Tyler Lane is the NextGen Pastor at Valley Real Life Church in Spokane, Washington. With over 13 years of youth ministry experience, he has a lot of great things to say about the world of youth ministry. In this episode we will dive into the daunting, but so important task of equipping students to live a life of Kingdom Work!
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Tyler Lane is the NextGen Pastor at Valley Real Life Church in Spokane, Washington. With over 13 years of youth ministry experience, he has a lot of great things to say about the world of youth ministry. In this episode we will dive into the daunting, but so important task of equipping students to live a life of Kingdom Work!
Here's how you can connect with us:
As always, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It also helps us out if you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and send this episode to a friend!
Hello, this is Brad Warren and you are listening to Beyond the Event, a youth ministry podcast presented by Christ in Youth, where we help you maintain momentum between the mountaintops Getting real close to summer. Guys, I want you to know we can still get you plugged in at Move. We can still get you plugged in at Mix, so if you're not already registered, let me know how we can help make that happen. Engage if you want to start having conversations about going on Engage trips in 2025 yes, that is a real year in 2025 we can start having those conversations right now too. We love the church. We love serving you guys. So if there are any obstacles that we can help you overcome when it comes to getting you to our events and on our trips, please just let us know. We really relish and look forward to the chance to serve you. Can't wait for that to happen this summer as well.
Speaker 1:Well, on today's episode, we have a great conversation planned for you. We're going to be talking to Tyler Lane. Tyler is the next generation team lead at Valley Real Life Church, which is in Spokane, washington. It is pronounced Spokane I did learn that today. Washington it is pronounced Spokane. I did learn that today. So Tyler's been at it for a long time. He's been at Valley Real Life for about seven years, been in youth ministry for about 15. So he's got a lot of great wisdom and I'm really looking forward to you hearing what he has to say. So let's head over to my conversation with Tyler. Tyler, thank you so much for coming and being on Beyond the Event. Glad you're here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I would imagine that um I always I people have yelled at me for how I say the word for so long. Say the city that you're in Spokane, spokane. So I'm not allowed to say Spokane is the thing.
Speaker 2:No, the E is unnecessary. Okay, spokane, all right, tell me about Spokane, washington, today never mad when we have winters or we don't have a ton of snow, yeah, um, so it's, it's gonna get up to the 50s today. Well, sunny, okay.
Speaker 1:Um, it's like the first time we've seen sun in a few weeks, but so we're gonna let that set the tone for this, this podcast, and not okay, not joplin world, okay, which? So you're not from there. Where are you from?
Speaker 2:So I was born and raised in Oklahoma yeah, um, still water Oklahoma and then went to Ozark and then went uh, was a pastor at a church in the Bay area of California for about five years before moving up here to Spokane seven years ago.
Speaker 1:So tell me about Spokane, especially coming from, you know, oklahoma, oklahoma, joplin, I feel like pretty similar in line like culture wise. Um yeah, What'd you have to get used to moving out, moving out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, probably the most important part of that journey, though, uh, for me was my five-year stop, uh, in the Bay area of California. Um, because there's there's very few worlds that are as different between, like, the Joplin Oklahoma world and the Bay area, um, and so incredibly diverse, incredibly fast paced, incredibly expensive. All of these things, some of the things we really like, some of the things we prefer not to have, yeah, and so when we moved up to spokane, we really didn't know. I didn't know anything about it. I knew gonzaga was here and that was it. You know, like, um, I like you didn't know how to pronounce it. You know all those things and so, um, but what we've, what we found, is it feels like this mesh of kind of the West Coast influence, but still heavily family-centric, and so most people, when they think of Spokane, I tell people I'm from Washington, they think of Seattle, or they think of Northwest, they think of Portland, you know that type of stuff, and so the East side of Washington is a completely different world than the West side of Washington, and so, uh, incredibly family centric, um, much more conservative, um, and uh, yeah, so, uh, you know, north Idaho is as conservative as they get.
