Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors

A Church Leader’s Guide to Staffing and Leading Youth Pastors

Mark Riddle

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780310577096
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The teens in your church are impacting their world today and they’ll be the leaders of tomorrow. As a leader in your church, you understand the importance of an effective youth ministry. But it’s not as easy as simply putting a person in charge of the youth ministry in your church. Some of the most important steps in building a sustainable youth ministry happen even before you begin looking for a youth pastor. And once you have a person in place, there are several key things you can do to help develop a healthy student ministry that includes encouraging your youth pastor, engaging teens, and involving parents. In this practical book for church leaders, you’ll: • Set goals for your student ministry that inform your search for a youth pastor. • Facilitate communication with your entire church ministry staff by using the included discussion guide. • Discover how to implement a ministry that supports families and their involvement in the youth ministry. Whether you already have a youth pastor or are just beginning your search, this book will help you set up your student ministry and youth pastor for health and longevity. Make sure you understand what’s going on inside the mind of your youth pastor—whether he or she is a veteran, a volunteer, or an inexperienced new pastor—so that together, you can create a life-changing student ministry that reaches teens and draws them to Jesus.

Section 1

STAFFING FOR YOUTH MINISTRY

Chapter One

WHY DO YOU WANT TO HIRE A YOUTH PASTOR?

I talk to a lot of church leaders every year. Very few are able to articulate why their churches have youth ministries in our first conversation. Every leader has an answer when I ask, but precious few have answers with substance or meaning. The answers range from “We want to make fully devoted followers of Christ” to whatever comes to the leader’s mind at that moment.

What are you hoping to accomplish in the lives of teenagers? If your church can’t articulate why it has a youth ministry, what are you hiring a youth pastor to do?

Sadly, since most churches can’t articulate why they have a youth ministry, the average youth pastor ends up running a bunch of programs that may or may not accomplish what the church is hoping for.

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular responses to the question, “Why do you want to hire a youth pastor?”

REASON #1: “WE WANT TO REACH KIDS.”

It’s encouraging that you and your church are eager to reach teenagers. Chances are, you want to connect with the kids in your church and the kids in the community who have yet to attend your church. It’s a solid ambition for a church, but it’s not an adequate answer to the question, “Why do you want to hire a youth pastor?”

Churches don’t need a youth pastor to reach kids. Churches of all shapes and sizes reach kids every week in innovative ways without a paid youth pastor on staff. If your church equates reaching kids with hiring a youth pastor, something’s wrong. Don’t give up on reaching kids. But let’s explore other, healthier reasons to hire a youth pastor.

REASON #2: “WE WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN TEENAGERS’ LIVES.”

To be direct, there aren’t enough senior pastors who really want to make a difference in teenagers’ lives. So this is an exciting response to hear as a consultant. Unfortunately, though, as an answer to our question, it falls way short. There are thousands of people making a difference in the lives of teenagers—and most of them aren’t youth pastors. More pointedly, there are plenty of churches making a substantive difference in the lives of teenagers—without a paid youth staff. If your church feels it needs a youth pastor in order to make a difference in the lives of young people, something’s wrong.

REASON #3: “I [THE SENIOR PASTOR] DON’T HAVE THE TIME.”

The old joke about you working one hour a week—on Sunday morning—isn’t funny. The truth is, you have too much on your plate already. There aren’t enough hours in the day to add another responsibility—especially something so involved and time consuming as youth ministry. Hiring a youth pastor would immediately take that weight from your shoulders. With so much to do in the church, certainly this is one thing you can hand off to a staff person. Right?

Let’s be clear. There’s no more difficult job in the church than yours. Your job is more emotionally demanding than most of the people who sit in your congregation will ever know. But hiring a youth pastor for this reason is a very bad idea, one that will hurt you and your church in the long run. (We’ll tackle this topic in more detail in chapter 4.)

Don’t let today’s quick solutions cause tomorrow’s long-term problems. Hiring a youth pastor because you’re too busy can cause systemic problems that can take your church years to resolve.

REASON #4: “EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT.”

That seems to be the case, doesn’t it? The last 20 years have seen an amazing increase in the population of professional youth ministers. Today it’s normal for new church plants to almost immediately hire a youth pastor. While strategically it’s probably not the best call for many churches, it is the norm.

