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I received a letter from a youth minister friend of mine who is going through a tough transition and is between youth ministries, here's an excerpt (printed here with his permission)
What the heck am I doing here! Okay that was a little over the top, but not too far from hitting the mark…. Now to the nitty-gritty of why I am screaming at the top of my lungs. I am struggling. No, I am struggling with what I am supposed to do and be in the grander scheme of things… What frustrates me, and this may be a result of “burn-out”, is what I see in every job description for a youth pastor. Maybe I am wrong but it looks like they want a gun slinging administrator with a charisma 2nd only to that of Jesus Himself. I don’t have both gift/skill sets. I got one. (Not that I consider my charisma 2nd to that of Christ . . . I may be down the line a few hundred . . . . Thousand names.) I want to minister but right now I feel shackled by my own failings. I don’t want to go into a new position and start well again only to be overrun by the details of programming. A lot of what I am writing is steeped in emotion. I have been on my knees like never before and digging into the word. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Your Friend.
I asked my friend if I could include my reply here on S digital to benefit other youth workers who read this site, he graciously accepted. I hope our email conversation might be a help to others in the process of Death by Youth Ministry.
Hi Pal,
I can feel the struggle you are having after reading your last email. You’re right, being a pastor in a traditional church (to youth or adults) requires the wearing of many hats and the big three turbans are: administrator / shepherd / teacher. Almost no one person comes up spades in all the big three areas. Seeking out where you might have a significant weakness and growing in it through skills development and shear personal discipline in the areas of administration or teaching or shepherding care is important. Realizing that you will never be super-stellar in whatever area you are weaker in is important:: aim for COMPETENCY and work hard to make it a regular part of your life. This is the hard thing in pastoral ministry, to do all the CORE things that have to be done knowing that we won’t have the deep native skills or even desire to do some of them.
Make what I call “disciplined competency” in your weakest area(s) your goal. After you can claim a sense of competency in your difficult area, work hard to bring others around you who can take some of that load so you can spend the most possible time doing the things you are MOST equipped and shaped by God to do– which is in your case shepherding and teaching I think. I really believe that one of the greatest things we can do to become more effective for the Kingdom is to work hard to get to the place where we spend the largest part of our time doing what God has uniquely shaped us for :: all the while knowing that we will still spend lots of time doing ministry stuff that is not in our deepest area of gifting.
So a goal is to work towards increasing the percentage of time that you spend doing your “gifted calling” as you display diligent disciplined competency in your weaker areas. I mean this, if you cover the bases of admin / teaching / shepherding competently, seeking team mates to serve in the areas of their strength (your weakness) and then move to spend greater and greater parts of your time doing your gifted calling --you’ll be cranking. It always remains though that you need to be able to cover the basic job duties, including your difficult ones competently and daily.
Re: reading pastoral job descriptions online…you’re right, they generally have a laundry list of desired abilities that no one person can fulfill – don’t let it get you down, it’s just easy when someone says write out the perfect person for the role’s description they forget that there are no people who are perfect. You need to interview for jobs to find a place that places highest value of what you bring to the party. Like IF you were a big program, schedules and administration guy you wouldn’t want to go to a church whose greatest value is on soul care – it would be a mis-fit. Since you are more “people” than “programs” you want to find a church (By INTERVIEWING) that is more concerned with people ministry than numeric and programmatic development as their highest values. Everyone says they want it all, but try to discern in each case what are their true highest values are. All that said… again keep working diligently to develop disciplined competency in the key area(s) that have been a problem in the past will be important because the “big three” are foundational in almost any traditional youth-pastoral role.
Do you find that any of the areas are just such a big deal that you just can’t or won’t do whatever it takes to reach disciplined competency? Let me know what you think and it will take our conversation to the next stage.
God has given you a heart for students and some cool gifts my brother. You can chose to be vocational in ministry (which means hitting on all three areas with some competence) or making your living in another field and only doing the ministry stuff you love as a volunteer are both valid directions. Shoot me your thoughts on all this.
Btw would you mind If I blogged parts of this letter (withholding you name of course), there are some youth workers who read my blog who could benefit from this epistle.
Comments (1)
Hey Chuckk,
This dialog is not only valuable to youth pastors. As a director of a ministry to international students, I find that I'm struggling with the same issues -- just with weaknesses on the other side. Give me any program and I'll administrate it, but ask me to counsel a kid and I start lecturing and get frustrated. I'm surrounding myself with others who are stronger in this area, but am pretty discouraged that I'm so weak in that area. I think those unreal expectations, even though they're on our job descriptions, are self-inflicted more than anything else. We're so hard on ourselves. We expect so much. But this is what the body of Christ is for -- we should be interdependent.
I think our higher-ups are really looking for us to be self aware, and they want us to creatively compensate for our weaknesses, through self-discipline and a commitment for personal growth, but also by asking for and receiving help when we need it -- even from them! Usually those who are over us have been walking in our shoes for years -- they've often learned their lessons the hard way and they have a lot of wisdom to share. I find that my boss is so open to hearing when I'm struggling, and gets a lot of joy in helping me figure out how to do it better. The trick is realizing how much help we need before it's too late and we're crashing!
So I'd also add one recommendation for your friend: Look for a place where you connect personally with your boss -- Is that person open to seeing your vulnerability and helping you figure things out, without judgement? We all need a safe place to screw up, learn from our mistakes, and try again.
Anyway, reading your note to your friend reminds me that I do need to develop discipline with myself when it comes to the stuff that I'm not so good at, and I need to be easier on myself when I don't feel like I measure up. Thanks for the encouragement!!
Miss you, my friend!!!
Erica
Posted by Erica Pollock | March 25, 2007 3:11 AM
Posted on March 25, 2007 03:11