Speaker 2:We're our church is 10 miles from the Washington Idaho border and Seattle's as liberal as it gets and we're kind of like right in the middle there, and so it's kind of the things we've loved about growing up my wife and I both grew up in Oklahoma, the things we loved about Oklahoma and the things that we loved about living in California. But they kind of mesh into kind of this nice little cozy town. I describe Spokane as like the largest small town. There's 250,000 people that live in this area but man, it feels like everybody knows everybody and they have weird customs and stuff like that. So yeah, that's how I describe it.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people who do ministry on the West Coast describe like this like in the Midwest we're very much starting to deal with like a post-Christian kind of thing, you know what I mean, where a lot of parents and grandparents that grew up in the church but are no longer involved in the church or having kids that really have no memories of the church but those older generations kind of do, and I feel like a lot of people that I talk to out in the West Coast very much more unchurched is how they would describe it. So which of those worlds are you living in?
Speaker 2:Or is it kind of both? It's kind of both, I mean, I think. I think at the core, both of them are de-churched in a lot of ways, like it's just a dependent on like how many generations removed from the church experience, right. Like most of the people that we like Spokane one is like ethnically the least diverse place I've ever lived. It's like 98% white, including Missouri.
Speaker 2:Yeah, including shopping, and so um, yeah, so um. But the diversity comes in. There's a huge, uh like Slavic Russian population, uh, in Spokane, because the climate is apparently the same, and so they kind of come over and they don't like Seattle, so they just keep going, uh. And so what I've learned in seven years is like Russian people, ukrainian people, they have a deep religious heritage and so that there are several Slavic churches here, and so I think that kind of allows for that. But then so you've got that heritage, you've got the de-churched, you know, just like I'm just living kind of my own life, I just want to do my own thing. Church is maybe a part of my family's history, but not necessarily mine, and then the Mormon church is huge here, huge here, yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess you're not that far from like the Salt Lake area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just go, like Utah, straight up to Boise Boise is huge in the Mormon population and just kind of come straight up there and so um. So I would say honestly that that's one of the things like every week at our youth group. We have a handful of Mormon kids that'll come with their friends or whatever, and so kind of informing like, hey man, what are these differences, how are they, how are we similar but how are we different in very key ways and what do those relationships look like? Seems to be kind of a hot issue, but I would say most of the people we're seeing their family history has some type of church background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like how far back do you have to go in order to get?
Speaker 2:there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So where has Valley Real Life found its kind of niche within all of that Like, who are you seeing that you're having success kind of reaching and resonating with there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our kind of our big thing right now is just like if we left the community, like if our church shut down, would the community even know we were here and um, as we went into covid uh, you know, several years ago I guess, like four years ago um, that was kind of this sentiment that we were like starting to really have this conversation about and it kind of led us through covid, it's led us out of covid, um about like how can we be intentional in the community? And so at the youth ministry side, for me it's like how do I invest in my leaders to go be in the community? One of the things we found success with is we just like rearranged some of our budget and said, okay, man, schools here, schools here were hit really hard because of COVID, and so and so, and can I interrupt you really quick, in what way do you mean like, yeah, so we didn't.
Speaker 2:When we shut down in march of 2020, our students at like the high school level and middle school level did not go back in person until April of 2021.
Speaker 1:My gosh.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so they did some varying levels of like online whatever, but like Right.
Speaker 1:But, the social consequences of that are just like unreal.
Speaker 2:Huge and like that's. That's been one of our biggest challenges coming out of COVID is man. A lot of these age groups lost an entire year of that social development, that educational development. I talk with teachers a lot, talk with parents a lot of just like man. The classroom management is the hardest aspect coming out of that, because for a year they could just turn their camera off and just say they were listening, and as long as they're turning their stuff in, that was fine. And so now to come back and try to manage, manage them. We see that at our midweek program um, like our middle schoolers are just like wild right now, like just wild and um, but you're starting to learn man, like at a very key part of their development, uh, developmental stages, it was like interrupted and for an entire year press pause for a year.
