Research into Resources

• Resources
  • E-Journal
  • Books
    • Leadership
    • Deep Justice Journeys
      • Deep Justice Stories
    • Deep Justice in a Broken World
    • Deep Ministry in a Shallow World
  • Articles
  • Audio
  • Curriculum
    • Deep Justice Journeys
    • 30 Hour Famine Curriculum
    • Vision Generation
      • Vision Generation 1-6
      • Vision Generation 7-12
    • One Life Curriculum
• Urban
  • Research
  • Articles & Audio
  • Certificate
  • Urban Youth Ministry Self-Care Toolkit
• College Transition
  • Research
  • Articles & Audio
  • Links
• Justice
  • Research
  • Articles & Audio
  • Deep Justice Journeys
    • Deep Justice Stories
  • Deep Justice Book
  • Curriculum
  • Short-Term Missions Resources
• Leadership
  • Articles & Audio
  • Leadership Books
• Intergenerational
  • Research
  • Articles & Audio
  • Links

It’s that awkward moment at the end of the prayer meeting. You’ve got someplace else to be, but that person is just standing there, pumping your arm up and down. You’ve already forgotten his name, and he’s trying to find everything out about you that he can. After what seems like an intolerably long exchange, you’re relieved when he offers to give you his business card. As you pick up your bag and jam the card into your back pocket, you consider for a moment whether you’re going to toss it directly in the trash can when you get home, or whether you’re going to temporarily store it in your glove compartment or the top drawer of your desk until the next time you do some spring cleaning.

In 2004-2005, the Fuller Youth Institute (formerly the Center for Youth and Family Ministry) conducted a series of interviews with urban youth workers about networking. ¹ Our goal has been to try to find out what networking really is all about, and why it seems to make such a difference for urban youth workers despite the costs. As we have surveyed relevant literature, conducted interviews with urban leaders around the country, and thoroughly surveyed a thriving urban youth ministry network involving 28 youth workers, we’ve wrestled with the question: Why is networking sometimes not working? Two themes have consistently emerged in our research, both of which will be initially addressed in a few articles on this website, and will be more thoroughly described in further resources developing out of the Center.

Theme #1: A poor definition of networking

Perhaps the best way to understand some of the inadequate definitions of networking is to contrast them with a definition that has emerged from the research: networking is intentionally forming mission-minded relationships. Sounds simple enough, right? But let’s dissect it to glean how to make networking truly work for us.

…intentionally…

The first ingredient that effective networkers described as essential to their task, and which was echoed in the relevant literature, was the purposeful nature of networking. Although the contexts in which networking takes place are often chaotic (like a coffee break during a youth ministry conference or town council meeting) or haphazard (when you run into the school board president at the grocery store), good networkers do their best both to plan for these times and maximize them. ²

Michael Mata, veteran networker, describes the useful skill of scanning the list of participants for any meeting he attends to see whether he should plan to connect with anyone on the list before or after the meeting. ³ Of course, this means it’s helpful to know who will attend the meeting ahead of time so you can determine whether or not you should attend. If connections with others are made before and after the meeting, you and your ministry can benefit regardless of how well the meeting is organized and operated.⁴

Other networkers emphasized the need to always have business cards on hand just in case those happenstance grocery store, coffee shop, or dog-walking meetings take place. It may seem odd to capitalize on these occasions when not in “ministry” mode, yet shouldn’t we, as people who have committed their life and ministry to following Christ, see every chance meeting as an opportunity to seek opportunities for Kingdom advancement?

…mission-minded…

A logical first step in looking for resources is to determine what you already have. ⁵ Similarly, those who seek to network with others would do well to first understand their own mission – both organizationally and personally. Of course, as we work out this mission, we strive to humbly envision and articulate it in ways that are in line with God’s purposes, and not merely an excuse to absolutize our own agendas. Furthermore, this mission should be condensed such that it can be communicated in a short period of time, say, one or two sentences.⁶ Then, if someone expresses deeper interest, they will be inclined to ask for more detail.

