So, When Are You Going To Be A Senior Pastor?

      Whether you’ve been involved in student ministry or are in a church with a paid youth ministerial staff member, you’re at least casually aware of the question.  It tends to be the follow-up question in almost every conversation that begins with the disclosure that I’m a full time Youth Pastor.  It tends to take multiple forms, but they’re primarily derived from the following few, presented in order from least to most frustrating: 

Class 2 - Well Meaning, but Deserving of an Answer

#7. “What’s your long term goal?” 

#6. “So, you’re eventually going to be a senior pastor?” 

#5.  “Isn’t there a point where it becomes hard to connect with students because you’re so much older than they are?”  

#4.  “Are you planning on going to seminary at some point?” 

Class 1 - Genuinely Insulting

#3.  “Do you feel called to full time ministry someday?”

#2.  “Have you ever considered being a pastor?” 

#1.  “When are you going to be a grown-up pastor?” 

        There is another entire post’s worth of the struggle to be sanctified in my answers to this question.  In short: by the grace of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I never answer with my first thought.  The point of the current post is less to provide adequate answers to the question, and more to expose the deeply problematic issues underlying it.  If you’re in youth ministry and on the receiving end of this question, please give your congregants the benefit of the doubt.  I’ve never been asked it in a way that was intended to be malicious, nor have I ever thought for long that this was the underlying intent.  The issue with the question is always larger than the one person who asks it of you.  The issue is a system which perpetuates the expectations that your calling is temporary, of a lesser value, that it represents a means to some type of “actual” ministry, or that it will change when you reach some type of second-level adulthood.  It is a system that is not only extremely difficult for youth ministry practitioners, but entirely detrimental to youth.  

          So why take issue with the question (in a loving, gracious, charitable way)?  

1.  It fosters a system where youth ministry as a practice has little in the way of available wisdom.

        So imagine that you’ve just broken your finger in such a way that you simply cannot take care of it on your own.  You must go to see a doctor.  You arrive in the waiting room, at which point you are greeted by a 22 year old specialist.  You get over your initial misguided thought that they’re too young to care for you, and go back into the office.  As you walk back, you see that every doctor working on the hand is between the ages of 19 and 23.  You ask the doctor, in as nice a way as you can, why are all the hand doctors so young?  He responds: “Well, once you’ve worked on hands for a few years, the expectation is that you’ll start becoming an ankle doctor.  While it’s a completely different part of the body, hand care is a young man’s game.  We’ve tried to figure out why, but we can’t come up with a great answer for it.  We’ve looked at research to back it up, but all of our research is done by our oldest practicing hand doctors, who are 23.  We had a guy in the office who really wanted to stay focused on the intricacies of the human hand for his entire career, but once he had a few kids, he needed shoulder doctor money. And you can’t be a shoulder doctor unless you’ve been working ankles for at least 3 years.” 

       If the system sounds ridiculous in the medical field, it should sound equally ridiculous in the ministerial field.  In seemingly every other profession, there is an understanding that a long-term commitment to the intricacies of that field will produce wisdom with age.  Youth ministers who have dedicated their lives to students into their 50’s, 60’s and through retirement are some of the wisest people I’ve ever encountered.  Sadly, there are too few.  It is a strange thing to go to a student ministry conference and hear keynote addresses from a 24 year old.  This isn’t to say that they ought to be looked down on because of their youth.  They should be heard, understood, and challenged.  But when 15 out of 16 workshops are done by hyperactive twenty- somethings with $70.00 haircuts, branded curriculum, and youth groups of 800+ students, the message is received loud and clear.  If every youth pastor moves into another field at 24, the wisdom available with age and experience will only continue to vanish.   

2.  It fosters anti-professionalism.

     While this could just as easily have been a conclusion drawn from the first point, there is a seismic shift in the difference between the two.  If the hand doctor in the first illustration can’t draw from the wisdom of the ages, his work will be done without mentorship.  More dangerous, though, is the system that tells the doctor that since he is only working on hands for a few years, he had also better use that time to study ankles and shoulders, since that’s the natural progression of his occupation.  The complexities of adolescence, the shifting cultural trends of teenagers, and the ability to counsel in particular situations based on age and psychological development are crucial tools in the youth pastor toolkit.  The assumption that you’re “moving on” in a few years also means that you had better keep up on how to church plant, church leadership structures, senior pastoral counseling, adult crisis care, training for dealing with dementia and Alzheimers, marriage counseling, bylaws, and the thousand other complexities of ministry to adults.  

     And so, in preparation for the future, what you have is a hand doctor who sacrifices the intricacies of the hand, and the depth of study which it requires, in order to learn the intricacies of ankle and shoulder.  Eventually the scholarship reaches a tipping point, usually around age 24-26, and your hospital needs to hire another 18 year old in the hopes that you can get at least 5 years out of him.  

