Get Out of the Rut and Challenge Yourself

This post is in some ways an extension of Tuesday’s post.

Succinctly put, it is important that we challenge ourselves rather than always falling back into the same repeated, familiar, comfortable patterns. It is only by challenging ourselves that we can grow and improve and become better.

The best example of this that I can think of is my own limited ability to put contacts in. 

I have been wearing contacts for about 12 years, since I was a senior in high school. My eyes are very

sensitive, and I always hated having eyedrops or anything put in, so it was a challenge for me to learn how to put contacts in and force a foreign object into my eye. I had to use both hands and have a mirror to do it so I could stare straight ahead and get the contact off my finger and onto my eye.

But here’s the thing: since I always put my contacts in this way, I never learned how to do it otherwise. I’ve known lots of people who can put their contacts in with one hand or without use of a mirror, but because I never challenged myself to learn how to do it, I’m still stuck in the same two-handed, mirrored rut (which can be a problem if you find yourself camping without a mirror or a broken arm or something prevents you from getting both hands to your eye).

I think this is an important lesson to learn for a lot of different aspects of life:

• Think of how limited our health care options would be in brilliant and daring doctors hadn’t pushed the limits of what was considered to be possible at the time. A lot of the surgeries and procedures which are now commonplace are only possible because people challenged themselves and risks were taken.
• A pitcher with a great fastball might tear through the high school ranks, but unless he challenges himself to try different things and learn additional pitches, he’ll never have more than a mediocre career.
• Maybe you’ve never received the promotion at work that you want because you haven’t challenged yourself enough. Maybe you haven’t spent free time learning new skills that would make you an attractive candidate, or maybe you haven’t gone out of your way to network and develop the relationships that are needed to get the promotion.
• Do you find yourself ignorant or uninformed about a specific topic that seems to come up over and over again? Challenge yourself to expand your knowledge in that area. Talk to a mechanic to better understand what’s going on under the hood of your car, or read a book that explains inflation, or get some CDs to listen to in the car that teach conversational Spanish.
• If you are a Christian, are you tired of the fact that you claim to live your life based on a book that you only study at church and barely understand? Commit yourself to studying the Bible every day. Talk to a minister or read a book for tips on how to study deeper and more effectively. Sign up to teach a Bible class at church—that will force you to spend time in study!
• Are you frustrated with your relationship with your teenage children? Challenge yourself to understand them better—listen to the music they listen to, ask about their interests, sacrifice your free time to spend time doing what they like to do with them.

We could probably come up with dozens of examples, but the principle remains the same: if you want to improve your life—professionally, spiritually, athletically, relationally, socially, informationally—you’ve got to challenge yourself. You can’t stay in the rut, doing the same things over and over and expect to improve.

Oh, and by the way, today I put my contacts in without a mirror (You know, practice what you preach and all that).

Reading and Walking

I have to read a lot for grad school, and sometimes my reading assignments stack up to the point that I have to spend hours and hours reading in a given day. Sometimes this can be hard to do, because the reading is occasionally not the most interesting material in the world, and if I read while sitting back in my chair or laying down, it’s easy to fall asleep. 

So recently, I have come upon what seems to be a great solution: I walk laps in the church auditorium while doing my reading. So far, I have noticed at least three benefits:

• Since I’m walking while reading, it’s pretty difficult to fall asleep. Along the same lines, it’s easy for me to read for longer periods of time this way.
• Spending my reading time in the auditorium rather than the office tends to minimize distractions (the temptation of having my computer nearby, phone interruptions, questions, etc.).
• I get exercise while being at work!

The last point is perhaps more significant than I originally thought. Yesterday I had quite a bit of reading to do, and ended up walking 190 laps around the church auditorium. I also paced off the distance of one lap, and determined that it comes out to about 74 yards. When I did the math, I was surprised (but pleased) to discover that I had walked almost 8 miles!

I am excited about this and hope to make it a habit, at least for those times when I have a lot of reading to do (not all activities can be done well while walking laps). I need to start wearing better shoes to work though!

Plowing Through The Semester

Ministers often get a day off during the week, and the thinking behind this is that Sunday is way too much work for a minister to be considered a part of a restful weekend. For the past few years, Monday has been my official day off, but unfortunately, this semester my work load has been such that I pretty much have to come in every Monday and work all day if I have any hope of finishing my work for the week.

The picture above shows the stack of books that I brought with me to the office today in an effort to prepare for my weekly Greek Readings quiz (technically they are quizzes, but the term quiz really doesn’t do them justice—they are tests), and to work on my Global Evangelism final which is due this Friday.

This all probably comes across as complaining, which isn’t really my intention. Certainly all of the work has provided me with an extra dose of stress, but it has also helped me to grow in my time management skills and my ministry. And perhaps most of all, I am developing perseverance: I continue to plow on through the semester (I like the word plow, because I think it accurately conveys the sense of hard work), but I am so looking forward to December 4, which is when my Christmas break officially begins.

Friday Summary Report, September 28

It has been a while since the last Summary Report, but things continue to be busy.

