Creating Culture

Some things are worth the pain in the beginning when compared with the outcome. Sometimes God gives you a vision for something that seems impossible. Sometimes you and I just need to be willing to create the culture. This can be a lengthy and hard process. But the end results are worth the investment at the beginning. 

Early on in student ministry there were 2 things that I remember having really clear vision on, but had no idea how to effectively build them. 

Student Leadership – Is a thriving element of our student ministries to this day. 

In fact, over the years we have seen hundreds of students come up through our student leadership, many of them have gone on into full time ministry and leadership roles. Roughly 25% of our students are actively engaged in student leadership. If you were to walk into a youth service you would see that most of the worship team, production team, the emcees, the greeters, small group leaders, etc… are highly led by students. 

However, the healthy thriving student leadership team that is today was preceded by a lot of blood, sweat and tears! We had to create the culture and that takes a lot of time and energy. 

Student Worship Teams – So, a couple years into launching the church I had a vision to do something I had never seen anyone do and honestly thought was a bit crazy. I thought… What if we started a middle school led worship team? The early days of launching this team was painstaking to say the least. A lot of hours were invested. A lot of hard conversations were had. A lot of awkward moments in service happened. But the end result was well worth it!! Because we created a culture of students leading worship. Years later this has become one of the main pipelines for our main stage worship teams. And many of these students have been hired to be worship leaders. 

Creating a culture usually requires a significant commitment from us. We have to be willing to invest the time, energy and resources into it, but in my experience it’s worth it! 

Matt Moore

Pastor & Author of Intentional Youth Ministry