3.  It assumes a lack of scholarship in youth ministry, and it gets passed down to students. 

     So the hospital administration calls the supervisor of the hand care unit.  “We’ve got a problem,” they say.  “We’ve realized you’ve been hiring hand doctors who are bringing with them a colossal amount of med-school debt.  We’ve talked about it, and med school is traditionally reserved for ankle and shoulder care.  While we acknowledge that hand care is important, we think we can hire someone without med school training, because they spent 2 years studying hand care exclusively.”  The supervisor protests, stating that the reason some of their hand doctors are excelling is because of the training that includes an understanding of the whole body, and how the hand connects to this thing called the wrist, and so on.  The response tends to go as follows: “While the administration wishes this were an ideal world, the bottom line is that you can pay someone with 2 years of hand training a lot less than someone with full medical school training.  Also, since people with 2 years of hand training won’t get hired by anyone else, they’ll take the job for considerably less than even their 2 years of training would merit.  So we get care for our patient’s hands that is “good enough,” and we stay in the black.” 

     If you feel like what you’re going to end up with in this situation are a group of young specialists deep in debt without the prospect of retirement or long term investment into their current job, you’d be correct.  I’m extremely happy to be part of a church that understands that seminary training is a worthwhile investment, even and especially for youth ministry.  I’m compensated well, I’m given the opportunity for continuing education, study leave,  and a budget for books and future training.  What makes my church exceptional, in this case, is that this is a giant exception to the rule.  I’ve lost a great many friends in ministry to the cycle of a lack of training, increased debt, and pay that doesn’t meet their needs as they age.  To put it simply and starkly: in many instances, if you can keep them dumb, you can keep them cheap.  And once they start to demand better training in light of the gaps in their education, or once they hit a financial wall, the easiest solution is to trade them out for a newer, cheaper model.  

4.  It assumes that the leap from youth to Associate or Senior pastoral ministry is a small one.

      Some of my friends who have read this post thus far have probably protested on the grounds of their advanced biological or anatomical training.  “Hands, ankles and shoulders are nothing alike!”  I know.  I don’t know with the intricacy which you, oh biological scholar, know.  But that’s the benefit of field experience, in that I’m aware of the complex differences between youth and adult ministry.  If you think there are vast differences between counseling a 7th grader and a sophomore, you’d be correct.  If you think that teaching narrative to 6th graders and seniors requires some level of savvy, you’d be correct.  Now consider the challenge of moving someone who has found out how to skillfully manage these intricacies. Consider what happens when they’re immediately questioned about when they’re going to start ministering to college students, broken down marriages, long-suffering cancer patients, and basically every challenge between age 19 and 105.  

     I have tremendous respect for my co-pastors and their ability to counsel, challenge, rebuke and encourage people in ways that I am simply not equipped to handle.  They understand that I have a skill set that allows me to counsel children of divorce as it is happening, just as they have a skill set that reaches out to the parents undergoing the same trauma.  In neither case is such counseling easy.  But in both cases, God has provided us with a different vocabulary, a different maneuvering of empathy and confrontation, a different understanding of how our respective flocks process these events. The leap between the two is larger than the question of advancing to senior pastoral ministry gives credence. One of my friends in ministry recently told me that he’s been counseling for over 5 years with an older married couple dealing with the slow, painful effects of Alzheimers.  He then reassured me that even though it was hard, he would rather deal with this situation than deal with a 16 year old who was dumped at prom.  As I continue in this work, I’m less and less shocked by how many of my friends in senior pastoral ministry agree with this same sentiment.  

5.  It assumes that youth are primarily served by people between the ages of 18-25. 

     This is the assumption beneath the question that reads along the lines of “aren’t you getting a little old for this?”  Youth ministry tends to be treated the same way as olympic gymnastics careers.  There seems to be a certain point when people in their 30’s attempt it, and it just seems wrong.  The difference between the youth pastor and the gymnast is that one is based on actual physical capability, and the other is based on an assumption that the young are drawn only to the young.   Yes, my lock-in recovery time is a bit longer than it used to be.  After a game of gaga-ball, I need to stretch.  This is why younger volunteer leaders are a tremendous gift to a youth ministry.  In the same way, when it comes to the depth of wisdom necessary for crisis counseling situations, I find that most of my students are immediately drawn to the oldest leader available.  A youth group, like a church, is blessed by the experience of multiple generations.  One of my greatest answers to the question of whether or not I’m too old for student ministry is when I say that I’m statistically on the younger side of my leadership team.  On a quick calculation, the average age of a Focus youth leader is 32.  Yes, I can seem old to a 6th grader.  But deep down, a 17 year old can seem old to a 6th grader.  The idea that youth are best ministered to by an energetic 21 year old is simply an unchallenged assumption, and an assumption which the slightest bit of insight can easily break.  It can be perpetuated by the larger problematic system, but has no basis in reality.  