One of the grad school classes I’m taking this semester, Greek Readings, is taking a ton of my time. I’m doing well in the class (we have weekly quizzes), but between the translation assignments, the memorization of paradigms and principal parts, listening to the class lectures, and learning new vocabulary, it is just a lot of work. It’s just the end of September, and I know I’ve still got a lot of the class left, but I am looking forward to December.

I’ll be going to Memphis in a couple weeks for Global Evangelism, which is the second class I’m taking this semester. I have been so busy with the weekly work for Greek that Global Evangelism has taken a backseat, which means that I have a plethora of reading to do over the next two weeks. I honestly don’t know how I’ll be able to get it all done.

In addition to my classes, I have all of my regular ministry responsibilities, so it’s a full plate. My blogging will likely take somewhat of a hit for a few weeks.

Some random tidbits:

• This weekend is Bikes, Blues & BBQ in Fayetteville; I will be doing my best to completely avoid it.
• The Arkansas Razorback football team continues its complete nose dive. We are currently at 1-3, and are facing an unlikely opportunity for a road victory at Texas A&M this weekend. And we thought we had a shot at contending for the SEC title?!

And finally, a few articles from around the net worth reading:

• As Chipper Jones nears retirement, here’s a great article from ESPN on the significance of his career. A first-ballot Hall of Famer, no question. Seriously, indisputable.
• Matt Marino writes a really good blog post entitled “What’s so uncool about cool churches?” in which he critiques the craving for trendy, relevant churches and/or youth ministries. He makes a lot of good points, and some of his thoughts closely mirror some of my own reflections on current problems with youth ministry.
• Here’s another great ministry article (this one more directly related to youth ministry) entitled, “The Myth That Can Kill Your Ministry.” It’s a really good read for anyone who works in youth ministry, or anyone that ever talks to someone who does.

Dealing With Interruptions

This post has nothing to do with ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. It’s a good show though.

In response to a post I wrote about time management where I mentioned having interruptions at work, one reader pointed me to a great quotation from Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer by J. Oswald Sanders (thanks Karen!):

“One busy man told me how he mastered the problem of interruptions. ‘Up to some years ago,’ he testified, ‘I was always annoyed by them, which was really a form of selfishness on my part. People used to walk in and say, ‘Well, I just had two hours to kill here between trains, and I thought I would come and see you.’ 

That used to bother me. Then the Lord convinced me that He sends people our way. He sent Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch. He sent Barnabas to see Saul. The same applies today. God sends people our way. 

So when someone comes in, I say, ‘The Lord must have brought you here. Let us find out why He sent you. Let us have prayer.’ Well this does two things. the interview takes on new importance because God is in it. And it generally shortens the interview. If a visitor knows you are looking for reasons why God should have brought him, and there are none apparent, the visit becomes pleasant but brief. 

So now I take interruptions as from the Lord. They belong in my schedule, because the schedule is God’s to arrange at His pleasure.’”

I think it’s a great quotation, and it underscores the fact that sometimes, interruptions happen for a real reason. I say sometimes and not always because I don’t believe the popular mantra that “Everything happens for a reason.” But a lot of things do happen for a reason, and a little bit of probing and discernment can usually help you to see that.

It also underscores the fact that, if someone has interrupted by schedule with a real need, their need is more important than my schedule. If we claim to be servants of God, then we need to serve Him in all areas of life, and that means to serve Him with my schedule as well.

One last note on “ministry interruptions”: a wise and experienced minister once told me that when church members come by randomly just to shoot the breeze (and thus, interrupting his study time), he will enlist their aid in some ministry responsibility (making a visit, working on some project, etc.). In his experience, this has either led to productive visits where work is completed, or a reduction in those kinds of visits!

Friday Summary Report, August 24

(1) After having a couple of weeks of relative calm as summer wrapped up, things have started to get busy again as my grad school classes for the fall semester have started up. My struggles studies in Greek continue, as this semester I take a course with a heavy emphasis on translating readings from the New Testament, and I’m also in a Global Evangelism class.

(2) Things have also been busy at work, as, in addition to regular duties and the start of my classes, I preached last week, am preaching again this week, and have also had various tasks to do to help with preparations for our upcoming year of Thursday Bible School.

(3) Here is an interesting report on the demographics of social network users. Did you know that the average age of Facebook users is over 40 (and getting older!)? Meanwhile, the average age of Twitter users is 37, and is getting increasingly younger. A lot of other interesting information is in the linked article.

(4) I’ve thought for some time that natural evidences for the existence of God don’t do much to convince people who aren’t already believers. Basically, if you already have your mind made up that God doesn’t exist, then you can look at countless examples from nature that scream Intelligent Design to the rest of us (believers) and find some other ways to explain it. But, if you, like me, find that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19.1), then you’ll enjoy this article on Why Giraffes Don’t Have Brain Damage. The complexity and wonder of God’s creation never ceases to amaze me!

