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Speaker 1: ​ ​ ​ ​ When we talk mission community, one of the things that we want to be sure is that the center of that community is Christ and not Young Life. Christ is the center of the community and we're going out together on mission in incarnational ministry through this vehicle called Young Life.

Lauren: Hello, Lauren Bocci here, sitting down. We are in Denver, Colorado, today, actually just south of Denver at an undisclosed location. We are going to talk about KNOWN. We're going to talk about the U.S. strategy, how those are one and the same. I am sitting here with Chad Edwards and Wiley Scott, say hello so they believe that you're here.

Wiley: Hey, Lauren, how you doing? This is Wiley.

Chad: Hey Lauren, this is Chad. It's an honor to be here with you.

Lauren: Yes, yes, yes. Okay. We're going to jump right in. I'm excited. You guys have done a ton of work to get here. You've listened well, you've been faithful. I would hate to look at your frequent flyer miles, but I'm grateful. We've got a lot to say. Let's jump in. Let's talk about how the strategy work started. What was that process? Who was involved? The good, bad, the ugly of that, which seems like it was a very long time ago now. But what was that process like?

Chad: Yeah, I would say, the process started a year and a half ago. Almost two years ago, actually. Started at the MLT level, some very deep but broad conversations. Then had broken out then to FLT with what we call a SAT group. A strategic action team made up of board members, made up of a couple of consultants that helped walk us through a process. In November of last year, we made our first presentations to the board. What that first process helped us do, is to really accurately indicate where we currently were and where the challenges were.

Then for this past year, we really entered the second stage of the process, which is to identify, okay, where do we go from here? That process has been led by Arthur and by Dennis Sweeney, who's had been a lifelong consultant with the McKenzie. Who said, in the 35 years of consulting, this is all he does is build strategies. He said he never worked on a strategy more complex. But he also has never been more proud of any product.

We would've loved this to have been a very simple, very easy strategy. But through the work that our team has done, we've realized that because of the complexity and the challenges faced by our staff and volunteers in the U.S., the strategy has to be multifaceted. Honestly, it's got to be pretty comprehensive. That's what we feel like we've been able to come up with. Right now, we have come up with our strategic initiatives where next phase is working groups that are made up of field leaders and functional leaders. Where we're taking each strategy and we're getting direct field voice into how could this roll out? What are things we haven't thought about? What are the implications?

Lauren: That's good.

Chad: What do you have there, Wiley?

Wiley: I was just sitting there trying to think through, and what came out of those different levels from MLT, four pillars. Where we got kingdom leaders, disciples making disciples, volunteer movement and what was-

Chad: DEB (Diversity, Equity, Belonging).

Wiley: DEB. Out of that. But then from the SAT is really where we came up with the 12 strategies. The 12 strategic areas of focus, which really breaks down to the five strategic initiatives around area director support, volunteers, hard to fund, segmentation and scale. Those are strategic initiatives. Then the idea of where we want to have the three things, how do we leverage college? How do we leverage WyldLife? How do we leverage ministry and church collaborations?

Then the reality that we need to keep the idea of research and learning, that we want to be cutting edge. How do we have spiritual deepening and emotional health and DEB. Those are things that we all want to keep in front of us in our organization going forward. Because we always want to be a mission that reflects the kingdom. We always want to have spiritual health and we always want to be a student of what we do. It's really five strategies. But it's three things we want to leverage and three things we will always want to keep in front of us as mission, because of who we've been called to be and what we value.

Lauren: You guys did all this work. You got to 12 strategies. That was a lot. But the right ones. How are you thinking about what are the differences? What are the commonalities between them?​ Where are you today?

Wiley: Well, we looked at the 12 strategies and you look at that and you say, it seems like a laundry list. But if you really take a closer look, it's really five unique strategies. Especially when you look at how we've laid out segmentation and scale. We divided those, but those are two basic strategic concepts around segmentation and scale. You couple that with volunteer movement, area director support, and hard to fund. Those are the five core strategies of our strategy. That's a little redundant, but yes.

Lauren: No, that's good. Just keep saying strategy. It's good, it's good, it's good.

Chad: Then we have six other things. Three of which we are currently doing with WyldLife, Young Life College and churches and collaborations that we feel like we want to leverage more. Then three other things that we feel like we really want to keep in front of us, learning and research. We used to be the best with understanding youth culture and the things going on in culture around us. We recognize we got some room to grow as a learning culture there. The spiritual formation and emotional health of our staff, we wanted to keep in front of us. Of course DEB. It started as 12. We combined two strategies into one. That made five strategies. Then focusing then on these six other things.

Lauren: Talk to me a little bit about what you guys have built. What the Lord has given you in the U.S. strategy. How it finds its foundation within those three Cs, if you will.

