Quotes from Mark DeVries

We encouraged volunteers to think of themselves not as people who run errands to keep a program going but as spiritual directors in the lives of students. Chris Folmsbee

Nothing characterizes successful organizations more than their willingness to abandon what made them successful.

Until structures are in place for great ideas to be implemented, even the best of them will wind up on a treadmill that may speed up or slow down but will go nowhere.

In this sense, Calvin did assert a belief in "free will," which, for Calvin, amounted not to a human's natural ability to choose what is good but to his voluntary choice to do what is evil. Because of the fallenness of human nature, the only freedom of the human will, apart from grace, is the freedom from righteousness.

Youth ministry may be one of the only professions that has settled into the pattern of handing over total responsibility for running an organization to young people just out of college. Far too often, anxiety, not wisdom, drives us.

Churches build buildings because the cost is clear; architects can give a good estimate of what it will take. But churches have a much harder time determining what it costs to build a sustainable youth ministry.

The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. The problem is that no one is coming. . . . These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no busses pass. . . . They can end up waiting forever. And that is what most people do. BRIAN TRACY   

pressure to succeed is especially acute for youth ministers, who—despite their lack of knowledge, skills and experience—are expected to attract young adolescents to a life of commitment to Christ and the church. It is a daunting task made increasingly difficult by the expectations of adults and a notable lack of congregational support.