6.  It simply doesn’t make sense.

     Have you ever asked an elementary school teacher when they plan to move up to middle school?  Have you ever asked a high school teacher when they want to start teaching adult education?  Does your day care worker seem to be ready to move up to high school gym teaching?  In each of these cases, there is an underlying assumption that the gifts and callings of each of these professionals is tailored to working with a particular age group.  In my case, and likely in the case of your youth pastor, their gifts are particularly tailored to middle and high schoolers.  When the assumption hits that I would love to work in VBS because I love kids, I do everything I can not to laugh.  I understand fully that there are some in the church who do not have the gifts, nor the desire, to work with middle and high school students.  If this is the case at your current church, understand (1) that this is okay provided that you still love your students as brothers and sisters in Christ and (2) you don’t assume that youth leaders are always the weird ones.  

7.  It terrifies students.

     Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the effect which these questions have on the students under the care of their current youth pastor.  If your doctor is working on your hand while only reading books about ankles, it should cause some level of anxiety.  If every 5 years you get a new 18 year old doctor, you begin to distrust the motives of any doctor over 22. Combine this with an age group that is beset by abandonment issues, distrust of adults and authority,  and constant fear of anything else changing, and you get a very stressful cocktail.  Being asked the question about moving on to senior pastoral ministry can be mildly irritating, but being asked the question by a parent of a student in the presence of that student can be emotionally petrifying to their kid.  It leads to increased suspicion, fear of abandonment, and a failure to open up to counseling with the expectation that as soon as they finally find someone to confide in, they’re going to leave.  Yes, there are appropriate expectations that people may change their career location, or try something new.  But the idea that you simply have to change in a limited number of years based on a broken system of expectations is not only mildly irritating, or insulting, but can hinder the good work of youth pastors, as well as intensifying the already present fears of their students.  

      I'm not asking you to stop asking your youth pastor about their plans for the future, but to be mindful of the way in which you ask it.  Like any other profession, sometimes things change, gifts shift, and the calling to senior pastoral ministry becomes a reality.  If you know of a youth pastor who has shifted to senior pastoral ministry, I'm not telling you that they sold out, that the system broke them down, or that their gifts aren't rightly suited.  However, if you know of someone who wants to spend a lifetime devoted to youth ministry and seems to be wearied by the idea that such a vocational road isn't feasible, reasonable, right, or biblical, provide them with a word of encouragement in their calling.   Ask questions out of love, not out of expectation.  In this way, you act with the kindness and provocation of Christ, who never breaks a bruised reed.  

- John

Every Facebook Article About Youth Ministry, Condensed Into One

         As is the case with any professional, or any narcissist, there is a compulsion to read any article you see on Facebook that happens to be related to your area of expertise.  This can happen if you teach for a living and constantly read about how your profession is either the triumph or insult of all creation.  It can happen if you're in the military, and are constantly barraged with sweet homecoming videos or meme posts of things that we do instead of treating you with respect.  "This guy ate 700 hot dogs, this guy shot 500 people...why do we only show THIS guy on the news?"  Maybe you're a mom, and have to choose between stories of sweet days running down the Little House on a Prairie hill with your little curly haired aryan princess, or nauseatingly graphic stories I accidentally clicked while thinking the page was a horror movie review based on the clickbait picture.

         We all seem to have the narcissistic need to promote our job or our parenthood as the best possible thing that humanity can achieve (he said, blogging).  This is where we get phrases like "the best thing you can be is a dad," and articles like "why I do my job, even when it's the hardest thing on the planet." Every time I see an article about the "hardest job in the world," I instantly think of a little Dickensian soot-covered lad working under a loom and trying not to die, or someone walking 15 miles to retrieve fresh water.  And yet I claim every bit of the selfishness that comes from clicking through articles I see about youth ministry and hoping to find a bit of encouragement along the way.  However, what I usually see is something like this:

Step 1:  Choose a title from the following:

A.  Why Young Millennials are Leaving the Church Like Never Before.  (Take a wild guess)
B.  Is Your Youth Ministry Setting Your Kids Up to Fail? (It always is, don't worry)
C.  How the Gospel can Transform Your Youth Ministry from Gimmicks to Godliness.  (Don't worry, no other ministries in the church utilize gimmicks....)
D.  Rethinking Youth Ministry (by kind of destroying it)
E.  How Culture is Turning Your Students into Bloodthirsty Atheistic Lustbuckets.  (I'm copyrighting that last word. Dibs.)

Step 2:  Insert one small shoehorned phrase to withstand charges of hasty generalization.  
Use one of the following:

A.  "Even though some youth ministries are...."
B.  "While there are few churches who have adequately met this challenge..."
C.  "Though there are glimpses of hope in this cultural quagmire..."
D.  "In some cases, people have straight out fired their youth pastor..."
E.  "In rare cases, when youth ministries haven't completely conceded to eating M&Ms and watching the Saw franchise..."

