5 things I did in Starting Over

For the past year I have been known as the “Family Guy” at New Life.  My job was to oversee the Youth and Children’s Ministries as well as being involved in the nZone making sure we strategize how we get families from the nZone to New Life.  Well, on Thursday, this “Family Guy” became the “Youth Guy” as our current Youth guy is no longer with us.  That means for the time being (however long that is), I was asked to take over the Youth Director position.  I am really excited about this opportunity but definitely not expecting this so here is what I did when I found out my new job:

1. Dusted off the old stuff.  Before I was the “Family Guy” at New Life, I spent 13 years in direct ministry of youth ministry.  So as I was trying to wrap my mind around turning around the youth program at New Life, I broke out all my old stuff to start brainstorming ideas on how to run the program.
2. Prayed!  I wish I could say that was my 1st thing, but my mind is crazy.  As my brain started getting overstimulated, I paused, and prayed.  I prayed for wisdom on how to lead the program and the students and families.
3. Contacted Key Parents and Students.  I let them know that I was now leading the program and I enlisted their help to get the youth program up and going as I shared the vision/direction I was taking the program in.
4. Started assessing where the program is at.  Even though I oversaw the Youth program as the “Family Guy”, I didn’t know exactly kind of cool “stuff” the youth had.  So I had to go around and figure out what we had and what we could use.
5. Contact and Meet with the Volunteer Leaders.  I wanted to get ahold of them, set up a time to meet and begin working together as a team.  This was the last thing I did as I waited for the previous youth director to send them a farewell email.  Once he sent the email, I immediately contacted the leaders to start the process of getting to know them and uniting them in the direction the youth program was going in.

Those were the top 5 things I did (and I’m sure I did a few things in between).  But what about you?  What would you do (or have you done) if you had to pick up a program and start over?  TAKE A MINUTE and share your thoughts, comments, questions or experiences so that we can all benefit.