The First 3 Years!

Hey my name is John and I’m the youth pastor at VCC in Virginia Beach , VA! This is such a great way to communicate to each other and build each other up. I wanted to talk about something that I am recently going thru. I was at another church and I actually left at the 3 year mark and so now I am coming to the 3 year mark here at vineyard, and I’m seeing some of the same problems. Maybe some of you have been in youth ministry longer and so you can speak into this which would be great in my opinion but maybe there’s some volunteers out there or youth pastors new at the job. I recently met with a youth pastor and he talked about the first 1-3 years you are running off hype basically and then the next phase 3-5 is actually when you start building the church. Now I don’t like to hear that the 3 years of my life, what I have worked so hard for can be just thrown into a cateogory of “Hype” but I feel that there are different seasons in youth ministry and if we can help each other navigate through these seasons then we as a Vineyard Team will be better at equipping our youth ministries to outlast these seasons and better reach teens. I really want to build a youth ministry that outlast me and my personality. Is there anyone out there that has any thoughts on what I’m saying here? I know that I’m currently having a hard time reaching new Youth. Is there anyone that has seen anything like this or is currently feeling like ur momentum is not there? How can we get it back? How can we freaking break our city’s open for God? Can Broken Youth really become heathly and lead the church? Just some thoughts and I just put down what I was thinking today.. I read a book called Sustainable Youth Ministry that was absoutely incredible… i think everyone should read it.. def…