This also points to something that networking is not – networking is not a popularity contest. In other words, the point is not simply to know as many people as possible and to develop the biggest circle of friends in your neighborhood. In fact, many of the best networkers spend a considerable amount of time in network pruning, because they realize that there is a limit to how many people with whom they can maintain useful connections. According to multiple sources, this number tends to hover around 35-40 people. ⁷ Therefore, knowing and being able to clearly articulate your vision not only helps you identify who else is likely best able to connect with you, it also helps others to quickly do the same.

These words also point to the special nature of networking connections that are forged for Kingdom purposes. In missiological circles, this is termed the Missio Dei, or Mission of God, and refers to the fact that each person we meet in urban youth ministry is a part of the bigger Mission in which God is engaged. Therefore, even if a new contact is unlikely to be able to assist you in your work, they offer, at the very least, a God-given opportunity to peek at some other work that God is doing in your community.

…forming…relationships

The last part of the definition points to what the research showed us was one of the most crucial aspects of networking: that networking is all about relationships. Often the business and management literature on networking fails to fully recognize this, and tends to suggest that networking is really just userism: making connections in order to maximize what you get from others while offering the minimum necessary to get it. Even when the secular literature recommends the development of transparent relationships, it is primarily because honest, trusting relationships have shown to generate the best outcomes. ⁸ As Christians we should not be driven by a dogged pursuit of best outcomes, but out of a genuine desire to interact with others as Christ modeled for us. Furthermore, simply applying the Golden Rule of loving others as ourselves means we first offer ourselves and our resources to others as servants before we consider how we can benefit from their offerings.

As Christians forming real relationships we are also called to remember that people want and deserve to be recognized for the fully-orbed human beings that they are. No one wants to be known as “the guy who…” Instead, we must remember that every person has a history and a family and needs of their own that deserve to be honored and valued. This suggests that an important task of networking is following up with others when they share deeply personal things with us. If someone in our network shares a concern about a loved one, we should take the time to call them up and inquire about them later, rather than focusing our questions only on those issues that directly impact our own ministries. Furthermore, if people don’t volunteer information about the rest of their lives, our research suggests that starting by sharing something of our own larger story is an effective way to encourage a greater and more multidimensional openness that can then be reciprocated.

Lastly, one of the components considered essential to building networking relationships is the element of reciprocity. No one wants to feel like they are giving more than they are getting, and although not every exchange is going to be equal, over time people need to know that the effort they are putting into a relationship contributes to the accomplishment of their own personal goals over time. Without this perception of reciprocity, relationships either tend to fade away or are intentionally ended.⁹

Theme #2: A poor understanding of our time

All of this sounds good so far, but let’s be honest with each other: you’re a busy person, right? Your hands are full with the challenges you’re already facing – the last thing you need is to feel guilty about one more thing you “ought” to do. What’s more, maybe you’ve already tried some of these things. You’ve tried to connect with a few others over lunch or attended a few local gatherings of other youth workers, but there’s too much pressure to get more kids to your events, or raise more funds for your work. At least at this point in your ministry career, you’ve decided that you can’t commit time to things like relationships with people outside of your current tasks.

But that is precisely when it is time to go back to our definition. Networking is intentionally forming mission-minded relationships. If we really understand our definition, we will grasp that networking doesn’t have to mean doing more than you’re already doing.

Timesaving Tool #1: Ranking Relationships

Consider it this way: for years youth ministry leaders have stressed the importance of relational ministry. This message is crucially important to those of us who have grown up in the individualism and consumerism so often dominating western culture. We have had to learn to work with others rather than work alone, to love people instead of things. This is the cultural legacy we must strive to overcome as we work in Jesus’ name. We rightly focus on enhancing the quality of the ministry relationships we have – with students, with parents, and many others. Our research has shown that youth workers today understand that, and often apply these insights well. But the networking paradigm allows us to add another level to that perspective. It suggests that not only should we carefully consider the quality of the relationships we have – we should also be critically asking, “Which ones are the most important?”