(5) The big news from the world of sports is that Lance Armstrong has decided to quit fighting the doping allegations that have been made against him for years (while maintaining his innocence), and that he will likely have his 7 Tour de France titles stripped from him as a result. I don’t know whether Lance is guilty or not, but I do know that he has been tested constantly for years without ever failing a test, and that there are a lot of people who have been working obsessively to try and tear down his legacy. He might be as guilty as he can be, but there are a lot of elements to the saga that resemble a witch hunt.

Reflecting On A Busy Summer and Managing Time

We are now a week into August, which means that soon school will start back up, and my hectic schedule will calm down to some degree. As a minister who works with teens, my summers are always very busy, but this summer has been even more crammed full of activity than most—really, dating back to about April, I haven’t hardly had time to catch my breath!

In general, I think it’s good to be busy, but there’s also such a thing as being too busy. And the problem with being too busy is that it often leads, at least in my case, to things like burnout, irritability, and neglected relationships (in addition to much less frequent blogging!). I’ve already been thinking about some specific things I can do or not do to ensure that next summer is a little less crazy than this one, but in a general sense, I’ve also been thinking about Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. 

Covey presents his Matrix in his famous book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. As a disclaimer, I haven’t actually read the book, but I have been exposed to this part of it in a couple of different settings and have found it to be quite helpful.

Considering the different activities that occupy our time (and which, added together, constitute our busyness), Covey categorizes all activities according to how urgent and important they are. An urgent task is something that is inherently time-sensitive and must be dealt with quickly, while an important task is basically something that carries lasting value.

When these two qualities are charted, you end up with Covey’s Time Management Matrix (see below), which groups all tasks into one of four quadrants.

(My thoughts on these quadrants are based on Covey’s, but are somewhat different because my observations come from a ministry context rather than a business one.)

Quadrant 1: Important and Urgent– Items in this category are of crucial importance and must be dealt with right away. This would include things like:

• When you get in a car wreck (even a minor one), contacting your insurance company and seeing about repairs becomes a major priority.
• When two teenagers (or adults) are having some sort of conflict which is causing disunity or division within the youth group (or the church congregation as a whole), you deal with the problem sooner rather than later if you know what’s good for you.
• When you have a term paper to write that is worth half of your overall grade and it is due in a week, you budget whatever time you need to get it done in time.

Quadrant 2: Important but Not Urgent– Items in this category are of great importance, but because they are not time-sensitive or attached to deadlines, a lot of times they end up getting neglected:

• Talking to a teenager about problems he is having at home or at school.
• Taking the time to sit down and plan a quality youth group event or church-wide fellowship activity.
• Immersing yourself in the study of the Word of God.
• Spending time with the most precious baby girl in the world.

Quadrant 3: Urgent but Not Important– Tasks in this category are really not important, but they are time-sensitive or somehow attached to a deadline:

• Phone calls are inherently urgent, because the phone rings right now, and it’s hard to leave a phone call unanswered because it might be important. But so many times they are not important at all—“Would your youth group be interested in doing our fundraiser?” “Can I sign you up for a free trial ______?”
• When you are in the middle of studying for a sermon or Bible class, and a church member comes in and interrupts just to shoot the breeze. Invariably the conversation starts with, “I know you’re busy, but…” (To be fair, sometimes church members stop by to talk about things that are actually important instead of just checking in on you out of boredom or curiosity. When church members are giving you important information or are in need of some sort of counsel, that would fall in a different category.)

Quadrant 4: Neither Important nor Urgent– Items in Quadrant 4 are not important, and don’t really have a deadline attached to them either:

• Reading promotional mail about an activity that “maybe I should look into someday.”
• Playing solitaire on the computer.
• Checking Facebook or Twitter a dozen times a day.
• Watching reruns of The King of Queens.

The reason that all of these categories matter is that where you spend the majority of your time determines, in large part, how effective and even how happy you are.

Some people live almost exclusively in Quadrants 3 and 4, spending time on things that are essentially unimportant. Covey says that people who live this way are basically irresponsible. You know people like this—they can’t hold down a job and you cannot rely on them for anything. It isn’t a good way to live.

If we have any feelings of responsibility at all, we have to spend some of our time in Quadrant 1, because there are certain things in life that pop up that you just can’t plan for. However, what happens to a lot of us is that we spend too much time in Quadrant 1, constantly shifting from one crisis or deadline to another. As I have discovered (again) this summer, that is a stressful way to live, and can easily lead to burnout.

And it’s also a vicious cycle—when we spend so much of our time dealing with matters that are urgent and important, that typically leaves us too exhausted to use our remaining time wisely. So, rather than spending that time planning for future events (and thereby preventing those events from becoming frantic, last-minute crises that we have to deal with), we tend to just sit down and watch TV, or doing something else that requires no effort (Quadrant 4).

According to Covey, the key is to spend the majority of your time in Quadrant 2. You deal with Quadrant 1 problems as they emerge, but you minimize the number of those problems by planning ahead (for example, knowing the deadline of your paper several months in advance, you budget your time so you are not working on it at the last minute). You recognize Quadrant 3 and Quadrant 4 activities as being essentially unimportant, so you seek to either delegate or eliminate as many of them as possible.

