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youth ministry

[Click Here For Part One]

6. Build Sabbath Into Your Ministry

The student ministry calendar is prohibitive, especially if you have a family. Often, there are several nights out each week in addition to whenever your group meets. Everybody involved—students, parents, leaders, you, and your family—benefit from regularly scheduled rest in the calendar. Take a week off from your normal gathering, encourage your students to spend that time having a meal with their families. Spend that time with your own family. Slow down at the end of the summer when things naturally taper off. None of this is rocket science but there is a reason that so many pastors start out in youth ministry and then move to a different role within a few years: keeping up with the schedule is difficult. But it’s not impossible—if you build rest into your ministry calendar.

7. Dig In Deep

[This one is from my beautiful, wise, and brave wife Courtney]-You can’t do this one without committing to #6 above. But once you have established a ministry calendar you can live with, make it a habit of signing a mental contract of sorts, binding yourself to staying in your ministry setting for a certain amount of time. For Courtney and I, we would reevaluate every couple of years taking into account the state of our family, asking whether we were still truly serving the needs of our students, and the state of the church that we were a part of. All of these served as factors for us to be able to say that we would be here until a certain date and then would commit to reevaluating at that point. Once we had prayerfully considered our involvement, we could be all in with our students in a way that provided for slow, steady growth. Longevity in ministry gives you credibility in people’s lives that you don’t have to fight for. You get it just by showing up and being consistent. There is no substitute for trust in ministry and there is no shortcut through the time it takes to build that kind of trust. When possible, stay.

8. Parents Need Encouragement Too

Often our interactions with parents are limited to communicating details or listening to the problems they are having with their child at home. Those things are important. But just as you should encourage your students regularly and verbally, you should also tell parents the things that you see in their kids. It’s not fair, but parents often get the worst of our students and we often get the best of them. When you see those glimpses of what God is doing in their life or the young woman or young man that a particular student is becoming, tell their parents. Your words will often fall upon the ears of people who feel like they have no idea what they are doing and certainly no confirmation that they are getting through to their kids in any way. One I found helpful in this regard is, Like Dew Your Youth by Eugene Peterson. You can purchase it by clicking the link below.

9. One Is The Only Number That Matters

[Also from Courtney] I was recently out of college, spending four year studying the Scriptures, loaded with information and exuberance to share with this new group of students I was going to be leading. I prepared my talk for the entire week leading up to our Sunday night gathering. I had so much to say (so I thought), all I needed was a group to share it with. I had so many visions of kids hearing what I had to say, surrounding their lives  to Jesus, laughing at all my jokes, and thinking, “Wow, I never knew Jesus was this good.” Sunday night came, my first official gathering as youth pastor, and six kids showed up. Turns out, it’s kind of awkward to preach a long sermon to six kids. I was flustered by the difference between my expectations and reality and so I completely scrapped what I had planned, dejected by the small crowd. I thought to myself, “I will give them the good stuff when more of them show up.” But here’s the thing, it kept happening. Week by week, six kids here, maybe eight kids there and I would just kind of get sucked into the malaise allowing the environment to influence me rather than vice versa. About six months in, we did an event where only one (ONE!) kid showed up. I had five adult leaders there and one kid. I was completely convinced that I should quit but in that moment I felt the Lord speak to me as clearly as I ever have, “Ian, that one matters to me so it better matter to you.” Instead of canceling the event and sending everyone home, we all hung out and laughed together and I, for the first time in my ministry, understood the story Jesus tells of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep. That was one of the early turning points for me, not allowing the size of the group to determine how I interacted with them or my vision for their lives. It wasn’t until I began to give all of myself joyfully to whoever happened show up that anyone actually started showing up. Whether you have a group of two-hundred or a group of two, one is the key number. Go after the one.