Speaker 2:Sports didn't happen, yeah, like our football season got moved to May, like of 2021, you know, because that was the first time they could gather. And you know, my daughter was in kindergarten when we went into COVID and for her first two years of school so kindergarten, which she did half online, which is not ideal and then all the way through first grade she was masked up in a class, right, and so I think that just like definitely informs kind of now what ministry looks like now. And so we kind of came coming out of that in 2022. We have a high school that's like a mile and a half from our building and we were like, how can we just love the teachers, love the faculty, show them that we're here, show them we care, with no strings attached. And so we just brought them breakfast one day and to one of their staff meetings and just said, hey, thank you, you know, thank you for all you're doing. We see you, god sees you keep going. And then we have three, two other high schools kind of in the same, what we call the Valley bigger high schools, and so we were like, let's do it for them too, let's figure it out. And we've got teachers that work at a Montgomery church, and so we did it.
Speaker 2:So then the next year we went from three high schools. We added three middle schools to that that are closest to us, and then last year we added three more schools, three more high schools, to that, and so we're just starting the process of doing that again. We're going to add three more schools again this year, so one of doing 12 schools kind of in our area of just like, hey, here's some Panera bagels and some coffee. We love you guys, we're so thankful for the investment you guys are making and we're here for you and and so it's been cool just to see I get texts from our teachers that go to these schools and they're like man, thank you so much. I got to have a conversation with my coworkers about where I go and how proud I am. That's cool.
Speaker 2:So it starts to start some of those conversations and so just trying to make it a presence and um, and being around and trying to get um, uh, creative with how we're kind of partnering with the schools, even though you know it's definitely challenging, I actually think it's easier to get into schools out here than it was when I was, uh, when I was at college heights in joplin or you, you know, working in Oklahoma, and I think part of it is like the, the.
Speaker 2:I think the idea is that it's less open to to church, which may be true, but it's more open to just everything, and so because of that, it's like everybody gets a seat at the table, yeah and um, and so it's. It's kind of interesting. So we spend a lot of time like working with students on how can we start like Christian clubs at their school. Yeah, and you know, it feels like we have teachers in almost every school. So it's like how do we leverage that, how do we reinforce them and encourage them? And that's been, honestly, one of the funnest parts over the last couple of years, and just like what's been going on in our ministry, is how do we kind of show up in these places that people aren't expecting us to show up in?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's incredible that you guys are just serving in that way. I mean, if someone brought me a cinnamon crunch bagel from Panera, it's like I would feel loved so.
Speaker 2:I think you're doing a good thing.
Speaker 1:So how you kind of started to get into it. But I want to peel back layers. How has that like culture at uh, at Valley bled down into the student ministry and and and how does that kind of impact the way that you program and the way that you minister to students and that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, I should probably explain kind of the structure of our ministry a little bit, because I think that that affects it, so we have a.
Speaker 2:We don't have any student programming in our weekend services. We have four weekend services every weekend. We have a Thursday night service, um, and then we have three Sunday morning services and we don't have any student programming at that. We push all of our students to serve on the weekend service and attend church, right and so, um, which I love, it's, it's awesome. And then we have we have what we call midweek, like most churches.
Speaker 1:I feel like at this point, With no vowels, right, no vowels, you better believe it. No vowels, mdwk. That's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And so on Wednesday night that's middle school and high school and it's kind of like what we call our front door to our ministry. It's kind of a stereotypical youth group worship games, and then we split middle school and high school for teaching and then we have what we call conversation groups, kind of just going over the message Okay, how do we continue what's happening? And then on Sunday nights we have life groups. Life groups is what our church calls them, right? So small groups, life groups, community groups, whatever you want to call it, but we have it on Sunday nights. And for high school they meet in homes all across our valley. They're separated by grade and gender, so we might have multiple groups in a home, but all the senior guys hang out at one house and have several leaders and all that stuff. And so our middle school has life group at the same time, but they meet at our church.