If all the other churches were jumping of a cliff, would you? (I’m only sort of joking.) Believe it or not, there are churches that don’t have youth pastors, yet are able to minister to youth in tremendous ways. They’re able to maintain healthy and growing youth ministries. Conversely, there are churches with full-time staff members who aren’t able to connect with young people or their parents. Simply hiring a youth pastor because it’s assumed you need one is not a good impetus for staffing.

REASON #5: “PARENTS WANT A YOUTH PASTOR.”

The pressure from parents on church leaders to hire a youth pastor is at an all-time high. Today’s parents probably had the opportunity to grow up in a youth ministry. Many have meaningful memories of their youth ministry experiences. To them, a youth pastor is the key to successfully giving their kids a similar experience and, to some extent, reliving their own personal experiences.

Some parents place such a high value on having a youth pastor that they’ll threaten to leave the church if you don’t find someone soon. Or they just leave, without threatening. A “concerned” parent may say things like, “We’re going to go to a church where our teens are valued.”

REASON #6: “OUR CHURCH DOESN’T HAVE ANY YOUNG ADULT LEADERS.”

In this scenario, the church says, “We want our congregation to value our teenagers, but we don’t have any people young enough [read: under 50] to lead the programs” or, “We’re a small church with volunteers already serving in other areas.” The obvious solution, then, seems to be to hire someone outside the church to lead the youth ministry.

INSIDE THE MIND OF PARENTS

The Hidden Assumption

Many parents equate having a youth staff person with the level of commitment and support a church offers them as a family. Their feelings could be stated like this: “If you care about me as a parent and if you care about my child, you’ll hire a youth pastor. If you don’t have a youth staff, it must mean you don’t want to meet my needs.”

The Problem

Sadly, this view often is right on the money. There is, however, a growing population of churches that value students too much to hire a youth pastor for this reason.

While that solution may seem immensely practical in the moment, it ultimately fails to address a bigger problem within the church: Why young people choose not to attend or choose not to get involved in ministry. Hiring a youth worker under those conditions would enable the congregation to maintain an unworkable demographic—one that’s unhealthy and dysfunctional. Whatever kids you reach as a result of hiring a youth pastor will almost certainly stop attending your church after high school, or when the youth pastor leaves.

REASON #7: “WE NEED TO KEEP OUR MOMENTUM.”

Things are going well in the youth program. You have good participation. You want to keep the numbers and excitement up. That makes sense. But if your church needs a youth pastor on staff to maintain momentum, something’s wrong. You may have situations and circumstances working against your youth ministry. Churches that depend on paid or volunteer staff for momentum are dog-paddling in the open sea. That kind of ministry can’t be sustained. There must be an intervention. (We’ll talk more about this in chapter 4.)

REASON #8: “WE WANT TO HAVE THE BEST YOUTH GROUP IN THE AREA.”

As a consultant, I hear this proclamation too often. Maybe you’ve heard it in your church. It’s often tossed around in the interview process. It’s a good line because it sells the church’s desire for greatness—and youth pastors love it.

The problem with this line of thinking is there isn’t a “best” youth group in the area. There are only youth groups you hear about, and youth groups you don’t hear about. Being a well-known youth group has very little to do with health or effectiveness and a lot to do with size and budget.

Your church is the best church to minister to your kids, their friends, and their families. So don’t put too much stock in the cool stories your pastor friends tell about their youth ministries. Most of them aren’t completely true anyway.

REASON #9: “WE WANT TO KEEP KIDS BUSY AND OUT OF TROUBLE.”

Keeping kids out of trouble is a worthy goal, especially when you consider the lifelong consequences that can result from spontaneous decisions made by adolescents with too much time on their hands. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America and community recreation centers exist for this very reason.

As a pastor, you know that churches have a greater purpose: Connecting young people to their Creator and helping them live their lives in a way that honors God. Youth ministry has little to do with behavior modification, which is the real goal behind this very bad reason to hire a youth pastor.

REASON #10: “WE NEED SOMEONE TO RUN OUR YOUTH PROGRAMS.”

Sustaining programs is not the point of youth ministry—or the church. It often might feel like it is, but it’s not. In much the same way that churches that focus on their survival actually contribute to their demise, youth ministries that focus on keeping programs running may have one foot in the grave.

