What does it take to grow as a minister? How do you keep learning and developing the skills required for a changing world? How do you have enough left in the tank to share a little bit with the students you love and the adults you lead?
When I think about the best seasons of student ministry in my own life, they are connected to the amount of time I was willing to invest in prioritizing my own learning alongside the duties of the work required.
Here are some helpful (and alliterative) tools for thinking about your own growth as a lifelong pastor and leader.
Structure: Develop a larger framework for learning.
Learn something from everyone.
It’s really easy when you get excited about your own growth, learning, and development to dive head first into the top-selling leadership book, just hoping it has an answer for your plateau.
Don’t.
Don’t wait for the book to come out or a blog to get posted to answer the question you are facing. Keep perspective on what kind of problems you have and questions you need answered.
Always be looking for connections in what you are reading, hearing, and observing. Don’t just click, search, and scroll trying to solve this problem, but listen and learn for how some issues are interconnected. This might mean that you learn something new today that is really helpful for a future date. Lessons like, “ministry happens in cycles” can only be understood when you observe ministry in cycles. It takes time to map the terrain of leadership.
This is easier when…
You start to map out the big picture of what ministry looks like. Some folks might call this your ministry philosophy or your own personal vision of ministry. Whatever you call it, you need a map of what you are learning that is a growing topography of what you have learned from where you have been.
System: Have a system for capturing what you know.
Capture at least one thing from everything you are learning.
I love podcasts as a tool to learn (2x listen speed anybody?), but one issue with auditory learning is that it only engages one of my senses for recall. This means it is harder for me to remember exactly what I heard that moved me so deeply 5 weeks ago.
So.
You need a system.
You need a system for capturing at least some of what you are learning. It can be a notecard file system, Evernote folders, the Notes app on your phone, a stack of composition notebooks, or you can even write/highlight/annotate/flag the books you read, but there has got to be a system that makes it easy for you
Because if you aren’t capturing what you are reading, you are retaining less than 10% of what you are reading.
This is easier when…
You commit to a tool.
If you love clipping digital notes from your Kindle reads, great! Store them in one place digitally. If you love reading analog books, great! Mark them up with notes and flags so you can know that blue means discipleship. Or, if you really want to go deep, go old school and develop a note card file box. It’s one of the secret systems of great writers and thinkers. DM me if you are interested.
Squeeze: Learn everything about one thing.
Learn everything you can about one idea, person, place or event.
Deeply study a figure, author, thinker, or issue as deeply as you can for a season. I like to tackle a new theologian, thinker, or idea every quarter or so and absorb as much I as can about it/them.
Don’t just gloss over Spurgeon quotes on your phone—read a biography of the man and as many sermons as you can before you get conviction fatigue.
Don’t just hunt and peck for “correct Trinity metaphors”—dive into why that St. Patrick video is really funny and important.
This is easier when…
You make a syllabus for what you are going to learn and don’t let the newest release deter you from your project.
I try to buy books thematically (as of right now I am reading everything I can on Dallas Willard’s late life writings), this helps you stay focused and dive deep to perhaps learn things someone else has not. Or if you are listening to a podcast from a pastor you like, listen to them all!
Start at the beginning of their episodes and listen in on how they have grown over the years and check some of the dates of their episodes with happenings in current events or in their community/context. Don’t just hear what they said, but when, and why they said/shared it.
Commit this winter to an idea, topic, or person: buy 3 books, commit a couple afternoons of research, and write out a little bit of what you learned. Take all the tools from Bible college, seminary, or the school of hard knocks and formalize what you are learning for you!
Share: Teach someone one thing you are learning.
This is usually where our self-growth, training, and discipleship shows because there is nothing more difficult and more valuable than teaching what you have learned. It’s why a lot of us love doing ministry and why a lot of us need to commit more time into our own growth so we can trust that we have something to say that is not just new but transformative.
This is easier when…
You are prioritizing the work of structuring, squeezing, and systematizing what you are learning.
Be relentless in your own discipleship effort.
This post was written by Zac Workun. Zac serves as the Student Ministry Training Specialist for Lifeway and is one of the co-founders of Youth Ministry Booster, Lifeway Students’ collaboration and training network. He has served the local church in various youth ministry roles for over 15 years.