By spending the majority of your time in Quadrant 2, your relationships with other people are strengthened, important tasks are still tended to, and your stress level goes down.

All that’s left now is to put all that I just wrote into practice. :)

A Tip on Using Dropbox on Multiple Computers

Dropbox is pretty cool. From Wikipedia:

“Dropbox is a file hosting service…that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. In brief, Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of the computer it is viewed on.”

For me, this is a great thing. At work, I have to bounce around between three computers, and since one of those computers (my laptop) is an MacBook while the other two are PCs, they don’t network well with one another and I used to have to carry around a flash drive constantly. Now, I can just use Dropbox as a flash drive—I put the file I want in the Dropbox folder on my computer, and soon, it is available on the other computer I need to use (I say soon rather than immediately, because the file does have to be uploaded from my computer to the Dropbox server and then downloaded by the destination computer—not a big deal though).

The only problem with this is that if you have multiple people who use a computer where your Dropbox is installed, they could potentially access your files or clutter up your Dropbox (you get a limited amount of free storage) with their own files.

I never worry about the first problem (none of the files in my Dropbox folder are secret or particularly important), and the second was never an issue until recently. I noticed over the last couple of weeks that a ton of files were being added to my Dropbox without my knowing, and finally I realized that a setting had been changed where Dropbox had become the default means of importing pictures on one of the computers at the church building. Basically, anytime someone would plug a flash drive into the control booth computer at the church building, it was automatically importing all the pictures from that drive to my Dropbox folder.

The fix was simple—I just went to Dropbox’s Preferences box and unclicked a few options—and now I don’t have to worry about have hundreds of strange pictures mysteriously appear in my Dropbox. If you use Dropbox on several computers like I do, and especially if (for whatever reason) you connect a lot of USB drives to your computer, you might want to make sure that your Preferences have been set up properly.

(If you don’t have Dropbox yet I highly recommend it: click here to get your own Dropbox for free!).

Reflections on Graduation, Youth Ministry, and Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams is a documentary film from the 1990s that tells the story of two kids from the projects in Chicago who play basketball and hope to use their talents to make it to the NBA and ultimately, change their lives. It is a brilliant and poignant film, and touches on a lot of heavy issues like race, poverty, and drugs, but it also has a bearing on this particular idea.

Near the end of the film, William Gates, one of the two main characters of the film, goes in to talk to his high school basketball coach, Gene Pingatore, at the end of his senior year. Pingatore coached for St. Joseph’s, a private Catholic high school with an expensive tuition, but because William was a basketball phenom as a freshman, he was able to receive a scholarship. William had a good career, but a devastating knee injury prevented him from being the player that everyone expected him to be.

The particular clip I’m talking about starts at the 30.51 mark in the video below, and runs until about 33.05:

As Gates walks out of the coach’s life, Pingatore chuckles and remarks, “Well, another one walks out the door and another one comes in the door. That’s what it’s all about.”

It comes across rather callously: it’s as if the last four years meant nothing to the coach; Gates was just a player on a team, a piece he manipulated for a few years, and now it’s time to use the next piece.*

•   •   •

Last night I went to Farmington High School Graduation to watch five seniors from our church walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.

As a youth minister, I’ve now been with the church here long enough that I have worked with some of our teens for several years—all the way from sixth grade through their senior years. All that time invested into students can stir up a lot of bittersweet feelings—I am proud to see how they have developed and matured and what they have accomplished, and am excited for what they will go on to do. At the same time, I am concerned about the trials and temptations they will face, the decisions they will make, and ultimately, whether or not they will remain faithful. I can’t help but wonder about things that I could have done differently that perhaps would have impacted their spiritual growth in a better way, and I wonder if I could have taught or exemplified a particular point of Christian discipleship more effectively.

Graduation is also a bittersweet time because I know that my relationships with my students (in a sense, I guess they’re not mine anymore) always change when they go off to college. Sometimes we get closer (which is a joy), a lot of times we drift apart somewhat as we don’t spend as much time together, but always there is a change, and I’m not a big fan of change.

To sympathize a bit with Coach Pingatore from the clip above, there are the realities of youth ministry (and coaching)—as kids graduate and move on, other kids do come into the group, and you have to devote efforts and attention to them as well. If spend all of your time focusing on the students who have already left, then you neglect the ones who are still around. But at the same time, I can’t just chuckle about it and laugh it off the way he does. New students come in, but they don’t replace the ones who have left as if they are interchangeable pieces.

As the summer ends and my graduating teens ultimately move on, I watch them from a distance, cheering on their accomplishments and praying for God’s guidance in their lives. But to me, they’re still my kids: I’ve poured too much of myself into them for them to be anything else.

•   •   •

*For the record, Pingatore did not like the way he was portrayed in the film and ended up suing the directors. He might actually be a great guy who invests a ton in his players; it didn’t come across that way in the film.