The purpose of youth programs is to connect teenagers relationally to God, to other teenagers, and to adults in your congregation. If you hire someone simply to run your programs, you need to recognize it as a symptom of a far greater problem in your church.

REASON #11: “WE’VE ALWAYS HAD A YOUTH PASTOR.”

This is a touchy one. It might be in your church’s best interest to take a break from having a staff person devoted to youth ministry. That would give you a chance to evaluate your situation and reflect on how your church community embraces young people and their families.

REASON #12: “WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH OUR EXTRA MONEY.”

Your church has loads of cash and doesn’t know what to do with it. If that’s the case, you don’t need a youth pastor, you need a youth ministry consultant.

Most of these reasons involve an external force putting pressure on you or the church to find a youth pastor. That driving need can teach you something about yourself and your church, if you explore it properly. But it’s important that you understand this: Feeling rushed to hire a youth pastor is a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a signal that there are issues to be addressed before you embark on the hiring process.

Your church has an opportunity to move forward to a healthier place. Will you take it?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR STAFF

1. Which reason in this chapter most accurately describes our mindset the last time we hired a youth pastor?
2. What did we learn from the experience?
3. Which of the poor reasons for hiring a youth pastor are most prevalent in our church? Explain.
4. What steps can we take to make sure our mindset is right before we hire a youth pastor?

Chapter Two

THE 35-POUND RACCOON AND AN OPPORTUNITY

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

—H. L. MENCKEN

My kids like to shop. No, that’s not right. My kids like to buy things. No matter what store they enter, they can find something they want. When my boys were younger and just learning to assert their desire to purchase a particular toy, book, or lollipop, they tried several strategies.

Once when my son Zach and I were in a Target store, I made the mistake of walking him past the toy aisles, where he saw a Star Wars puzzle he wanted. He was in the second grade, which might lead you to assume that he was small and weak.

A friend once told me that a 35-pound raccoon is as strong as a 150-pound dog and can kill it—especially if the raccoon can coax the dog into deep water. I don’t know if it’s true, but my friend is a senior pastor who lives in the country, in an area populated by raccoons, so I believe him.

I tell you this because I believe that a 50-pound second grader is stronger than a 200-pound man when the second grader wants a Star

Wars puzzle. Here’s what happened to me.

Zach said he wanted the puzzle.

I quietly said no, reminding him that his birthday was in a couple of months. I pointed out that he might get it then as a present.

That’s not the response Zach wanted. He emphasized that he really wanted the puzzle—that the puzzle would make him happy. He offered to feed the family dog all week—without having to be asked—in exchange for it.

I said no.

Zach started to get impatient with my inability to cooperate with him. He said, “But DAD, you don’t understand. I NEED this puzzle!”

“Son,” I replied. “You don’t need the puzzle; you just want it. There’s a difference between a need and a…”

Zach grabbed the puzzle from the shelf and hugged it with both arms like a pro running back protecting a football while being gang-tackled for short yardage. I momentarily admired his technique and wondered if he should try out for football. But then his yelling snapped me back to reality.

“I NEED IT! I NEED IT! I NEED IT!”

I’m surprised he didn’t hold it above his head with one hand and declare, in his best Charlton Heston impression, “From my cold, dead hands!” But he didn’t. Instead, he held the puzzle with a viselike grip—the grip of a 35-pound raccoon.

It took a few moments, but I was able to pry the puzzle from his white-knuckled fingers. When the puzzle dropped to the ground, I had both arms around Zach from behind. That’s when he went boneless and started screaming louder.

Zach threw the worst fit he’d ever thrown—or has ever thrown since. And he threw it at the place in the store that was farthest from the front door. The raccoon was now rabid. It was time to cut my losses and leave, with my 50-pound son playing deadweight.

It’s a tricky thing to carry your son while he’s screaming and keep people from noticing. It’s amazing how carefully you can handle a kid that heavy just so you can show the world that you aren’t abusing him. Once we made it past the long line of registers, Zach found his bones again and upgraded from boneless rag doll to failing freak-out. By the time we fin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Special Acknowledgments
• Important! A Note about Gifting This Book
• Introduction
• SECTION 1 Staffing for Youth Ministry
• SECTION 2 Getting into Your Youth Pastor’s Head
• About the Publisher
• Share Your Thoughts