If you’re in youth ministry any length of time, you will begin to rack up “successes” and “failures”. These terms can encompass so many things from the excitement of the event, to whether students accepted Christ, to staying above budget. Almost any combination of these (and other) criteria can deem a certain event a success. Then you have events where nothing comes together and you’d have been better off sitting at home that evening (or weekend).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if something is a failure, it’s probably not a good idea to try it again, thinking it will be a success. A quote I picked up from pastor Daniel Henderson (and that I’ve seen on internet attributed both to Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein) is “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” That’s not too hard to grasp.

The incredibly frustrating thing, however, is when past successes are recreated, only to fall squarely in the “failure” category.

You remember all the planning details. You even make a few improvements. Tweak some things here and there, but overall, the spirit of the event is the same. And yet, it flops. How could this happen?

Rarely in life do so many variables exist than in youth ministry. Whenever you put something on, you have any number of kids with any number of different moods, tastes, circumstances, attitudes and a million other things. So the overall dynamic of a group will be inexorably different than that of another. Not only that, but each year, the group dynamic changes as kids graduate, new ones are added and those that remain espouse a completely revised collection of the previously mentioned attributes.

Two examples:

When I ministered in the junior high ministry at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, we held a New Year’s Eve party every year. The event was an all-nighter containing movies, games, ESPN Zone and whatever else we could think of, from ice skating one year to Dart Wars another. We started with 200 students one year and by the time we moved from McLean, the event was running 1,000 students between high school and junior high.

We tried the event at Grace Church, with reserved expectations. Of course, the first year of an event, you have to have realistic ones. We had about 200 high school and junior high, and the students seemed to enjoy it. So we brought it back a second year, and had half the number of high schoolers show.

Same story with our Dodgeball Tournament. The first year we had a success. Everyone loved it, kids brought tons of friends and it wasn’t a high cost event.

Second year running and we had less than half the attendance.

You can be sure I was reaching for every reason that could exist for the event going the way it did.

Could be things just changed. No reason. No rhyme. Just because.

So if you count repeat your successes and count on success, and you certainly can’t repeat your failures, what can you do?

Your best.

Related posts:

1. Autumn's Arrival
2. Long Trek North