Of course some relationships in ministry are inherited. If we are in a paid position, we will certainly have a relationship with our colleagues – we have no choice about this. Furthermore, our lives are populated with any number of other people who God has placed in our lives permanently – family members head this list, and often there are others to whom we are committed and would never consciously abandon. But a networking paradigm allows us to consider all of our relationships with the recognition that although some people are in our lives by necessity, this should not keep us from carefully considering where we should be placing the most effort in establishing and maintaining relationships. In other words, once we fully grasp that every person in the world (even the best “networkers”) has a limit of only 35-40 relationships that they can effectively maintain at any given time, we are driven to realize that what separates us from those effective networkers is not the number of relationships we are able to maintain, but how strategically we have chosen them. Of course, as we choose these people daily we may find ourselves committing to lunches with other youthworkers more often or a few more phone calls here and there. But the central question becomes this: “Do the people in whom I am investing the majority of my limited time and efforts represent the best investment I can make towards accomplishing my mission?” A good networker is someone who can say, “Yes.”

Timesaving Tool #2: Testing Technology

Another key tool for saving time in our networking efforts is engaging with the broad array of tools for relational connection that are offered to us through our increasingly technological society. Emails, text messaging, blogging – our research showed that the well-connected youthworker can sometimes discover whole new arenas for relationships by exploring these new modes of communication. Gone are the days when good networkers were bound to a desk telephone or confined to face-to-face meetings as the only way of getting things done. Tech-savvy urban youthworkers use email, blogging, and the occasional web-surfing expedition to keep others informed of what they are doing, and these online resources can be great for connecting with new people who have similar concern for urban teens.

Of course, caution should be exercised when using some of these “new media” since standards for their use are constantly evolving. It’s hard enough to keep up with the acronyms used in instant messaging today, let alone remembering the preferred ways that different people within your network communicate. Some old-school types can be insulted by the inevitable coverage loss from a mobile phone, whereas younger contacts can actually prefer the brevity of text messages to stay in touch. Nevertheless, if you’re a technophile likely to be using these media anyway, thinking through how you can maximize their use with a networking mindset can be a great way to redeem some of that time you would otherwise be spending tinkering with the latest new gadgetry you’ve acquired.

Developing Networks that Work
Our research has revealed that networking may not be as difficult as we often take it to be. Of course, it’s useful to have the knack of being able to quickly get to know people and earn their trust, but this is not the primary task of networking. Rather, good networking has more to do with the attitudes we employ as we go about our work and the relationships that work represents. It is about being open to new relationships while maintaining old ones, and in everything focusing our best efforts on nurturing those that are the most profitable to the accomplishment of our Kingdom-minded goals.

So maybe it’s time to gather those business cards out of your car’s glove compartment or your desk’s upper drawer. Take a scan through them and consider whether you may have missed out on some critical relationships by not following up. Better yet, maybe you can start thinking now about what kinds of things you might say the next time you go to that prayer meeting, so that in that context and others you can focus your efforts on intentionally forming some mission-minded relationships. You may just find that there’s more value to this whole “networking” thing than you once thought.

(Note: for more information about networking or existing networks in your area, contact the National Network of Youth Ministries at www.youthworkers.net.)

Action Points:

• Who do you consider to be a good networker? How do they intentionally form mission-minded relationships?
• Try giving yourself a relationship audit. With whom do you spend the most time? Are there other people with whom you often feel you should spend more time? Are there new ways you might consider of reorienting your schedule with a networking paradigm in mind?
• Who have you met in the last few months that you think you should contact this week so you can build a mission-minded relationship?

1. The findings of the FYI Urban Youth Worker Networking research are currently being written up. Furthermore, most respondents preferred to remain anonymous. Therefore, unless subjects explicitly gave their permission to be cited, all references to the research will be general in nature for the purposes of this article. [↩]
2. Alison Gilchrist, The Well-connected Community: A Networking Approach to Community Development. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press (2004), p. 71. [↩]
3. Michael Mata, personal interview, January 24, 2005. [↩]
4. Gilchrist, p. 56. [↩]
5. Discover Total Resources. Mellon Financial Corporation (2000), accessed Aug 1, 2005, http://www.mellon.com/communityaffairs/guide.html, p.2. [↩]
6. Mata. [↩]
7. Gilchrist, p. 108. [↩]
8. Ibid., p. 55. [↩]
9. Ibid. p. 63. [↩]

©2010 Fuller Youth Institute