10. I Will Be In Your Life As Long As You’ll Have Me

Youth ministry is, by design, a seasonal ministry. But the relationships you build don’t have to be. Your interactions with your students will change, you may be separated by long distances, but I would encourage you to continue to make yourself available to your students long after they are under your care. I say to our students, “I will be in your life as long as you’ll have me.” I am not over-promising anything or taking responsibility for their spiritual growth throughout the remainder of their life. I am simply acknowledging the value of the relationship that I have built with them, honoring their impact on me and mine on them. Seasons will change, relationships will lose the immediacy of proximity but for many students, they follow Jesus because they saw something beautiful, something true in the lives of the adults that invested in them during their teenage years. This is certainly true for me. One of the greatest joys I have experienced has been growing in my friendships with adults who used to be my leaders and seeing students that we used to shepherd grow into true friends.

 

 

The end of this year marks the end of my time in vocational youth ministry. I could not be more grateful for the amazing people that we have gotten to serve and those we were blessed to work alongside. I am forever shaped by my experiences—both painful and joyful—working with students. In this post, I am waxing nostalgic about some of the lessons I have learned. While these may be specific to my observations and experiences in youth ministry, they are not sequestered to that particular field or church work in general. Truth is truth, because it transcends borders. Grace and peace.

1. Prayer Is The Work.

You got into student ministry because you (hopefully) enjoy being in the presence of students. One problem, those people to whom you are ministering are in school seven hours a day, nine months out of the year. So what do you do when everything is all planned and everyone is in school? I can’t tell you how many youth pastors I have spoken to simply don’t feel like they know how to fill out the hours of their day. A lot of youth pastors feel guilty because they spend their time distracted on social media or completing busy work tasks because at least an open computer makes them appear productive. We often spend our time coming up with more efficient ways to reach people and miss the fact that God has given us the most efficient way to reach people: his own presence. When we pray, we spend time with Jesus, we become more like him, and thus become better pastors.

2. Stories Win.

Can you feel the anxiety? Have you been in ministry for a couple of years and already used your best stories? Youth pastors often feel the pressure to tell stories that are equal parts hilarious and relevant. We have all been at that retreat or conference where the speaker that will only ever interact with our students once gets up and tells a story that kills and also paints a poignant picture of Jesus. But here’s the thing, I’m not talking about those stories. I’m talking about the stories that have been passed onto all of us in the Scriptures. It’s amazing how many youth ministries see their task as doctrinal download. Don’t tell your students what grace is, show them. Jesus embodies and enacts grace, the things he does and says are the essence of grace. Bring your students back to those stories. Help them to locate their lives within the story of Jesus. The Bible is amazing, mysterious, perplexing, and breath-taking. Don’t turn your gatherings into lectures, help your students encounter Jesus.

3. Students Are Not The Future, They Are The Present.

Like in those zombie movies where the heroes are able to finally shut the door on the hordes of brain-eating monsters, many churches group all their teenagers in one place, shut the door, and run away. But what if teenagers were invited to actually do ministry, not in the future, but right now? What if they led worship, served communion, greeted people at the doors? When we involve students in the life of the church during their formative years they don’t run into the dissonance of trying to integrate into “adult” church when they are older.

4. You Won’t Connect With Every Student. Don’t Try.

This is not about the value you place on every student you have the privilege to pastor. This is about what it means to be a finite human being. No matter the size of your group, you simply don’t share interests, similar experiences, or even a basic understanding with every student in your midst. And God never asked you to try. What God has asked of you is to create an environment where young people are cared for and nurtured to grow in their faith. You’re going to need help. Find and empower people to minister to your students. If you are the focal point of every aspect of your ministry, you are bottlenecking the growth of those you serve.

5. Words Create Worlds.

Every day your students walk in worlds where they are competing for attention, for meaning, and affirmation. Don’t make them fight for it within the confines of your ministry. Make it a regular practice to verbally encourage individuals. Pray for them so you can point them towards the things that God is doing in their lives. Beyond this, have regular rhythms throughout the year where you publicly affirm, encourage, and speak life into your students. Be thoughtful, be effusive, be prophetic. Your words, well-thought out and proclaimed in front of the group become seeds that are certain to produce a harvest.

 

Look for part two tomorrow.