Step 3:  Argue entirely from personal experience. Use one of the following stories, and then base your entire remaining article on it.   This is done like a mad lib:

A.  "From my own experience attending (Youth Group/Camp) I remember (Not being perfectly discipled/being bullied by my youth pastor/being told that emotions are an element of Christian experience) and not ever hearing (the vogue Christian buzzword of the age, something like community, kingdom, narratives, apologetics).
B.  "Sadly, almost all youth groups are exactly like the one I visited that one week at that one church where they said that one thing."  Footnote this so that it looks well researched, and footnote another article that claims the same thing, and reciprocally footnotes your article.  
C.  "It was evident that my youth pastor was more concerned with being (cool/hip/relevant) than being (Godly/discipling/theologically astute/perfectly holy)."

Step 4:  Don't outright suggest getting rid of youth ministry on the whole, but basically argue that exact point.   Say things like "reframing," or "renewing," or "rethinking." At the same time, line up the argument so that any trained monkey can see that what you really want is to gut youth ministry from the church in its entirety.  

Step 5:  Use the phrase "moral therapeutic deism."  Assume that this is the worldview of every human being between the age of 12 and 18.  Also, don't ask for the source of this particular set of beliefs, unless you know that it is coming directly from the mouth of your youth pastor.  

Step 6:  Ask a pointed rhetorical question.  End with a question mark.  Even if your entire article stems from the fact that youth groups are failing to answer questions adequately.

Step 7:  Make sure the following are stated in your comments section:

1.  "If parents would do their job, we wouldn't need youth pastors."
- Note:  If trapeze artists would do their job, we wouldn't need nets.
2.  "In my own faith journey, I stopped going to youth group and found God elsewhere."
- Note:  This God is probably (1) really tolerant and saccharine and (2) Buddha.
3.  "I never needed to go to youth group, and I turned out just fine."
- Note:  There are lots of places I've never needed to go.  They remain necessary.
4.  "Maybe if youth pastors were better trained theologically, this wouldn't be a problem."
- Note:  This comes from a church where they hire a married-with-3-kids part-time youth pastor for $10,000 a year and ask them to work 35 hours a week.
5.  "I used to be a youth pastor, and then found the wonderful world of (insert pyramid scheme), and you should too!  Simply go to www.thisistotallylegitandnotascamatall.net"

         Now this doesn't mean that all jobs are immune from right and detailed criticism on occasion, so long as that criticism is free from overgeneralizing or horrendous exaggeration.  We need to make sure that we're balancing out our criticism with encouragement, and avoiding phrases that deify or vilify certain professions.  I have friends who are excellent, godly youth pastors.  I've also watched youth pastors fall from grace in terrible ways.  Like all jobs, we live in the tension of saint and sinner.  Encourage your brothers and sisters.  We all need it.

Lastly, if anyone is to blame, it is totally your worship leader.

- John

Twinge

Thought I would do a bit more of a fun observational post for the day.  Also, I am fully aware that I'm guilty of many of the following things.  Let's simply call these 10 "twinges:"

1.  There is no book of Revelations.  There is a book of Revelation.

2.  However you pronounce the name, Habakkuk is not Ha-BACK-ick.  Unless you are an old prospector.

3.  Things do not need done.  They need to be done.

4.  120 = One hundred twenty.  120 ≠ One hundred and twenty.
(Kudos to Jackie for teaching me this one)

5.  Calvary is a hill.  Cavalry charges up them.

6.  If you could care less, that means you care.

7.  The goal of the Samson narrative is not to be strong like Samson.

8.  Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. are two very different people.

9.  The light being sent forth from the City on a Hill is the Gospel and the light of Christ.  Not Democracy.

10.  For my chiefest offense, things are not "real good," they are "really good."  Real is an adjective, really is an adverb.

What about you?

How to Preach when you are Terrified of the Text

        One of my favorite chapters in all of Scripture is Ezekiel 34.  Now if you're one of those types who feels pathetic every time someone quotes chapter and verse, let not your heart be troubled...so am I.  Every once in a while someone says "just like in Daniel 3," or "Yep, Exodus 12," and I will nod and agree, just like I nod and agree when my mechanic tells me something is wrong with my engine. I have no idea what he's talking about, I just don't want my face to reveal the deep inadequacy flowing forth from my unmanly and uninformed heart.   So, with that caveat in place, let me explain Ezekiel 34.

      God begins with a discourse against the shepherds of Israel.  He rebukes them for their lack of care, lack of concern, and lack of willingness to seek after the flocks under their less-than-watchful eye. Verses 4-6 say the following:

"The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.  So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for wild beasts.  My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them."  

       After this lengthy discourse about how categorically inept all of the shepherds of Israel continue to be, God pronounces that He is personally and mightily going to step in and do the work they have failed to do.  Verses 11-24 are beautiful in the way that God describes His imminent actions and compassionate touch in restoring the flock to health.  From verse 11 and following: 

"Behold I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.  As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among the sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness." 