Speaker 2:And so it's really cool just to see, like, as we've gotten more in the community and we've started to like cast that vision to our students, like it gives them a place to bring their friends right. So, like every week we're seeing, you know, somewhere between five and 10 new students a week because their students are bringing their friends. And that's kind of the pressure we put on our students to say like, hey, my job is not to get your friends here, my job is to equip you with the resources and the courage to bring your friends here. And that's going to be more effective anyway, like a random person come off the street, may stick around, but if they come with you they know they have somebody safe and somebody close. And so that's been kind of the challenge and then and then our goal is like on Wednesday nights, how do we just create the funnest, most intentional environment we can? And some weeks we do a good job of that, some weeks we don't.
Speaker 1:You know, and we've all had the youth group game. That uh, that just falls flat a little bit. I get that no. So I, I want to dig in on something that you just said, though. You said, um, that your job is to equip students to be able to invite their friends, so let's just talk about what that actually looks like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like, how do you?
Speaker 1:how do do you? What is it that you are giving to a student that gives them confidence to be able to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what we like to do is let our students help plan what we're doing, and so, like Wednesday nights, our worship is done 100% by students from eighth grade all the way to senior. And then like our hosting, like the games and announcements and stuff, those are done by students like 90% of the time. It's really rare if me or my middle school lead Emma, um, uh, does that, and so, um, she's really poured into our band, she's poured into these like hosts to make sure that they're bringing fun or whatever. But then when they are on stage, like they're more likely to invite somebody, you know cause they're like, hey, come see me, right, I come have fun with this. Uh and so uh.
Speaker 2:And then just the relational environment I is huge, that's a big thing at our church talking about relational discipleship all the time.
Speaker 2:Uh and so, um, we, we make it.
Speaker 2:We're like, hey, don't feel like you have to have all the answers, you don't have to like win somebody to jesus, just invite them to what god's doing in your life and and so we really try to focus on just like developing their own faith and developing what they're excited about and what Jesus is doing, and making sure we have intentional and relational leaders that are pouring into them and that are having fun with them and challenging them and holding them accountable Right.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of the development and so much of it for us is at the leader level that I found the more I invest in my leaders, the more I have fun with my leaders, the more I spend recruiting leaders and challenging them and holding them to it. Then that kind of trickles down to their investment in the students and when I do that we get to reach a lot more students, because I can reach a certain number of leaders who can reach a certain number of students and you know it starts to work with that. So a lot of that is just like living like a like an intentional life with our students and being honest and so and students want to be a part of that and I think that's why for our high school students we have like twice as many many students high school students that are a part of our life groups then that come to our weekly midweek program because your life group ministry is larger than the, than the midweek thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, and that's really interesting, yeah yeah, the crazy part is like we close it, so like once it starts, we don't add people throughout the semester and we charge for it. So we do a study Every year, we'll do a different study and all that stuff. We charge for it. But they love the relational environment, whereas you look at our middle school ministry, it's actually flipped Two times, maybe even three times, as many kids come to our midweek program. They love the big energy, they loveweek program, they love the big energy, they love the games, they love just like being there and in our life groups ministry, like that's probably an area where we're like how do we, how do we do this better? You know, like how do we get middle school students excited about discipleship?
Speaker 2:But at the core, I think what our high school students are are learning and and and modeling is just biblical community, you know, and that's hey, it's not always going to be a Bible study. Sometimes it's going to be fun, sometimes it's going to be this. You know there's a, there's a bunch of different lenses. We can look at what life groups look like, but do they have this community that they feel safe with? Do that they that they want to be a part of? And it's, it's honestly my favorite thing that we do here, um, and just the intentionality. It requires so much of me to equip, equip my leaders, um, because I'm not a part of any of them. I I don't lead a life group, I just lead the leaders who are leading life groups, and so we get together a couple of times a year as a whole group and the rest of it is, you know, lunches and coffees and text message conversations, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So I'm interested in how so you said high school ministry it's like maybe two to one, twice as many kids come to the live groups as come to your midweek programming. So what about the Sunday morning serving thing? How many kids do you think?