Bad News/Good News

Bad News: I just realized today that I am busy on at least 9 of the next 10 weekends. I hate it when my life does this—I have got to get better at learning to say “no.”

Good News: After over a year of it being blocked off with building materials as part of a construction project, I got my special parking spot back at work today! This is a big deal, because my special spot is one of the main perks that comes with working at a church building (I also get all the free ice I can eat…when the ice machine isn’t broken.).

What’s Wrong With Youth Ministers? Summary and Conclusions

This post will serve to wrap up my thoughts on several problems which people commonly associate with youth ministers. If you’ve missed the first three parts of this series, you can read them here, here, and here. 

Youth ministers often don’t get a lot of respect, and people who complain about them have a lot of criticisms. In this series I discussed five different criticisms which I think have varying degrees of validity:

(1) Youth Ministers don’t stay very long.

Is this criticism valid? Generally, yes. It will always be difficult for youth ministers to get respect if they are viewed more as hired hands than as good shepherds (cf. John 10), and people can’t help but view youth ministers as hired hands when they don’t stick around long enough to put down roots and build meaningful, lasting relationships with the congregation. There are certainly some valid reasons to leave a congregation (even after a short period of time), but in general, I think youth ministers as a group are guilty of leaving a little too quickly when things get difficult. 

Suggestion for improvement: Congregations are made up of people, which means that any church and therefore any church-related job is going to come with problems and headaches. Realizing from the outset that no ministry position is perfect helps to temper unrealistic expectations. Furthermore, working on developing the biblical virtues of perseverance and patience helps a minister weather the bad times while working diligently to help bring about better ones.

(2) Youth Ministers are never in the office working. 

Is this criticism valid? To a degree, yes. It is not valid when based on the assumption that being in the office is the single most important thing that a youth minister can do, because the majority of youth ministry cannot be done in an office where no young people are present. Thankfully, most congregations realize this today, and adjust office hour requirements accordingly. Unfortunately, some youth ministers take advantage of this arrangement and are never found in the office at all, and that is a problem. Youth ministers hold a visible position of leadership and, therefore, need to be accessible to members of the congregation at certain times.

Suggestion for improvement: If you have office hours posted (or even if they are not posted, but were agreed upon when you were hired), be a person of integrity and make it a priority to be in your office at those times. Make the hours you spend in the office as productive as possible by focusing on those aspects of youth ministry that can be done without your youth group being present: studying and preparing Bible class lessons, answering phone calls and emails, planning and publicizing events through social media,  or reading books on ministry and Christian living.

(3) Youth Ministers build allegiance to a group, not to the Church.

Is this criticism valid? Yes. I spent a lot of time covering this one, because of all the criticisms people make about youth ministers/ministry I think this is the most significant. A lot of the activities and strategies that youth ministers typically employ serve to isolate young people from the rest of the congregation, leaving them without any meaningful relationships with other, older members. Once the teenager graduates from high school (and the youth group) he/she can feel out of place at church and not surprisingly, a lot of teenagers leave the church during this time of life.

Suggestion for improvement: Limit how often you remove your youth group from the corporate worship of the congregation; the more often you are gone (regardless of how important the reason seems), the more you underscore that, on some level, the youth group is not a part of the larger congregation. Allow high school graduates to still hang out at youth group activities, and invest some level of responsibility and leadership in them. Encourage your teens to be actively involved in the life of the church in worship, in service, and in church-wide events. Finally, provide opportunities for adult Christians to mentor teens one-on-one or in small groups—the more relationships a teen develops outside the youth group the better.

(4) Youth Ministers are shallow.

Is this criticism valid? At times it is, but on the whole, I don’t think youth ministers should be roundly criticized for this. As I mentioned before, I honestly don’t know of any youth ministers who do nothing more than plan fun events and play games with their teens. I do think that youth ministers sometimes lean too far toward entertainment when trying to teach their students, but even that generally comes from a desire to instill biblical principles in a way the student will remember rather than an unwillingness on the part of the youth minister to teach the Bible. Youth ministers are sometimes unacceptably ignorant in their Bible knowledge, but as I argued before, so are most Christians. That’s not to say that it isn’t a problem (it’s a huge problem), it just isn’t a problem that youth ministers should be singled out for.

Suggestion for improvement: Youth activities which are fun should be balanced with activities that focus on other important aspects of the Christian life. There’s nothing wrong with taking your teens bowling or visiting Six Flags, but you should also take them to spiritually-focused events like retreats and youth rallies and also provide them with abundant opportunities for service. With regard to Bible class, teaching the Bible should always take precedence over entertaining the students, and that is made easier when the youth minister has made a personal commitment to Bible study.

(5) Youth Ministers are liberal.

Is this criticism valid? Mostly, I don’t think so. Generally speaking, because of their age and educational background, I do think that youth ministers tend to be more “liberal” than the average church member, however, I don’t think it’s particularly common for youth ministers to swoop into a new ministry position, determined to make the church more liberal at all costs and causing irreparable damage along the way. Actually, I think it is much more common for youth ministers to forget about some of their own personal preferences, realizing that they are out of place in their current congregation and not worth causing grief over.

