What is a Vision?

I may be a complete twit, but I had no idea what on earth people were talking about when they said you needed a vision for your youth group. I’m a Mum with 6 kids so my vision is to get through the day alive.

But my massive learning curve has taught me a vision is the direction in which you want your youth group to go… and grow.

 It’s a simple sentence or statement, that kind of lines of all the thinking of the leadership team into the same direction. It is useful for checking if the activities and events that you participate in are helping or harming your direction.

For example, Our churches vision is “Loving God, loving people, loving life.” So if a pastor is bringing a sermon, he makes sure its in line with this vision. If someone applies for a specific financial request, if it doesn’t fall into the vision, its not going to happen.

We wanted a vision for our youth that contributed to our churches vision, but that gave us our own direction as well. Youth for us is an outreach, specifically to connect with unchurched kids and bring them closer to God. We wanted it to not be about a great program, but about a great God.

So we decided our vision for Youth@theShed is “To make disciples, who make disciples”.

When I was praying about it, I felt God asking me to move beyond seeking kids to pray a prayer of commitment, but to seek lives who sought God and his purposes for their own lives and the lives of others. It fits nicely in with the verse known as the “Great Commission”

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” Matthew 28:19.

It really has helped. If someone suggests we go to a combined youth event for the third time that term, it has allowed me to say no. If someone asks me why Im not doing an altar call every week, its allows me to explain our relationship approach. If im considering spending a whole lot of money on an outreach event, I make sure its based in loving those who don’t know him, instead of just a raw gospel. If a connect group is flourishing and growing, I want to make sure its growing towards our vision, not just in number.

I know this might not be your approach, and that’s ok. Yours might be more about speaking the truth of the gospel directly into your kids. It might be more about developing a passion for righteousness. It might be about transformation of your kids, or about kids committing to Christ. But a vision is really a great thing to have for your ministry. Its kind of grown on me. So get together with god, ask him to show you what he wants for your youth, and speak it our regularly to your leaders and members. It’s a really good road sign on the way to ministry success.