        I am constantly captivated by this verse, and out of that love flows the excitement that at some point, I will preach it.  I look forward to and long for that day.  I anticipate the looks on the faces of students and leaders when they see the great love of God their shepherd reaching out to redeem them from oppression, even at the hands of their own faulty shepherds.  It is a striking account of God's active, significant grace towards his people.  And here's why I haven't preached it yet:

1.  Because I don't like preaching verses out of context. 

2.  Because the context of the verse happens to be Ezekiel 1-33.  (Not 1:33, chapters 1-33)

        "But wait," you say to me by raising your voice to your computer screen (which is psychotic, stop it), "surely there are other beautiful verses along the way!"  Yes, indeed there are.  However, this very morning I stumbled upon this illustrative gem.  In Ezekiel 32, God says this about the then current Pharaoh of Egypt: 

"I will cast you on the ground; 

on the open field I will fling you,

and will cause the birds of heaven to settle on you, 

and I will gorge the beasts of the whole earth with you.

I will strew your flesh upon the mountains

and fill the valleys with your carcass.

I will drench the land even to the mountains

with your flowing blood,

and the ravines will be full of you.

When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens 

and make their stars dark;

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

and the moon shall not give its light.

All the bright lights of heaven 

will I make dark over you,

and put darkness on your land,

declares the Lord God." 

Ezekiel 32:3-8

         Youth ministry on the whole is known as a brand (such an unfit word) that produces out of context topical discourses that end in some kind of Aesopian moral.  The outline of your stereotypical youth group sermon (or "talk," if you want your youth pastor to feel sub-pastoral) usually reads like this: 

I.     Intro - funny story about my pet. 

II.   Verse out of context. 

III.  Francis Chan quote from Goodreads or Brainyquote. 

IV.  John 3:16

V.   No sex before marriage.  Stay in school. 

       This is not only plainly ridiculous, but outright offensive.  If we aren't careful in our vocation, we can become lazy sermon mills or clumsy outline-fillers, writing some kind of perverse homiletical mad-libs with our favorite buzzwords or cute little stories.  Does this mean that all topical sermons are useless and unnecessary?  No.  To say so is to fence the law, and you have to do some serious exegetical gymnastics to pull that argument off without resorting to the exact tactics you are struggling to avoid.  However, there are a few occupational hazards that come from only teaching topically, and one of the greatest dangers is that we leave our hearers unprepared to handle the difficult meaty verses that precede the easier milk that they drink too regularly.  Consider what happens if you preach Ezekiel 34 (the shepherd passage) only to draw your listeners into reading the remainder of Ezekiel, likely without the same access to your collection of study Bibles and commentaries.  Now you, as the expert, have taken on the easiest verse, and thrown them into the tempest of the preceding chapters wherein God challenges Ezekiel in extremely bizarre ways to proclaim his message, God declares Israel an insatiable whore, and God takes the life of Ezekiel's wife.  Sadly this fear leads to two very common responses to Ezekiel: 

1.  Preach the "nice parts." 

2.  Avoid preaching any part of it at all, for fear of exposure.  

       It seems to me that one of the greatest dangers of preaching ministry is what we portray to our students and congregations about the Scriptures when we avoid the unsavory parts of the whole counsel of God.  It leaves us with a Bible that looks something like this. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS:  THE EVANGELICAL SERMON SERIES BIBLE

Genesis 1-3

Flood 

 Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and all the weird stuff with his wife

Jacob and Esau, Jacob wrestling God, ending up in bed with Leah

Exodus until the golden calf, and the mass execution that follows

Joshua until Jericho 

Gideon (yay!) and Samson (Boo!)

David kills Goliath. 

"A man after God's own heart" 

Occasional reference to David and Bathsheba, accompanied by actually reading the account

Psalm 1, 23, 51, 100, 

Isaiah (Christmas and Easter parts) 

Jeremiah 29:11

Daniel in the den

Jonah swallowed by a fish, and being a generally horrible, ethnocentric prophet

Malachi (the Bethlehem part) 

Jesus is born 

Jesus teaches parables

Jesus dies and comes back

Great Commission

Pentecost

Every single verse of every single epistle, in great detail.  

Including the nasty stuff from Corinthians and the eschatology from Thessalonians.

All of the morals from James

1 John 1 and following.

        Why do we present this parceled out, piecemeal text?  It likely stems from the desire to primarily preach what we have already heard.  Too many churches are simply on a constant cycle between epistles and pleasant narratives, with occasional commandment lists when we haven't spoken of the Old Testament in a while.  We map out our response to our cultural love of narrative stories and symbols by primarily presenting logical epistolary arguments.  When was the last time you heard a sermon on Joel, or Micah, or Ezra? What about the big "unpreachable" texts like Ezekiel, Isaiah, Revelation, or the obscure symbolism of Zechariah?   How can we expect our students to be captivated by a confusing text when our best approach is avoidance? 

