When cliques battle in your girls ministry

Jun 20, 2009 by     No Comments    Posted under: Featured, Girls Ministry, Mentoring, volunteers

Clusters aren’t bad. It speaks to our longing for community. We desire to be with people that are like us…that get us…that we can relate to. Why? Because we all want to be known. That’s why Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 139 speaks so deeply to each of us…God knows the plans and purposes He has for us. He knew us before we were even breathed our first breath of air.
We want to be known.

It’s when the clusters we choose to be in become our identity and even change the way we think and act. It’s when they begin to battle against other clusters that we have to step in and help students understand that the cluster has become unhealthy.

So what do you do when you have two groups of girls that are battling each other?

I had a chat with our pastoral care minister awhile ago and he had some amazing insights that I think would be great to pass along to you.

I have had groups not get along before…typically they are middle school girls. When this happens, I will usually address each group separately and then eventually bring the groups together. Sometimes, it is a little miscommunication that is causing a rub between the two groups. However, there are times when two groups really just don’t get along and begin to act on it. At this point, the groups move into something called GROUP THINK.
If I were to sit the two groups down, they may tell me what I want to hear but there will be no breakthrough.
I discovered from our pastoral care minister that the girls who were a part of these two groups may not really want to act the way they are but they also don’t want to lose the comfort, community, and safety of The GROUP…so they begin to put aside their individual responses and think the way THE GROUP would think.

It is when this begins to happen that it is important to help restore the individual’s ability to think, act, and feel.
One way of doing this is to bring a girl from each group together to have a conversation where the GROUP is not able to tell her how to think, act, and feel. Each girl has to do that for themselves. Allow each girl to share how they have felt when the other group behaved a certain way about them. This will help each of the girls begin to have some empathy and realize that their actions have an impact. Allow the conversation to progress so that the girls have an opportunity to make a difference. End the conversation with the girls determining consequences for when they themselves behave a certain way against the other group. This will hopefully allow the two girls to begin to work together to bring about a change for good.

Hopefully this will be helpful for you when some groups are having a hard time understanding how their words and actions are impacting other girl groups in your student ministry. And thanks to my pastoral care minister for working with me to think through some action plans.

How to get people to “join the dance” of girls ministry

Jun 12, 2009 by     No Comments    Posted under: Girls Ministry

This past week I ran across a youtube video that was being discussed on Seth Godin’s website. He was discussing this video in the context of tribes. As I watched it, I couldn’t help but see girls ministers. Sure the video starts with one crazy dancing guy. Then finally another crazy guy joins him. It takes about a minute before a 3rd crazy dancing guy joins…but this guy is when a spontaneous movement begins. As you watch this video, see the beginning of a movement take shape, and then I want to begin a conversation about how we invite people to “join the dance” of girls ministry.

So as you watched this video, maybe you feel like the 1st guy…God has completely caught your heart and planted the vision for girls ministry in you but no one around you is joining you or supporting you. But you just keep on dancing.

For you that are reading this and feel like the crazy dancing guy…I want to tell you to keep dancing and pray that God will send you some other people that share the mission and vision of helping teenaged girls and families of teenaged girls. Pray that God will send you someone else to “dance it out”.

Imagine how that crazy dancing guy felt when his passion caught the attention of someone else. All of a sudden, he wasn’t alone anymore. YOU NEED ANOTHER CRAZY DANCING GUY! In fact, you need to surround yourself with them. Start sharing the mission and call that God has placed on your heart with friends and family. Share your prayers for girls in your church with your pastors, your youth minister, your women’s minister. Usually, when someone does this in our church, they get pointed to me—why? because people have heard my heart for girls ministry so much that they know this person and I belong with each other because we’re dancing the same dance.
So keep on dancing, but don’t try to do it on your own. You will tire and quit the dance. You need a dance mob—not a spotlight.

Finally a 3rd dancer joins after about a minute. And when he joins, something happens—the movement really begins. People rush from all areas of the place to get involved and join the dance. So in this analogy—whose your 3rd dancer? When I watch this video I can’t help but think that God is the 3rd dancer. I’m so guilty of forgetting that God created the dance…and I often times leave Him sitting on the sidelines…I sometimes think that my frantic dancing will be enough to get a movement started. All it will do will burn myself and my 2nd crazy dancer to a tired mess.

I wish that girls ministry and movements in general happened as fast as this…and then again–I know that the infrastructure to continue to grow is important to build in order to support all that God wants to do. God knows and will provide the infrastructure of leaders and parents if we continue to rely on Him and include Him in the dance. Perhaps I’m being overly spiritual with this video but I know from our own experience with girls ministry that movements of leaders and depth within our students truly begins and expands when we lay our plans before God and ask that He move in the hearts of girls…parents…and leaders.

My prayer is that girls ministers everywhere would keep dancing even though sometimes they may feel alone. No matter what happens…keep asking God to send people your way and just be prepared that when the crowd comes…they may not be what you expected and they may not dance where you want them to dance…but ask God to help shape you to be the girls minister He needs in order to grow a meaningful movement that truly nurtures teenaged girls to be healthy women now so they are not broken later.

Now get to dancing!

Twilight wins MTV best movie. Check out the New Moon trailer.

Jun 1, 2009 by     No Comments    Posted under: Featured, Girls Ministry, Pop Culture, Twilight

Keeping you up to date on the Twilight happenings. If you want to see the trailer for the new movie, here it is.  We’ll be sure to give you a girlsminister.com review on book 2 before the movie so you can be ready to discuss before 11.20.09.