Suggestion for improvement: Congregations can go a long way toward alleviating this problem (to whatever degree it exists) in the interview process. Since terms like “liberal” and “conservative” are relative and generally used in relation to certain beliefs or practices, it should be easy enough for churches to ask specific questions during the interview process which determine if the candidate would be a good fit for their particular congregation.

I’m sure there are other criticisms that I could have covered in this discussion, but I tried to hit the ones I hear most often. As you can see, to some extent I think that youth ministers are criticized unfairly, but because of the questionable actions of a lot of youth ministers over the years, I also think that we deserve a lot of what we get. 

As I have tried to make clear in these posts, I am by no means the perfect youth minister, and I am sure that at times I have done some of the very things that I have been criticizing. Nevertheless, as I move forward, my goal is to exemplify the positive aspects of youth ministry rather than the problems often associated with it.

What’s Wrong With Youth Ministers? Some Common (and often Legitimate) Criticisms, Part 3

Disclaimer: I have been involved in youth ministry in some fashion for almost ten years now, so the statements below are based on observations I have made during that time. That being said, I am in no way claiming to be an expert on youth ministry, and I am certainly not suggesting that I am a perfect (or even particularly good) youth minister. Below are a collection of humble opinions and suggestions based on personal experience. See Parts 1 and 2 of this series here and here.

(4) Youth Ministers are shallow.

I had a hard time coming up with the title for this area of criticism, but really it’s just an umbrella description for specific criticisms of youth ministers that I’ve heard voiced or implied several times like, “All he does is plan fun events! There’s never any spiritual emphasis!” or “His Bible classes are pure entertainment! There’s no Bible to them!” or “He doesn’t even know the Bible! Why is he teaching our kids?”

Fun Events: in a time when a lot of teenagers are having fun in some decidedly unholy ways, I think there’s nothing wrong with having certain events that are for the express purpose of having good, clean fun. Of course, these fun events should be balanced with other types of events, but I honestly don’t know of any youth ministers who do nothing more than play basketball with their teens. Most organize regular devotionals to provide a time outside of worship to study the Bible, and many travel to a variety of youth rallies, retreats, and summer camps to provide an opportunity for worship and spiritual growth.

If there is one area in which I think youth ministers as a whole could be more intentional about planning activities it would be service. Fundamentally, Christians are supposed to be servants, but that’s a hard message to get across in our self-centered, consumer culture. One thing I’ve always tried to do as a youth minister (sometimes more successfully than others) is to provide a variety of opportunities for service to remind my students that following Jesus means adopting His model of servanthood.

Entertainment vs. Bible: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but teenagers in today’s world don’t exactly have stellar attention spans. This isn’t particularly surprising since most of them have been watching television since birth and spend most of the day plugged in through a smart phone, iPod, or laptop.

Because of this, there is undoubtedly a need for capturing the attention of our students in order to teach them effectively. That being said, if you’re not careful, you can spend so much time engaging the students that you don’t have time to engage Scripture. I’ve seen Bible lessons for teens that were so focused on grabbing their attention and making the Bible relevant that they barely had mentioned the Bible at all!

Fundamentally, I believe that the Bible is relevant to the life of every person, and because of that, it is interesting. I don’t claim to be a great teacher, but the Bible is a great book, and since I make it a priority to teach Scripture in my classes, it’s usually fairly effective.

Bible Knowledge: I have become personally convinced that Christians, on the whole, are woefully ignorant of the teachings of the Bible. That’s a scary thing to me, but even worse, a lot of Bible teachers (including some youth ministers) aren’t much better.

I don’t want to over-generalize here, because everyone is different: I’ve known youth ministers with little formalized training who are outstanding Bible students, and others with college degrees in Bible who seemed completely unaware of basic biblical teachings. Regardless of that, on the whole, we as a people don’t know our Bibles well enough, and I’ve never known anyone who spent too much time reading and studying Scripture.

And, related to the point above about Entertainment vs. Bible, the better you know and understand the Bible, the easier it is to teach it. Being able to describe the historical and cultural background of a specific story or passage is more interesting than just having your students take turns reading it out loud. Better understanding leads to better teaching.

(5) Youth Ministers are liberal.

I really dislike the labels “liberal” and “conservative” when it comes to church discussion, because everyone defines those terms so differently that they become largely useless.¹ I dislike the labels so much that I almost left this one off the list entirely, but it is a common criticism, so I thought I would address it briefly.²

In this last criticism, I am not referring to the idea held by some people that having a youth minister is inherently liberal,³ but rather the notion that youth ministers individually tend to be more liberal than the congregations that employ them, and thus, cause problems at those congregations.

Like I said above, this is a common criticism, and I’m sure it’s valid to a degree, but I think it tends to exaggerated a lot. Let me explain.