       Believe me when I say that I understand the complications.  Walking through Ezekiel with your youth group in a Bible Study setting, or even as a sermon series, will likely take a year or longer.  If you want to preach from Zechariah, you will need to budget tremendous amounts of time in commentaries, journals, academic studies, and you will need to provide answers to extremely difficult questions.  Friends in youth ministry, this is your job.  You may need to delegate down some event planning, some online culture studies, the occasional quest for a new group game, that you might allow yourself the freedom to stay deeply rooted in even the most unsavory aspects of God's great Scripture.  

      To this end, let me offer a few practical suggestions.  

1.  Once a year, schedule an exegetical series on a book, or half a book, that simply terrifies you.  

        I have striven to do so every year, resulting in series on Thessalonians (including the really, really confusing parts), Joel, Hosea, Deuteronomy, Judges, 1 Kings, Ecclesiastes, Revelation, and for next year, Job. These series are demanding, they are confusing, but they are spiritually rich and rewarding for the effort and study and concentration which they demand from a scholarly pastor. Rather than avoid them, steer into the skid with intention and conviction.  

2.  Allow yourself the freedom to preach with solid conviction in the truth of the Scripture, but the cooperating freedom to respond to questions with delayed answers.  

        If a question comes to you in the midst of this difficult series, be free to say "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."  The exegetical preaching of difficult texts doesn't immediately turn you into an expert scholar on the text, but your hearers may assume that it does.  Be willing to occasionally model the ability to tell someone that you don't know everything.  

3.  Be willing to break out of devotional slumps with hard texts rather than easily identifiable truths. 

        For some of us, our go-to response when our spiritual lives are stretched thin is to re-read John 3:16, hit up a few parables, or jump back into Ephesians.  Yet if our struggle is rooted, as Paul Tripp would attest, in a lack of awe, perhaps our best recourse is to dig deeply into texts which remind us plainly of the limitations of our knowledge, or the pitiful state of our belief in Jesus as some kind of five step process for spiritual happiness.  Get out of your spiritual rut by staring boldly, head on, into the book of Zephaniah, or Jeremiah.  Be shocked, confused, and perplexed. Then, in those moments, seek the face of God for illumination and clarification.  

        We may not be ashamed of the Gospel, but we need to get over our shame responses to difficult texts or difficult books of Scripture.  Preach with boldness the whole counsel of God.  Be strengthened by grace through the Holy Spirit to tackle the difficult books, to put in the hours of study, and to bear fruit through a sanctified mind.  The stakes are too high at this point to play scared. 

Mandatory Youth Group

             There are a few occasions every year where I kick around the idea of simply stating to the congregation or to a Summer Camp full of kids that “youth group is mandatory this week.”  It would be so deliciously easy.  Just a few short words to stick deeply into the guilty consciences of each and every attentive ear in attendance.  I would love to have the authority that grips them into fighting for things like play practices, sports teams, social circles, minimum wage jobs, and  clubs.  It would be nice to be able to tell a kid “you know, you’ve missed youth group for the past few weeks…one more and we’ll have to bench you.”  During what?  I don’t know.  Communion?  No.  Worship?  No.  All of those suggestions are blasphemous at best.  

               What would the response be from the congregation following an announcement that “youth group is mandatory this week?”  I’m not sure.  We lost a lot of kids from camp this year because of a “mandatory” football and band banquet…in February.  So on the one hand, maybe our students are so used to the announcement and pressure that comes with mandating weekly events that there may be no shock at all.  On the other hand, making mandates at church which don’t concord with Scripture tends to ruffle feathers, even for things like congregational meetings.  On the one hand, you have things like “mandatory” football banquets 3 months after the final game of the season, and the threat imposed on missing such a thing is so great that students will willingly give up going to a weekend at camp with their friends.  On the other hand, a vow to support the church in “her worship and her work” and the request to attend our one, yearly, congregational meeting during the Sunday School hour is met with statements and eye rolls like we’ve asked you to give up your firstborn.  

             I wish there weren’t discrepancies between the authority of Elders and the authority of coaches.  I wish youth groups across the county and country weren’t consistently shrinking numerically because more and more sports teams continue mandating things outside of their normal season.  In fact, I wish sports were seasonal.  I wish these mandates and pressures which take kids away from youth group weren’t met with comments like “we want them involved in sports, because athletics builds character.”  I understand that teamwork and athletic pursuits build character, but you’re sacrificing church life for the sake of character formation?  Would you say that to your head football coach?  Or does the threat of not making the team simply outweigh your by-design non-threatening church leadership team?  