Wiley: Yeah, I really do think those three Cs fit our aspirations and our commitments as we understand the audience, where our staff are, where kids are, as we want to go live out our strategy. We have to care for staff well, right now. Out of all that they've been through over the last couple years, there's no leader that's leading well that's not being caring of the people that they've been called to lead. We have to care for our people well.

As we begin to get ownership of the strategy, we're reminding of our call and we're inviting people into a call. Then we want to do that if we want to build sustaining things, we're doing it in a framework of a mission community. Where people are not only just called to great fellowship and connection, but being on mission with one another. I think it's the heartbeat and the approach of the strategy, if we're going to be effective in the things that we call, we have to really think about how we're caring for people, how we're mindful of their calling and how we do that in the mission community. By the way, that's the history of our mission.

Chad: When we talk mission community, one of the things that we want to be sure is that the center of that community is Christ and not Young Life.

Wiley: Amen.

Chad: Christ the center of the community and we're going out together on mission in incarnational ministry through this vehicle called Young Life.

Wiley: When Christ is the center and our goal is to build a kingdom, that's where things like leveraging the idea of mission, our church and ministry collaborations is really key. Because we're actually being kingdom players, not just Young Life focused. I think that actually resonates with a lot of our folks. That Young Life is still a great vehicle, but we're not called Young Life, we're called to Christ in the kingdom

Chad: Then as Wiley said earlier, because of our focus on volunteers, we're talking about a centralized volunteer certification program, where volunteer leaders can all be equipped at a certain level of expertise. That then the local area of course, can contextualize and add to whatever they want so that they're ready and prepared when we say, hey, we you to go focus on that group? They're ready to do so.

Lauren: Some of the work you're doing is new and you've had new findings and new revelation in that. Some of it is really, we've been doing it for a long time. How do you guys see some of those things like the doubling down or the optimizing of existing? Where are some of those pieces happening?

Wiley: Well, I would say, as I think about college and WyldLife, when we look at our existing​ ministries or about what I think about. If I look at my toolkit, they're probably two of the bigger levels we have where there's an upside and opportunity that we haven't realized yet as a mission. But I think by really having very specific strategies around how we ... And we've talked about not just growing those things, but how do we let those things be a blessing to our existing areas and regions? That is not about, it's going back to the idea of can they help us go deeper where we are? Also, reestablish our base​ as a mission, but grow as an organization by leveraging those things. Because I think we're just scratching the surface of what can happen on college campuses and in middle schools across this country.

Lauren: KNOWN, really, I think has been a gift that the Lord has given us. Also, from years past, we've also were given this metric of kids known by name. I know​ to you, kids known by name is not a number on a dashboard. It means something. When you think about what does it mean for a Young Life leader to know a kid by name, what does that look like? How do you explain that?

Chad: Kids known by name is the essence of who we are and what we do. It's the one metric that we have control over. It's the thing that shows that we're getting out of our comfort zone. We're going where kids are. We're breaking the barrier that separates what we know a kid that the Lord loves from the best news that we could ever give them. It isn't a metric and it is literally the foundation of everything else. It's by far I think, for both of us, the most important thing that we could measure. Wiley, what would you add to that?

Wiley: I think to me, that question is at the heart of the KNOWN campaign. It's this idea of kids know more people than they ever have through the power of social media, but are they really “known?” Because of all of the loneliness, the isolation and anxiety young people have. What we do I think is more valuable than ever to really come alongside a kid and know them, truly know them for who they are. Know their struggles and love them unconditionally with no strings attached. I think it have a more profound effect. As I watch young people, they're drawn to that more than ever right now. It's giving them something that they don't actually consciously know they need, that they're dying for.

Chad: One of the other things we love about the KNOWN campaign is there's an as well that our staff and volunteers are known and​ recognizing the importance of that as well. As we've been dreaming with our team, we're talking, what would it look like to know 20% of the school by name? Because we have such a focus on kids known by name, again to know 20% that's representative of the demographics of the school. Which is going to totally change the way we build leadership teams and how intentional we are when you're a volunteer leader and going into a school, for me to say, Lauren, here's a group of kids we're not currently reaching, I need you to specifically focus on those kids.

Lauren: Right. There's a plan.

Chad: There's a plan. One of the things that I think most of our staff agree with and are on board with, but we want to make sure from a language standpoint people understand. Is Wiley talks a lot about how our high school ministry is called Young life. Sometimes we can over-index on thinking, well, high school ministry is the most important ministry. We want our staff and our communities to think of all adolescents in their community and have the freedom and flexibility to evaluate where is the best place to start.

