Combine all of the above with my age and you've got something interesting. I'm 33. That means I'm in a prime position to make my next piece of work with students the best of my life. I'm young enough to easily relate, but old enough to have a ton of experience. It's an opportunity that can't be wasted, so I can't take any risks of winding up taking a job, only to find out that I'm actually a horrible fit. My solution? Be so up-front with where you are that there's no way anyone would hire you inless they really love you and who you are for exactly that.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, here's the philosophy of ministry I provided in hopes to scare off as many churches as possible.
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In an effort to keep this as digestible as possible, I’ll do my best to relay a sense of my philosophy on ministry by sharing some key thoughts and giving a brief description of each. I trust that if any further explanation is desired that you will feel free to ask as many questions as you please.
Christianity isn’t about events, it’s about life.
Events are a great place to systematically begin relationships and, to some degree, strengthen old ones. They have their place. That said, I could probably count on my fingers the number of times that a life-changing experience happened to a student, purely because of programmed events. My strongest influence has always come in those relationships where students accept my family’s invitation to “do life” with us and live alongside us.
What people need more than anything else in life is to know they aren’t alone.
When God tells us to have no fear, it’s almost always immediately reasoned out by His assurance of His presence in our lives. In looking at Jesus’ life and ministry, it seems to me that He went about the business of seeking out the people who felt most abandoned and alone and assuring them that He was with them and for them. I seek to do the same in my life and teach others to emulate this example, as well.
People, in general, and especially teens, are capable of much more than most of us care to imagine.
Almost every student to whom I’ve ever ministered has been starved for opportunity to grow. Much of that stems from a lack of opportunity to fail. I make it a point to push my students to do more than they dream possible. Sometimes those efforts are not successful in the moment, but growth will never happen in the absence of struggle. It’s uncomfortable and messy, but it’s necessary if we really are committed to raising students up to lead.
Working at a church is about going after the one, not patting ourselves on the back for the 99.
I have an undeniable role to disciple the students that make up the core of any ministry with which I may work, but when another “weaker” student is struggling, it’s not a time to protect the rest of the group from him or her. Rather, it’s a time when I will do all I can to lay out the welcome mat for such a student and I will encourage my other students and families to join in the same.
Every single student has a talent (or more than one) that is worthy of the world’s attention.
I can’t tolerate claims that today’s adolescents and young adults are lazy or apathetic. My experience and a large amount of research suggests that they are actually the most motivated group of young people the world has ever seen. A student’s talents and passions may not fit the mold for our traditional lists of spiritual gifts, but those gifts are still God-given and purposeful. We have to allow our students to think outside the box and seek out their role in the body.
No one is going to be a perfect fit for everyone.
If you hire one guy to take care of 30 kids (or more) it’s ridiculous to believe that he will become best friends with every single student. Hopefully, a productive relationship can be formed, but even Jesus only had 12 disciples… one hanged himself and only three seemed to really be super close to Jesus. Let’s face it… If Jesus were a youth minister and the disciples were His youth group, most every Church I’ve ever seen would fire him…or put Him on administrative leave until He resigned. What a church can expect of a youth minister is that he will empower other adults in the church to provide strong relationships with students in the group as well, so that it’s not an all-or-nothing one man show.
In a perfect world, it would be completely unnecessary to have a youth minister on staff.
Best-case-scenario, all of the parents in a church, as well as the empty-nesters, and everyone else, for that matter, would take their faith community seriously and seek out opportunities to grow relationships with younger kids and adolescents… they would disciple one another as they grow in love for one another… students would learn to minister to each other, rather than sitting back and waiting for someone to cater to their spiritual needs because they’re being told they don’t know enough yet. A truly healthy youth ministry is one in which the youth minister is there, not to run the show, but to coordinate the things being done by members as they minister to one another and their community and make sure that those efforts are all working in the same direction.
It’s not the job of a youth minister to tell students what to believe.
Our students aren’t stupid. One of our biggest problems in Christianity is the number of adults we have in the church who don’t know why they believe what they believe, except to say that it’s what they’ve always been taught. Teaching students a bunch of facts and instructing them on how to believe is a worthless waste of time. On the other hand, teaching them how to ask the right questions so that they can look at scripture and figure out their beliefs for themselves is the greatest gift we could give these students and the Church as a whole. After all, while people may be intimidated by tough questions, truth is never afraid and will never be overtaken because someone asked too many questions.
If I haven’t already scared you off…
The Church is the last place on the planet where we should be tolerant of gossip.
No Church or ministry within any Church can function in a healthy way when gossip is tolerated. When I share something negative about you with someone else and I haven’t talked with you first, unsuccessfully, about that issue, I am guilty of gossip. If I have talked with you unsuccessfully and I share that situation with another person who is in no position to do anything about it, I am guilty of gossip. Gossip is relationship cancer and a Church without relationships is no Church at all. Any team of which I am a part can count on me to strive diligently to conduct myself with an attitude of vigilance to always “go to my brother,” and I will expect the same from others in leadership.