             And that is where the difficulty hits home.  All of these wishes are simply wishes.  Because I, and your pastoral staff, and your elders, or your other youth pastors, simply can’t call for mandatory attendance outside of consistent Sunday morning worship.  We can’t do so because to do so lumps us into the category of Pharisees, or conscience-binders, or usurpers.  I can hope that you don’t schedule your 2 day a week job on the 2 days a week that we want you at church, be they in a youth group, a small group, or a weekly Bible study.  I can hope that you can take claims of mandates and penalties from school organizations seriously, but not so seriously that the risk of being benched or sidelined or reduced in role looms considerably smaller than forgetting the fellowship of believers.  I can hope these things, but I can’t mandate them.  You have to make a choice.  

            As a note to parents, some of your kids are incapable of making that choice wisely, merely because they are choosing between non-threatening, non temporally-penalizing church and threatening, potentially penalizing institutions.  So you need to avail them of the reality behind the situation.  You need to, occasionally, speak up to your coaches and board members about the extreme amounts of mandates being put on your kid.  And you need to adjust their work schedule if it keeps conflicting with Sunday mornings.  You get to mandate these things, I don’t.  

          Let me make another thing abundantly clear.  Because I and the other leaders don’t get to mandate youth group attendance, we are honored and humbled when your kids make the choice to show up.  The evidence of a choice to spend another night out, a choice to build character, a choice to find community and commonality with other like-minded believers, a choice to simply avoid one more night playing video games or Netflix binging or fanatically doing homework.  The students who consistently give something up to pursue life in the Kingdom are a true blessing to your leadership and your congregation on the whole.  The half hour drive through -10 degree temperatures for an opportunity to hear the Word preached, to play some games and to build lifelong friendships may seem temporarily difficult, but reaps an eternal benefit.  Because we can’t mandate youth group, your attendance is an honor and a privilege for your leaders.   You play a part in our group.  You mean something to our life as a family.  Your chapter in our book is a significant one.  I can’t mandate the way in which you write it, but I can hope that at some point our chapters cross each other and form something like the body of Christ.  

- John

How to Help Your Youth Pastor

        I had the opportunity today to speak at Career Day at Beaver County Christian School, talking to those who are considering youth ministry as a future career.  It was a great time talking through some of the great joys and struggles of discipling students along the way.  I figured I would share this little post from the handout I gave to each of them as they walked out.  Might be of use to some of you to help your own youth pastor out.  Editorial comments are in parentheses.

How to Help your Youth Pastor

DO: 

1.  Show up.  

2.  Pastor’s Appreciation Month is October. Yes, they count. 

           - If your church doesn’t do anything specific for this, be the person that gets it started. 

3.  If they have kids, get some friends together and volunteer babysit once a week.  They will love you forever. 

          (Even though I don't have any kids, I know more than enough youth pastors that would really appreciate this.) 

4.  Have boundaries.  Don’t call super late unless you really need help. 

          ("Super Late" changes with each year, by the way)

5.  Be honest about what you’re going through.  

6.  Starbucks Gift Cards.  $5.00. 

        (They laughed at this, but it is 100% true) 

7.  Say thank you for the big stuff.  

8.  Figure out when their birthday is and plan something fun. 

9.  Invite them to your house, your play, your concert.  

          (We look super creepy inviting ourselves).

10.  Look for opportunities to serve the larger church.  He/she can help you find ways that you can fit. 

11.  If you want to be discipled/go deeper/have a 1-1 bible study, ask! 

          

12.  Invite friends to youth group.  Stay committed to your church’s group.

        

DON’T:

1.  Ask them when they’re going to be a real pastor. 

       (You laugh, but it happens) 

2.  Tell them that you’re busy. 

      (Everyone is.  Also, saying this after posting pictures of cats on Facebook....not cool.) 

3.  Give up church or youth group for sports/band/musicals.

      

4.  Get a job where you “have to” work on Sunday/Youth nights.

       (This is primarily referring to youth aged kids who start working at jobs where they are afraid to ask for those days off.) 

5.  Show up super late, or super early. 

      

6.  Ask them when things are without looking at the 300 ways they’ve already communicated them to you. 

7.  Refer to preaching as “chats, talks, lessons.”   

8.  Get upset when they choose their spouse/family instead of your event. 

9.  Do the “We need to talk.” 

       (This is when you tell them that you really need to talk to them this week, and you don't say why.  It ranges anywhere from "I want you to come to my band concert" to "I'm pregnant."  And youth leaders are an imaginative breed.) 

10. Turn them into Jesus. 

       (If your faith is based on your youth leader, ask them to point you closer to Jesus). 

Comments are additions are appreciated, 

- John 

Dear Geneva

Forgive me for writing about more of an in-house issue, but here we go.