Speaker 2:you have activated and involved in what happens on Sunday mornings. Of our active students, I would say probably like 40%.
Speaker 1:It's incredible.
Speaker 2:And then if you just took like the ones that and so like on on Wednesday nights, I would say 30% of our students who come on Wednesday nights, their families don't come to our church. Yeah, right, so so that obviously skews that number, right. Like they haven't made. They haven't made that jump from Wednesday nights being this fun place where they're at to like like this is the church that I call home, um and so, um, but yeah, like of our active students, I would, I would guess, probably for like between kids ministry, we've got a full cafe, um, our worship team is and tech team is awesome about like equipping, like I just had this freshman guy, uh, who's been running, uh, lights and slides for me for like the last couple months, um, and he started running lights and slides for me for like the last couple of months and he started running lights and tech for our kids ministry, our elementary class, and he was like, hey, I think, like it came to me, he's like, hey, I want to. I think Wednesday nights would be like more of a challenge, like I want to keep doing the Sunday so it doesn't conflict, but could I do this? So I got him trained in and our student ministry on Wednesday meets in our main auditorium. So it's one of my favorite things. It gets kids comfortable with the main weekend stuff, right, which is another kind of result out of COVID.
Speaker 2:And so then he went to our main tech guy and was like, hey, do you think I could come shadow for weekend services? And this kid's like 14, you know. And our tech guy and was like, hey, do you think I could come shadow for weekend services? And this kid's like 14, you know. And our tech guy who just like loves investing into the next generation too, he was like, yeah, come shadow. And so we got three services on Sunday and so he was like, hey, watch me during practice, watch me in the first service, and if everything's going good, let's just have you jump on at 9, 30 and 11. And uh, and so every service I'd see him. He'd come down and get like you know, go to the bathroom or whatever, come down from kind of our, our media booth. And I'd be like, hey, man, how's it going?
Speaker 2:he's like dude, this is awesome, you know, like he was just so pumped, you know, and and starting to really feel like this is, uh, like this is a good role for him within the church, and so, yeah, those are the things that get me excited too, just like seeing seeing them get excited. Or, you know, uh, students that you know like are 15, 16, 17, getting getting involved in our cafe and then it springs them into like their first job at like Washington's known for having like way too many coffee stands, you know, and so, um, there's no shortage of that, but they get like work experience while they're serving and helping people and, um, it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that a lot of youth pastors would say that they would like to get to a place where a lot uh, as like most youth pastors would be like man. If 40% of my kids were serving on a Sunday morning, that would be mind blowing, awesome, amazing. I think an obstacle that a lot of people run into is getting buy-in from all of those ministry leaders. That a lot of people run into is getting buy-in from all of those ministry leaders. So you talked about your tech guy and how open he is to training people up and allowing people to be a part of what happens on Sunday morning. Would you say you feel like you've had to do work in order to get buy-in from other people in the building to let like wacky high school students help out in their ministries?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I would say, by and large, no, because I inherited it. You know, and the guys that came before me I think did a really good job. Our lead pastor believes in it. You know, he's adamant, especially, like for our high school ministry he's adamant and like we're kind of it's one of the things that drew me out here that we don't have high school ministry stuff during weekend services so that they can come and be a part of the church, like as they're preparing to graduate, like that's a huge aspect of that and so so I think you know, from the top down, that's that's something that is not just welcomed but almost expected, right Like, it's a conversation we have on a regular basis and one of the things that, like our our lead guy talks about a lot is my job.
