Smellmylife

I’ve been hearing alot of stories recently about poor relations between staff members at churches….especially between senior pastors and youth pastors.  This seems to be a common problem.  Many senior pastors are on a power trip and intimidated by the usually younger, gifted youth pastor.  On the other hand many youth pastors are lacking the proper respect for authority, and very critical of the church in general.  I know, I was a youth pastor for 10 years and frankly I didn’t have much luck in connecting with either senior pastor I worked with.  Some of that was their fault, some of it was mine.  I thought I read that the average tenure for a youth pastor is less than 2 years, so something’s wrong in many churches.  I wrote an article after leaving my second youth pastor position.  It’s never been published but I think it could help many senior and youth pastors out.  I’ll not post the whole article (you can e-mail me for that), but here are the main points.

Advice for Senior Pastors;

• Make sure that your vision matches up.  If you both have different ideas about where the church should be headed, about how to do ministry or just the church in general….it won’t work.
• Understand that your youth pastor has a calling also and deserves the same respect as you do.  Your youth pastor (no matter what you may think about him personally) should never be make to feel as if he isn’t a “real” minister.  I hated being called “Mr. Mark or The Big Kid”
• Direct complaints about the youth pastor or his ministry back to him.  Matthew 18 works in small churches and big churches.  Gossip is gossip.  If your staff member can’t resolve the situation then he can involve you later.  This actually saves you work.
• Give your youth pastor a detailed job description up front.  He needs expectations right off the bat.  I’ll never forget being told,” We hired you to take care of our kids, not bring in all these others”. That’s a direct quote!

It takes two to tango, so here’s advice to youth pastors;

• Communicate out the Wazoo!  Don’t let your senior pastor be the last to know what’s going on.  Some don’t care, or don’t bother to read your reports, but that’s not an excuse for you lacking on your end.
• Respect your pastor enough to talk man to man.  Don’t be afraid to approach him about anything.  If you don’t bitterness and resentment will well up inside you.
• Never say anything negative about your senior pastor to anyone. It’s just plain sin, and it will come back to bite you for sure.
• Behave in such a way as to destroy all youth stereotypes. 

            Here are some common “youth pastor” stereotypes;

• You want to be a “real” pastor someday and you’re in training
• You have 2 million fun games at your disposal.
• You aren’t as qualified to teach the Bible as a senior pastor
• You are highly unorganized
• You are great at sports and play the guitar
• If you are spending time with teens, you’re just playing with kids all day.
• You are a big kid and immature
• You are too young to be a pastor.

Here are some tips to help dispell some of these.

• Don’t be late to work
• If you must be late, have a good reason and call ahead
• Have regular office hours
• If you’ll be out let the office know why, where and when you’ll be back
• Plan ahead
• Plan ahead
• Plan ahead
• Don’t wear cut-off’s and a Dr. Pepper t-shirt to work everyday.
• Be professional

Hopefully this was helpful to someone!

Seriously, I’m done with the view of church that I have had for the past 5 years.  I want our church to really be about one thing….preaching Jesus Christ, the gospel, the good news for those who need to hear it.  I’m still going to be innovative (or try to be), I’m still going to be creative, I’m still going to make sure that the systems in our church are designed to produce fully devoted followers of Christ.  But, I’m done trying to treat the kingdom of God as a business.  I know we are supposed to have goals, but have we taken it too far?  I mean as a goal, how about, “We want to share the gospel with as many unsaved people as humanly possible this year, but not, our goal is to have 2,000 salvations at our church this year! Of course we want people to come to Christ, but did Peter go out on the day of Pentecost and say, “Alright guys, make sure you take an accurate count of hands during the response song, we’re shooting for 3,000 today!”  I don’t think so.  I think it was more like…”Let’s preach Jesus today and leave the results to Him, be it 3,000, 1,000, 200 or 5 salvations…we are going to do our part and trust God to do His will.

It scares me a little that we (The Church in America) are treating the Kingdom too much like a Fortune 500 company.  I’m all for taking some principles (such as systems, leadership training, marketing, etc.) that help make a business successful and apply them to the church setting.  That’s just smart.  However, when we put pressure on our staff by saying, “We need the baptism and salvation numbers to increase by 10-20% this year, or we need to add 50-75 new members each quarter”, I think is dangerous.  And I’ve seen churches do this sort of thing.  But, I’m done.

I’m going to be more about prayer, than about problem solving.

I’m going to be more about seeking Him than seeking the next church trend.

I’m going to be more about knowing Him, than knowing the lastest leadership secret.

I’m going to be more about the individual than the numbers.

I’m going to be more about being involved in what God is doing here in Crofton, than just my desire to be part of something “Big”.

I’m going to be more about preaching the Word than just coming up with catchy sermon titles.

I’m going to be reading the Bible more, rather than books about the Bible.

Now, does this mean that I’ll stop reading books about the Church and about the Bible?  Does this mean that all of The Journey Church’s sermons will be entitled..”Gleanings from Ephesians”?  No.  But, it means that that stuff is not going to be as important to me anymore.  What will be most important is knowing God more and preaching the gospel, all the rest, He can take care of.