A Week with Brian Mills

Keith and I had the privilege of spending 4 days with one of the top youth pastors in America, Brian Mills of Second Baptist Houston. It was great time of hanging out and just getting inside this guys head and getting his thoughts on all things youth ministry. It's so great to get a fresh take on this whole world of students, and to get that from a guy like Brian was amazing.
He's the real deal.
It's been awhile since my last blog, and I kinda got convicted since Brian blogs 5 times a day(and they're all really good). So, I decided to add some entries. Here's just some of the stuff that I gleaned from my time with Brian.

Brian has been at 2nd Baptist for about 14 months now so I asked him, "what were some of the first things you did when you got to 2nd Baptist in Houston?"

He said that the first meeting he had with his youth staff he did 3 things:
1) Set the vision and purpose for the ministry. “Everything flows from the vision.”
2) Set expectations for the youth staff. He gave them goals and requirements to be apart of that staff.
3) He began meeting with 3 people every week. He would meet with a principal, a coach and a volunteer youth worker every week.

**He said that you have to be very intentional with what you do. It must have purpose behind it.

He also made an analogy about the direction of his youth ministry, but I felt it's true in all cases. He said that in his youth ministry they’re on a 8 lane highway headed to downtown Houston. “We’re headed the right way, but I want to get us into the HOV lane. We need to be more focused with what we are doing. We’re not going to teach 2 topics a week, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday, but 1 topic for the whole week on Sunday and Wednesday."

You've got to be intentional in everything you do.