Speaker 2:I mean, my title is the next gen team lead, but I'm hands-on in high school ministry and so, like my job as a high school pastor is not just to create these programs for students but to minister to all of the high school students that we have in our church, because there's a decent number of families and high school students that come to our church that don't come to our program Right, like, and it's just part of it, and so how do we connect to them? And a lot of ways we can do that because they're already coming on Sunday mornings is to connect through serving, to get them serving in different places, and so I've been blessed here that that's just something that, by and large, people have bought into. But I think there's a couple areas where we've really worked. My approach has been okay. I just want to build a relationship with that lead Um, and then it's like one or two students that I think would be great at at serving on their team and like let's trial run it, you know, and then use those students to like prove that, hey, high school students, sometimes middle school students, can do this and can do this pretty well.
Speaker 2:Um and um no pressure, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so mess up Um yeah, and I think, um, I think when I first got here, like our worship team was kind of at that place where they had had some like um, just typical teenagers be a part of the team and so they show up late or they, you know, they couldn't get a ride or whatever.
Speaker 2:So they kind of had made it more challenging for a for a high school student to come and be a part of it, and and so at first I was like man, I was frustrated by that and and really I just started to focus on okay, let's just build a relationship, let's build a trust. We didn't have a high school band at all at the time and so I said let's build that up, let's give them a place where they can serve first and they can get really good at it, and then I can be like hey, look, they're doing awesome, what about over here? And start to slide in, and so we've seen that grow. That's an area where I feel like we've seen some investment and, um, and we've seen some fruit come from that. Uh, and it's kind of created this culture of of worship in our, in our church, in our, in our student ministry. Uh, that didn't really exist, uh, seven years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. So love that. You feel like you walked into a culture where that was going to be expected and that kind of thing that's really cool. So is there any?
Speaker 1:so, honestly, valley Real Life sounds like the dream gig, you know, it's like the whole church is on board with making sure that we're raising up disciples in high school ministry, all these kinds of things. So so that all the people who are listening to this don't get disillusioned and and tune out, let's talk about something. Where is an area where you're trying to, or feeling like you are having to fight to, instill, like a culture that you believe is is going to be necessary for the overall health of the student ministry, like what's, what's an obstacle you're running up against?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Uh, great question. Uh, I definitely don't want to paint any pictures that like uh, I mean I love where I work, but it's it's, it's, it's tough, you know too, right, like every church everywhere is, and the messes and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:You know too right, like every church everywhere is and, yeah, the messes and all this stuff. You know, I think for me one of the things um that is is kind of student leadership. Um, we've done it well in certain seasons. Um, I don't feel like we're doing really well in it right now. Um, I'm just creating like, okay, how do we provide another level? We have some students who are stepping up but, like man, how do we give them more and more ownership of this ministry? I think student ministry is like the first ministry that's for them and can be done by them. Um and so, um, so I want to give them more, but that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. Um, that, um, I don't always have um or don't prioritize Um, so I think that's part of it. And then I think, like with a lot of them, like I mentioned, like we're having new kids come all the time, like on Wednesday nights, but our numbers are not growing at the same rate of like our new kids coming Right and so kind of.
Speaker 2:Like church attendance, you know they say uh, in in the Western half of the United States they say the average church attendee um is like 1.2 times a month. Um and so, uh, we see that a lot on our Wednesday nights. Um, when I was growing up in oklahoma, like wednesdays was kind of a sacred day, yeah, um, like, we didn't get homework on wednesdays, we didn't have sports on wednesdays um, there's no sacred day here. That's probably true for most places in america now, I would guess. But, um and so, just fighting against, like, but trying not to see it as fighting against schools and activities, but we were, we are, fighting for their attention, fighting for their time and um, and so we'll get kids that'll come occasionally, you know, but like, trying to create that buy-in and um, and we see that at camps we're able to do, you know, bring way more to camps than we do on a weekly basis.
