Subscribe to the Network5 Ways to Freak Out Your Youth Pastor in the New Year
Just finished up writing a little article for Outreach Magazine’s next newsletter. Its not too often I get a chance to speak to senior pastors, so I had some fun with it. Here’s a clip of what I just sent them, I’ll post the rest/link to it when it makes it online January 4th:
A few years back at one of Saddleback’s youth worker conferences we offered a workshop called Senior Pastor: Friend or Foe.
Unfortunately, it was a really popular seminar.
It seems that youth pastors deal in extremes in many ways – not just in the lives of students at a critical and often misunderstood age, but extremes in their relationships with their supervisor. No matter how good or bad your relationship is with the lead youth worker in your church, I applaud you for reading the title of this article and at least being mildly interested in the perspective of a guy who’s played number two his whole career.
I’ve sat in my church office (which was located in the basement, though I’m sure that had no reflection of my value), completely frustrated with my leader. I’ve wrongly done youth ministry all alone, frustrated by the lack of camaraderie with my boss. I’ve dug myself into some pretty terrific pits in my time as a youth pastor, too many without the confidence of a trusted partner in ministry. Someone on your team might be thinking or feeling this way right now … in their basement office.
The relationship between the church staff team has to be effortless. But it takes a ton of effort. When people look at a great marriage, they may not realize the arduous amount of hard work that it takes – and now you’ve got a second spouse. I’m just being figurative here, in case you felt like I was endorsing concubines. You’ve carefully invested day after day in your marriage and build up trust, the same has to be true with that guy sitting in the basement.
JG
