Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my own personal comfort level. I write this as I sit in an office surrounded by books on a really nice computer. Today I received a paycheck which is always nice. One of my sons had to go to the doctor yesterday so I was grateful for the medical insurance that comes with my job.  I really enjoy the comfort’s that my job provides to me.

I’ll be honest too in saying that I’m probably not really innovative.   Yes we are doing great things here and I love my church and our youth ministry staff team. But, we’re not at work 7am-7pm trying to keep things afloat.  We don’t feel a huge amount of pressure or need to create something that is hugely successful or even sustainable. We have budgets to cover the costs of things.

In the geek side of my life I like to read a lot about technology and am always fascinated by startup companies that come up with ideas and go “all out” to try and make things happen.  When I watched the “Social Network” I was enthralled by all the late nights and dedication he put into developing “The Facebook.”

So how do we get innovative? 

Recently a couple friends of mine started something that I’m super impressed with.  And it’s not what they are doing that is so impressive but they way they are doing it.

The Youth Cartel started by Mark Oestreicher and Adam Mclane is a new thing. And it’s a fledgling start-up with a bunch of cool things on the horizon. But, they are doing everything in a new way that is in part encouraged by what I called “forced Innovation.”  Since they don’t have the luxury anymore of working for big churches or companies they have to be out there on the edge making things happen. This last couple weeks I was super impressed with how they were planning “Extended Adolescence Symposium” they are planning on doing in Atlanta November 21.  When they first started planning this event they basically were honest and said they had no money and the only way for this thing to work was if people sponsored it, bought into the kickstarter mindset and as a community made it happen. I think they had to raise $6,000 and at the time of this writing they’ve raised over $8,000.  There were different ways of supporting them all the way from being a full sponsor and getting to hawk your stuff to the group to just paying $250 to have lunch with one of the speakers or paying a little bit more to get an e-book and audio of the event.  Brilliant stuff I think and super innovative.  Great reward of pulling off something cool but little risk since they were raising the money before hand and if it wasn’t raised they couldn’t cancel without any problems.

Who knows how this thing will end up with those two but if the present is any indication of the future promise I’m looking forward to seeing.

There’s a lot of need for innovation in the Youth Ministry world now. I’m hearing quite a bit that Youth Specialties is going to be rolling out a new vision and plan this fall and I’m excited for that. I’m a fan of Mark Matlock and Doug Fields and the rest of their team.  This is a good season to be a youth worker and I’m hoping that with all of this going on that more of us get creative, innovative and strategic.

Maybe the biggest problem with me right now is my comfort level. Maybe I’d get a lot more done and be way more innovative if I was desperate. I don’t know if that’s the case but I think on one level it has to be true.

I was with a group of youth workers today in Dallas at something we called the "Unconference" which was basically just a time of prayer, dreaming and talking about Youth Ministry without any paid experts in the room or any venders present.   The goal was to engage the youth ministry community of Dallas (and a few people who flew in) to see what topics we needed to talk about and just jump in.    The format was to allow for 4  one hour long conversations about topics  that were brought by the participants. 

I was fully prepared for us to talk about Dallas and dreams for youth ministry and had my standard "If we could dream big and money was not an option what would we do" idea when someone flipped it around on me.  In one of our discussions my friend  Mark Riddle encouraged me to think about what it would look like to give students the freedom to dream. All of the sudden a switch flipped in me when I realized that I hadn't asked any students what their dreams were in a long time.   It would change my role to not be in charge but to instead be  put in the position of helping to empower them dream bigger and make their dreams happen. 

David Grant the Youth Pastor at Irving Bible Church told a story about how some girls in his group were given the freedom to dream big and they decided one day that they were going to make a 700+ sandwiches to give away to a homeless ministry.  One of the girls called him and asked for his credit card so that they could go and buy the supplies to get this project going.  He gladly handed over his card and supported something that involved a bunch of students showing up at his church one afternoon to make sandwiches. 

Are you willing to do hand an 11th grade girl your credit card?  

We talk all the time about discipling and growing students closer to the LORD but I don't always feel like I do a very good job of providing them resources to take some of their dreams and make a reality.  

So here's my challenge today.  Think about what it would look like to both challenge your students to dream bigger and how you can provide them the resources to make those dreams happen.  Maybe you are like me and  haven't created a culture of that in your youth ministry.  Maybe your first step is to give them opportunities to dream and share those dreams.  If that's the case start there.  

I think teenagers are pretty amazing and have great ideas.  Sometimes they have crazy ideas but those are often fun too.  Our job needs to be helping to encourage and to release dreams.  

We are often the keepers of the keys to make dreams a reality.  Are you wiling to make things messy in order to lovingly make those dreams come real?  

Christian Endeavor and organization with the longest roots in youth ministry that I know of has taken on this challenge at the core of who they are.  Tim Eldred recently published a book called the "4 Hour Youth Ministry: Escaping the trap of full-time youth ministry" which I think shoves us in this direction.  He is passionate about releasing students to be leaders and to engage them in real activities with meaning not just entertain them with Youth Ministry Games.  I've had some opportunity to sit with Tim and have been very impressed with the team he's put together, the complete overhaul of that organization and the focus that they have to empower students.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what they are going to lead us to in the future and think you should check out some links and get to know them.