Creating Emotional Boundaries for Collaboration


Wayne Morgan - October 13, 2021

As we think about creating healthy boundaries for ministry, we need to talk about creating emotional boundaries for collaborative events. Collaboration takes a lot of passion and hard work and when things do not come together as planned, it can feel like a soul-crushing defeat. I've felt the soul crushing defeats. Here are a few boundaries that I've learned to keep me from quitting after collaborative events that were less than perfect.

FIRST is to plan collaborative events in advance. If you're looking to bring people together, you will need to look farther ahead than a couple of weeks. If you have an event that is worth collaborating around, it should take a couple of months to recruit, plan, and promote. Many great events never gain the momentum because collaboration was needed months in advance.

The next step is DO NOT be offended if others plan "similar events." It's easy to get offended when you have planned a collaborative event and then someone plans a similar event. Like the Back-to-School night that you've been planning for months... and then another church in town does the VERY SAME event! If that happens, here are reasons I've learned that you should NOT GET OFFENDED:

- Your event was season specific. Many of the events that youth workers can collaborate on can happen because we are all planning them. 
- Church leadership or parents won't allow collaboration. We live in a world where competition and fear drive many organizational decisions. Your fellow youth worker may LOVE the idea of collaboration but that doesn't mean they can be part of a collaborative event.
- Imitation is the greatest form of flattery! Seriously, if someone in your area does a simliar event, then take it as a compliment! It may be the only form of collaboration is the network's brainstorming of ideas to run in individual youth ministries. Even if those youth workers don't come to a network meeting, your ideas are helping others dream! Schedules and logistics may prevent you from running events together, but it doesn't stop the collective power of dreaming together about better event planning!

Ultimately, REMEMBER that collaboration is about introducing more students to the good news of Jesus. No matter how big your ministry reach has become... there are still more students who need to know who Jesus is! I encourage you to applaud other youth workers attempts to reach students. Your enemy isn't "the competing youth workers" in town, our enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). If we are not careful, we can allow the enemy to steal our passion, kill agape love for other Jesus followers, and destroy the mission of the church. We cannot allow this to happen within our community!

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