Lane Palmer
Let's face it, youth pastors are busy. They have meetings, appointments, lesson plans, budget items, and tons of interruptions going on all the time. Their job description is a mile long, and some of them actually have a life outside of ministry!
All this business oftentimes forces many youth pastors to spend all their time and energy running the existing program: Sunday morning, Wednesday evening, retreats, etc.
Most of these programs deal primarily with the discipleship aspect of ministry, because most of the students are already believers. The problem is that evangelism can easily get pushed to the side, and nobody really notices. The youth pastor doesn't have the time to keep an ongoing evangelism program going, and the students typically don't know how. So what's a ministry to do? We are responsible for making disciples (Matt. 28), but unfortunately most ministries aren't making any new ones, just keeping the existing ones. All you have to do is look at the statistics on how many conversions the majority of youth ministries have each year: the average is only 2!
At Dare2Share, we propose a solution called an e-team.
What is an e-team?
e-team (short for evangelism team) is a youth group based strategy which involves a group of at least nine students. These students need to be desparately concerned about evangelism. They are faithful, available, teachable, evangelistically motivated students who will commit time and energy to making sure that people are being reached with the gospel early and often. They are ready and able young people who have been empowered to attack the gates of hell from the fortress of the youth ministry.
What does an e-team look like?
An e-team has four positions: Leader, Webcaster, Greeters, and Prayer Warriors. Each position is crucial in attaining the goal of increasing the evangelistic effectiveness of the ministry.
The Leader leads the way and sets the tone for the e-team, and he/she makes sure that everyone is doing their job well through training and challenging.
The Webcaster is the information gatherer and reporter who keeps everyone up to date.
The Greeters (3-4 minimum) are the obnoxiously friendly and relational people who help visitors feel welcome, followed up, and invited back.
The Prayer Warriors (3-4 minimum) are...well, prayer warriors. They are constantly before God asking for the Kingdom to be advanced through the e-team efforts, and they also coordinate the youth group prayer effort.
Why should I have an e-team?
Suppose I made you an offer of $10,000 a day for one year. Think you'd take it? My guess would be that most people could use a little raise like that. But what if I gave you a choice between:
(A) $10,000 a day for one year
or
(B) 1 cent a week that doubled its total value every 7 days for one year?
For those that chose A, you would have $3,650,000 in your piggy bank. Not bad!
For those that chose B, you would have $2,251,799,813,685,248 in your piggy bank. That's a big pig!
Get the idea? Most youth ministries operate on the addition principle. "If I plan it, they will come." So week after week, activity after activity, you try and add more numbers through the program model, and hope that your students invite friends. With an e-team in place and functioning, you are opening the door to the multiplication principle. You are switching from programming to equipping, and you are adding mobilization to your ministry. You as the youth pastor are partnering with your students to reach people for Christ in a strategic and focused way, as opposed to the once-a-month "shotgun" approach that most ministries utilize. Bottom line question you need to wrestle with is this: is my youth group actively and consistently fulfilling the Great Commission by making new disciples? If not, you're probably running a closed door Christian club. Adding e-teams to your ministry is a tried and true strategy proven to increase evangelistic effectiveness and release students into ministry. Isn't that what the Great Commission is all about? Start an e-team- Christ is with you!