Dear Geneva, 

        First off, I recognize that categorizing all of you into one homogenous unit is the mark of gross generalization.  It is with this in mind that I ask you to discern those among you to whom this applies, and find hearts of compassion towards others should you not find yourself in their midst.  Frankly, it is near impossible to play the writing game without generalizations when they are so often spread in the counterpoint.  For example, the categorization of Geneva on the institutional level as one homogenous unit who is beholden only to the dollar and is seemingly out to ‘get’ all of their students at some level is a ridiculous generalization.  It comes not from a posture of love, but from a posture of self-defensive narcissism.  Functioning on the fantasy that each and every member of the administration, board, and faculty wake up each morning ready to find new ways to screw you over by fiendishly smiling at your picture on their bathroom mirror says less about what you think of them and far more about what you think of yourself.  

          Are there problems that are facing the administration and boards that are cause for concern?  Yes indeed.  We ought not to be naive enough to ignore them.  Yet it appears to me that the most common response from many within the student body follows a similar course.  It begins with a critical sniping at policies that seem to disenfranchise you, like the classic open hours "scandal" or what to do with the sabbath.  This is followed by large declarations of mistrust, generally in meme form or in some kind of article in the cabinet.  When the dissent is strong enough it takes shape in lunch conversations, apartment to-dos and the occasional angered writer with some kind of old latin pseudonym, most likely because they saw V for Vendetta and want to engage in that kind of behavior while avoiding all of the risk that it engenders. 

          All along this course there are multiple self-justifications.  You are disenchanted.  You are disenfranchised.  It isn’t worth the cost you are expending.  You didn’t sign up for this.  The last one, while patently untrue, is also the most hysterical to have to hear over and over again.  If you are of the sincere belief that what you ‘sign up for’ always binds you to the perfect efforts of the other party, according to your own opinions of what constitutes right and wrong action on their part,  let me be the first to admit I would hesitate to employ you, and be absolutely loathe to marry you.  Self justifications with a posture of arrogance towards the administration and the faculty are about as effective an agent of change as nailing jello to a tree.   Actual discussion, dialogue and a willingness to listen intently rather than to form opinions on the fly from one or two articles (or heaven forbid, Facebook posts) seems the better way.  Recognizing that you cannot, on your own, come to be the sole arbiter of truth regarding this situation will go a long way as well.  This should be happening on all levels from administration to staff to student.  No one person possesses the way forward, and so the assumption that the one person who should be moving everything forward is holding it back is just one more way to bog the process down in ire, hopelessness, and fatalism.  

         This seems to be the MO of late, though, doesn’t it?  Walk around and have a discussion about Geneva and you are met with a sour face, a gross countenance, and some level of doom saying straight out of a depression era folk tune.  It is as though many cannot rightly distinguish between a thorn in one’s flesh, a chip on one’s shoulder, and a stick up one’s butt.  Surely this is not the way forward, is it?  If you have followed the mistaken proposition that pessimism, cynicism, and an abject critical spirit towards authority are marks of true Christianity, please stop forgetting your face when you walk away from the mirror.  If we really are to believe that by worrying we cannot add a minute to our lives, then why descend from knowing that a problem exists into a bane anxiety and emotional angst disguised as institutional concern?   It may sound trite at this point, but be of good cheer.  If indeed Christ died for his church, then her longevity and sanctity will not rise or fall as dictated by her colleges or institutions.          Geneva may fall, which would indeed be a sad day, or she may rise from the ashes with a newfound vigor and calling.  We cannot live as though we know for sure.  We certainly cannot live this way when it seems that the only things we know for sure are those which are worthy of doubt, despair, and discord.  Not only is it misguided, it is quite literally repulsive. 

          So how do we move forward?  It begins with a posture of humility.  Self-denial even insofar as it means denying the selfish act of sniping, gossiping, and faction forming.  Pray for your faculty, your friends, your staff members, those in authority over the administrations of Geneva.  Bend your ear and heart towards them and then take their supplications to our gracious Father.  Listen well.  Consider others higher than yourself.  Get over yourself, and take the chip off your shoulder.  Speak truth in love.  Let that same love cover multitudes of sins.  Love those who hate you, who despise you, and who disappoint you.  It is not a love of naiveté, but a love of genuine concern and a willingness to help.  The model of complaining about what we didn’t sign up for, when in fact we did, flies in the face of the model of God’s covenant grace.  He signs up, knowing our frailty and inability, and yet sacrifices himself for our redemption and shalom.  

         Lastly, I would encourage you as a student to study hard and find sincere community within Geneva and the churches that surround her.  If you complete your degree at the expense of your actual education because of distracting side arguments that beget a critical spirit, you’ve missed it.  If the sum of your joy is measured in the hours that other genders can be in your apartment, you’ve missed it.  If your goal is to change Geneva on an institutional level, rather than to be changed by Geneva on a personal level, then you’ve missed it.  And if you think for one second that any or all of this can be accomplished apart from the constant renewing grace of the Holy Spirit, then you’ve missed everything.  

With love and an open ear, 

John