Speaker 2:Um, because camp is like that one thing and we've created a culture of camps. Um, you know, thanks to CIY, that helps a ton with that. But and so, but it's like, okay, but come and be a part of this every week. Like, how do we all year we can do these things, we can build these relationships? The core of this is not the event but but the relationship and and and these like connections that we're we're building. So how do we bridge that? So I think that just as wide as our front door is in our ministry right now, I feel like our back door is just as wide open and so kids are kind of walking through the house and walking right out and so just that follow-up and that intentionality and kind of keeping them around and to where they can really grow is probably our biggest challenge right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I remember talking to somebody I don't even remember who it was who was kind of talking about the dynamic that you mentioned, where kids you know the average church attendee comes 1.2 times a month or whatever. So then, if I'm doing my math right, if you need to say something that you want everyone to hear, you have to say it four weeks in a row, right? You got to really pound it home in order to make sure that you're. So having any kind of momentum through, like a series in youth ministry or any kind of thing, is becomes difficult. But, um, have you? So you said you have a lot more kids that that come to camp and do that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm sure you've given some thought to this and I'd love to just kind of brainstorm with you, even though it sounds like this is something you're going to work on. But have you given much thought to, okay, how can we capitalize on that? How can we bring some of the momentum? I mean, we're getting ready to enter a season where it's insane for me to realize this, but it's basically summer, right? So we're getting ready to head off to all these camps. Kids are going to have a great time, they're going to build relational bonds. They're going to feel closer to Jesus. What does bringing them down off of that mountaintop look like at Valley Real Life? How do we capitalize on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say we try to really do that through our life groups. My goal every year is that we get a hundred percent of our life group leaders at camp Um and we look at, we look, so we go to move, we go to move, um, uh, in Oregon. Um, at the end of July and we look at that as the beginning of our school year. Um, and so, you know, all the kids have moved up to their next grades.
Speaker 2:Um, I've tried to recruit, like uh, I was just meeting with a leader the other day who was an eighth grade leader or trying to cast vision, like, hey, do you want to move up with your girls? You've been with them for three years. Do you want to stay in middle school? Kind of go back down, like what's, what's that look like? And uh, and I was just like man, you're going to see some fruit, you know. And she was like, okay, when do I need to make that decision? I was like, well, I need to know about camp by like May. And and she was like, okay, you know, cause? I was like, if we can lock in camp, then we, we create this momentum for the fall Right. And so our big kind of like next step at camp is get into a life group, get into a life group, get into life group. We say all this time you're saying that at move, like at move.
Speaker 2:So, like, our registration for life groups for the fall open the first day we are at camp, and so, um, we, we talk about, because it's just easy like to be like, hey, these groups that you're having this, this big transformation, this can be that group that you spend the rest of the school year with, if you guys are intentional, if you can kind of. And so we'll send out a message it's automated to parents during that week that say hey, your kids are having a great time at camp. Why don't you help them continue this on by signing them up for a life group right now? So, while they're at camp, their parents are getting an email to say, hey, come be a part of life groups. And so we see that every year and we do a winter camp in February as well, so kind of like the halfway point, and we start our life groups in the spring after winter camp, intentionally, so we can.
Speaker 2:Okay, here's another camp experience, a completely different experience than what we experienced at MOVE, because it's at a camp, it's just our group and it's more rustic and those types of things, but kind of a two different experiences hitting two different types of people and kids and it's just over a weekend, but we're still like the next step is the same. Hey, come be a part of a life group. Carry this momentum on and it feels like we make incremental, like improvements with that every year and the intentionality life groups. Last summer didn't get hit as hard at summer camp at MOVE, but that's mainly because I spent all of MOVE in the hospital.
Speaker 1:Right, I heard about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it was a good time, so my appendix decided it did not want to stay in my body and so I got to experience MOVE secondhand from the hospital room. But so some of those intentionality and just those details don't always happen, but it was a fun exercise to see. You always ask that question like, hey, if the leader got hit by a bus, how would this event, how would this go? What does that look?
Speaker 1:like the leader did yeah.