It might be with YoungLives​ or Capernaum. It might be WyldLife or college. But also recognizing that hey, when you're in charge of a Young Life area, you have a vision for every adolescent in that area. We want to leverage WyldLife and college. And by the way, our high school ministries, we are all about growing as well. But every adolescent in the community has to be a focus.

Lauren: How did that come across? As you've been sharing this plan, and those that have been working on it with you have been sharing it or being able to socialize it to area directors, what's the feedback you are getting in that? Or how did you get there? What feedback are you getting?

Chad: Yeah, I think it's so easy to create these strategic plans at 30,000 feet, that are imposing or dictating things to a local area. We were really intentional from the beginning of saying, we want the entire process to be through the lens of, “how does this impact the local area?” The area director was the person that we consistently had in mind. Wanting to care for, wanting to encourage their calling and wanting to [00:16:00] be sure they have the capacity to continue to build mission community at every local level.

Wiley: I think you've always done a good job of talking about, as we've grown in our functional capacity, the unintended consequence of what that has shifted in the area director's job. How we've actually continually asked them to do more and more administrative work, which unintendedly has created a dilemma. Do I go to the school or do I go to the office? What we want to do is getting back to their primary job is to go and be with kids and building mission community. How do we get 70% of their focus and time on that?

When we talk about that, because part of the question, that is like water on parched ground. When we talk to the area director and they hear that, they go, "Man, you see me. You feel me. You understand my world and my dilemma." I don't think any of that was an intention, but as we become more of an organization, because we're much more of an organization as a mission than we've ever​ been. How has that affected our folks on the ground? Now that we're aware of that, we're saying how do we rectify that?

Because we want them literally doing what they signed up to do. Which is being with kids and building mission community and mission community as volunteer leaders, it's committee, it's donors and kids. That's where we want them spending the majority of their time. Then the feedback we've gotten from them is, where we can help them the most is around administrative help and development help, fund development help. That's part of what we want to come out of with the area director support. I think some of the work that we're doing with segmentation and scale is going to help with that as well.

Lauren: Yeah, that's good.

Chad: Lauren, as we talk about care, one of the things that we've talked a lot about is how to roll out this strategy and the timing of the rollout of the strategy. We really, prayerfully have considered what our staff are carrying currently and what we see. We consider these next two years as a season for our staff to consider what it looks like to move forward out of a pandemic. We have a lot of things that we're working on in preparing some of these strategies so that hopefully at the end of this two-year period, we're ready to hit the ground running with some of these strategies. Not that we're building them as we're trying to launch them. For us, I think we really feel like this next two-year season is significant in not just preparation for the strategy and the work that's being done now, but the care for the person.

Lauren: What are some of the things in your strategy, what are some of the things that you get excited about that you're like, this is the right direction for the U.S.? This is the right moment. This is the right direction for us to be leading from. There's a little bit of it's happening now, not three years ago. What makes you excited about that?

Chad: You go and start, Wiley.

Wiley: Well, I just lied, because this is the five strategies. That's what excites us. This is literally, let's reset and get back to the core of our mission. Which is that idea, getting the area director​ being with kids in building mission community. It's that idea that we have been and we always should be a volunteer movement. We get our greatest work done with volunteers. How do we do that but do it well? Well, we're recruiting them.

We're actually onboarding them well and we're training them well. That's what we hope for. When you start looking at the hard to fund, that's a nut we've never been able to crack. We have a funding model that was created exactly what it's for. It was for originally a suburban middle class ministry where the community can support ministry. We are very different than that now. How do we get a funding model that fits who we are right now that every kid can be reached and everyone can participate?

That's exciting. Then you start looking at segmentation and scale around how do we leverage our resources, human and financial resources to come alongside areas that they don't have to create in a vacuum, but we leverage our organization of freedom up to do ministry in a community that makes sense for that individual community. Then not just of a scale. That's what's exciting. I'm sure Chad has more to say.

Chad: No, no. Yeah, I share Wiley's excitement. Those last two are actually the strategies that we think probably have the potential to change the way we do Young Life the most. The funding model of course, is actually central to scale and segmentation as well. But what we've done is, we've created​ a model for ministry, which has been a very good model. But it was a model for ministry in the way we developed committees. The way we've recruited volunteers.

The way we've trained our staff. The way we have administrative support. The way we have camping opportunities. They've all been built around, as Wiley said, primarily a suburban fundable model. With segmentation, we really want to open up people to the freedom of saying, hey, if you could create the kind of area support structure to reach the community that you'd want to reach, what would it look like?

Lauren: I'll close with this. Do you feel more known now that we've had this conversation?

Chad: I do.

Lauren: I thought you might.

Chad: I do.

Wiley: I'll go with that.

Lauren: Okay, good. Okay. Thanks guys.

Wiley: Thank you.