It makes a lot of sense for youth ministers to be a somewhat liberal group as a whole when you remember that, as a general rule, youth ministers tend to be young, and they also tend to be only a few years removed from an education at a Christian university (typically, people are more liberal when they are younger, and usually Christian universities are somewhat more liberal than are a lot of the congregations whose young people choose to attend them).

Nevertheless, if a congregation has done a good job in the interview process to find a youth minister that is a good fit for them, then really it shouldn’t be an issue—more liberal churches will have no problem accepting youth ministers with more liberal views, while more conservative congregations will avoid those candidates and instead hire someone whose views are more in line with their own.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if there is⁴ a huge problem of youth ministers being too liberal for the churches they work with, at least part of the blame should fall on the congregations who hired them in the first place when they obviously weren’t a very good fit.

The next (and hopefully last) post will close out the series with a few summary observations.

• • •

1For example, some people use the term “liberal” to refer to the idea that Jesus wasn’t actually define and wasn’t physically raised from the dead, while other people use it to refer to the practice of clapping hands while singing in worship. The fact that the same term is used to describe such widely varying theological beliefs and practices renders the term almost meaningless. It becomes just a relative term—anyone to the left of (whoever is speaking at the time) is “liberal”, while anyone to his right is “conservative”.


2I won’t put the terms in quotation marks from here on out because that would be annoying to read; just realize that I am making no attempt to actually define the terms, but am just using them in a general and relative sense.

3Some Christians/congregations believe that, since the New Testament doesn’t specifically speak about the use of youth ministers, congregations that have them are using a “liberal” innovation. Obviously, I disagree. Not wanting to go into great detail on this point, I would suggest that since the New Testament comes much closer to supporting a congregation having a youth minister than having a multi-million dollar building to worship in.


4There is no doubt in my mind that there are multiple examples of guys who have come in with more liberal views, tried to bring change to the congregation they were working with and caused a great deal of damage in the process. Nevertheless, I don’t really think this is a common occurrence; it is certainly not true of the vast majority of the many youth ministers I have known and worked with. 

What’s Wrong With Youth Ministers? Some Common (and often Legitimate) Criticisms, Part 2

Disclaimer: I have been involved in youth ministry in some fashion for almost ten years now, so the statements below are based on observations I have made during that time. That being said, I am in no way claiming to be an expert on youth ministry, and I am certainly not suggesting that I am a perfect (or even particularly good) youth minister. Below are a collection of humble opinions and suggestions based on personal experience. See Part 1 of this series here.

(3) Youth Ministers build allegiance to a group, not to the Church.

In recent years, this has become a vocal criticism of youth ministry as a whole, and I think it is a valid one, so I want to spend some time addressing it.

Multiple studies have shown that evangelical teens leave the church at an alarming rate after they graduate high school,¹ and it seems likely that at least part of this phenomenon can be attributed to problems with the way we do youth ministry.

Consider the following, hypothetical example:

On a regular Sunday at ___________ Church, the youth group meets for class in their special, isolated, youth room in the Family Life Center. After class they head out to the auditorium for worship where they sit with the other teens on the special youth group rows, and after services are over, they either stay where they are, visiting with friends, or rush back to the youth room to play ping pong/foosball/PS3. 

On regular Sunday evenings, instead of meeting at the church building with ‘old people’, the youth group has a special Life Group where they meet in each other’s homes to have a devotional, sing a few songs, and then have a meal. 

These are just on regular Sundays though, which don’t actually occur all that regularly, because the Youth Minister has made it a priority for the youth group to be gone to as many trips and youth rallies as possible on weekends, in addition to regular monthly Sunday night gatherings with teens from other youth groups (after all, it’s hard to keep teens excited about just going to ‘regular’ church). 

On Wednesday nights, of course there is a special teen class in the youth room in the Family Life Center, and because this is such an important time during the week for the teens to fellowship with one another, they don’t come out after the Bible class period to spend time singing or having a devotional with the rest of the church family, but instead just stay in their room to have more time with one another. 

Each week there will be a devotional at one of the teen’s homes. 

In addition to youth rallies and weekend retreats, special activities include a ski trip over Christmas Break, a couple of church camps in the summer, and a short-term summer mission trip. All of these are primarily for teens, but there will be a few parents and maybe a youth deacon or two thrown in as chaperones.

Obviously this is just a hypothetical example, and to be clear, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with any of these specific activities, but when added together, what you get is a group of teens who spend a lot of time with each other, but have very little meaningful interaction with anyone else in the church. They likely don’t even know the names of the majority of adults who aren’t their Bible class teachers or youth deacons or parents of their friends. The careful and diligent work of the Youth Minister has made them very dedicated to the youth group, but has also (unintentionally) isolated them from the church family as a whole.²

What happens when they graduate? Is it particularly reasonable, after cultivating an allegiance to the youth group (which has been largely separated from the church as a whole) in them for years, to kick them out of the youth group once they graduate and expect them to eagerly ‘switch allegiances’ to the church as a whole (largely made up of parents and ‘old people’)? I think it’s increasingly becoming clear that the answer is, ‘no.’