Speaker 2:So what happened and luckily we just have a great team of leaders and a great staff team as well that just said like, hey, it's not about Tyler, he's never made this about him, and so let's just keep going and let's make this happen. And largely, I don't think they skipped a beat, so I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great that you're seeing the incremental change though, because I think, from a buy-in perspective, the more kids students, I should say are able to see the fruit in their own lives of that type of ministry, the more they are going to vouch for it to the people around them and the more their commitment is going to increase for the following year, more their commitment is going to increase for the following year. So it's like man, we just hope that every year we see some progress and then, maybe, you know, another eight years from now, we're sitting down talking about, um, how this is like a super, super strong aspect of the ministry that you have such high involvement in that.
Speaker 2:So I hope so. Yeah, that's the hope. Right Like, yeah, I think, just in ministry like I've done student ministry for 16 years right, like, and it's awesome when you get droves of kids that come, or you like see this, but like most of youth ministry is like incremental, you know, like you see, just like a couple kids like the light bulb clicks, or a couple kids are decided to give their life to jesus, or a couple kids are like jumping into understanding what kingdom work looks like, or they're choosing to go into ministry, like in my experience, that hasn't come in like droves or these waves as much as um, it just you got to put the relational effort and energy and being intentional relationally, whether that's leaders or students, it's a combination of both, right, um, depending on your context. And and I've got, I've been at small churches, I've been at larger churches and yet the approach can stay the same and it just yeah, it's, it's incremental. You know that's the word that keeps coming back to me.
Speaker 1:It's being faithful through a lot of the like two steps forward, one step back, kind of stuff Like all right we can you know. But a lot of youth pastors do put a lot of pressure on an event or a you know call to action or a particular sermon or series. It's like okay, I'm really excited about this. Maybe this is going to be the thing that builds some momentum, but it takes a long time. It takes a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you've been there. I mean, we drive hard. Yeah, yeah, seven years I've been here, um, and yeah, and yeah, we're just like let's just keep building, let's keep creating this momentum. And what does that look like? And as people kind of come and go, and you know, like in seven years, I've now seen an entire group from sixth grade all the way through, you know, high school, you know, go through, and it's a completely different group and culture than when I first got here, because the kids change it right. I think that's one of the things I love most and frustrates me the most about student ministry. Right, like in high school ministry, like literally, it's a completely new ship every four years. There's no, there's no retaining, you know, like it's just constantly kind of changing and flowing and you gotta, you know, stay intentional with that Um, and it's the thing that makes my hair continue to recede and it's the thing that gives me life too, you know things can be two things right, as Lane Moss always says.
Speaker 1:So well, Tyler, I really appreciate you taking some time to chat with me today. A lot of really great stuff to chew on, so, um, you're, you're, you're awesome. Appreciate it. Keep up the good work out there, man.
Speaker 2:Brad man, I appreciate that, the invitation and, uh, just so thankful for for the work that you guys are doing and what you allow us to do through CIY and through summer conferences and things like that. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Well, it's an honor, man. Thank you, man. What a great conversation. So so thankful for Tyler and for the reminder that you know it's not our job to build these super big attractional programs, that if you build it they will come students so that they are comfortable sharing the gospel with their friends and they're comfortable bringing their friends to be a part of what the Father is doing through their local churches. So I'm grateful for that reminder. I hope that you take that reminder to heart and that it is able to be a blessing to your ministry.
Speaker 1:Speaking of blessing, how's that? For a segue, I'm going to close us out today by reading our blessing over you, our wonderful listeners. May God show you grace and bless you. May he make his face shine on you. May you experience the love of Christ, through whom God gives you fullness of life. May you be strengthened by his power. May Christ himself make his home in your heart, that you would be full of his love and grace and that those you serve would see Jesus in you.
Speaker 1:Today's episode was produced by Michael Hester, lauren Bryan and myself. Thank you so, so, so, so, so much to Tyler for being with us today all the way from Spokane, washington, thanks to the power of technology and, of course, thank you for listening. Thanks for being with us today. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe to Beyond the Event, wherever you listen to podcasts. We're going to be back in a couple weeks, but you can feel free to connect with us in the meantime by reaching out to us on the CIY Community Facebook group or by email at podcastciycom. See you next time, thank you.