does that journey look like for your in-person youth experience? And then along with that how does that journey look online? At what point does the online and in person experience intersect? These are all important questions for leaders to be thinking of in the weeks and months to come as we re-open society.
2. Change in the Metrics of Success.
“How many kids are at your Friday night?” This is a typical question that youth pastors will ask each other. Our weekly attendance is a measurement used from Sunday morning to our youth small groups. Even before Covid-19 we saw spotty attendance at youth due to sports and dance events. We are going to need to get more creative in how we measure the success of our youth groups. Your weekly event matters, but I would be more concerned about how many students you have in a month than per week, and then be able to track the students that attend multiple times per month. In depth analytics will help get first time visitors to return, and help you target which students may be falling off. A youth group may only have 30 students coming out on a week, but if each week 20 of those students are new and you keep 10 the same, you may have an orbit of influence of 110 unique students. Knowing that information is key to goal setting and resource allocation. You also will need to put equal value into your online space. Zoom small groups and social media views also will need to fit into your metrics as we now know online is here to stay, it is more than supplementary, it’s one of the greatest tools to develop in the last 20 years.
3. Ability to Drive Everything to Community.
Good news and bad news. The good news is there is unlimited quality resources out there for your students, from worship sets to sermons and animated videos quality teaching material is very easy to access. The bad news is that your cool sermon and awesome service may not be as needed. There will always be a space for you as a student’s pastor to speak a message and be a key teacher in a student’s life. But what if instead of spending as much time on stage design and some well-formed one liners for your Friday night message. You spent more time and less energy making an efficient but effective digital message online and spent more time partnering with parents and investing in your leadership team around you. What if you only met in person every second week for a worship service, and the other weeks you were all online. Would more kids connect? What would it really hurt? Are you pushing back in your mind right now because it wont work? Or because its not what you are comfortable with? Nothing great ever grew from a state of comfort.
What have you learned during COVID-19 that you will bring back with you?
Jeff Kiers is passionate about finding creative ways to communicate the gospel to traditionally unchurched demographics.