Does that mean that mean that youth rallies, youth trips, youth rooms, and even youth groups should be done away with? Well, judging by the fact that I am a Youth Minister, I obviously don’t think so, but I do think that it means that youth ministry needs to be rethought somewhat.

I think it is important that we provide opportunities for our students to build relationships with other Christians their own age, and I also think it is appropriate to offer teaching that is customized and directed at teens, dealing with the issues they face in a way that is interesting to them. Taken together, these goals provide justification for a lot of the things I mentioned in the hypothetical example above, but these goals must be balanced with the intentional effort to make teens disciples of Jesus, which of course, involves a lifetime of service to His church (not just 6-7 years of involvement with a youth group).

Instead of being isolated from the church, teens are an integral part of it, with their involvement including, but not being limited to, youth group activities. Of course, that’s easier said than done—how do we make teens active and functioning parts of the Body instead of merely loyal members of a youth group? Well, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but here are a few suggestions:

Limit how often the youth group is absent from the corporate worship of your congregation. From personal experience, I can say that it is really tempting for youth ministers to have their groups miss a lot of the worship services of the church, opting instead for special events where the worship is different, fresh, and exciting. But is there any doubt that the more your kids are absent from worship with the local body, the less they feel like they are a part of that body?

If high school graduates want to hang around for a while, let them. I’ve known some youth ministers who are adamant about getting kids out of the youth group as soon as the summer after their senior year is over. Considering what I mentioned above about students leaving the church at an alarming rate after graduating high school, I’m not sure this is a great idea. Transitioning from high school to college is a difficult time for a lot of students, and especially if you don’t have an active college group at your church, some might not know where they fit in. I’ve always encouraged those who have already graduated but who are still interested in coming to youth events to come—they provide good, older role models for the younger students, and it also helps to keep them involved with the church.

Provide opportunities for adult Christians to mentor students one on one or in small groups. This is something we started doing this year as part of our Lads to Leaders program, and with work, I think it could develop into something very positive for our church. Having students work with adult mentors provides another positive Christian role model in their lives (and they can never have too many), and also gives them another connection to the church outside of the youth group and their own family.

Allow teens to be involved in the life of the church, and encourage them to do so. Let your young men serve in the worship assembly. When high school teens reach a certain level of maturity, encourage them to teach (or help teach) a children’s Bible class for a quarter. If there is a work day at the church building, let your young people know that they are needed as well. Look for ways in which your congregation can serve the community and make sure that your teens work hand in hand with older members to accomplish those projects.

These are just a few ideas; what other things can churches and/or youth ministers do to make teens an active part of larger congregation?

I know this post was long, but as I mentioned above, I think this is an important and valid criticism. Next time I’ll focus on two more that I have heard a lot.

• • •

1Statistics from different studies range on what percentage of teens leave the church after high school. CrossExamined.org places the number at 75%.

2For what it’s worth, I do think teenagers actually enjoy this type of youth group—taking lots of special trips, being isolated from adults and the elderly, having their own special worship and Bible study gatherings—I’m just not convinced that, when taken to an extreme, it’s conducive to healthy spiritual development.

What’s Wrong With Youth Ministers? Some Common (and often Legitimate) Criticisms, Part 1

Disclaimer: I have been involved in youth ministry in some fashion for almost ten years now, so the statements below are based on observations I have made during that time. That being said, I am in no way claiming to be an expert on youth ministry, and I am certainly not suggesting that I am a perfect (or even particularly good) youth minister. What I have written below is simply a collection of opinions and suggestions based on personal experience.

Typically, youth ministers don’t get a lot of respect. Many members of the congregation largely consider them to be glorified baby-sitters who come for a couple of years as hired hands, hang out with teenagers and then move on, unworthy of the salary they receive (“What do you do all day, anyway?”).

I think that’s unfortunate, because I believe that (good) youth ministry is an important part of a healthy church. However, if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that we (youth ministers as a whole) have done a lot to warrant the criticisms and generalizations that are often directed at us:

(1) Youth Ministers don’t stay very long.

In a very good article on ministry, Lynn Anderson suggests that it’s hard to be really effective as a minister until you’ve been at a congregation for at least seven years.¹ This might seem shocking since a lot of ministers don’t stay in place for that long, but it makes sense when you think about it: it takes time to build deep, genuine relationships with people, and most people aren’t really going to trust you with their spiritual well-being until they know you well.

The problem is, as often as ministers tend to move from one congregation to another, youth ministers seem to do so with even greater frequency. I’ve been working with the teens at Farmington continuously since May 2006 (since then my title has changed and my responsibilities have evolved and expanded somewhat, but still, my foremost priority has been working with the young people). That’s a time period of a less than six years, but of the 12-15 Churches of Christ that I am aware of in Northwest Arkansas, only one has employed the same youth minister for that entire time.

Now that’s just one person’s anecdotal evidence, but it certainly seems to support the generalization. So why do youth ministers leave congregations so quickly?

Of course, there are a lot of reasons, and youth ministers shouldn’t be blamed for some of them. Sometimes clashes with an eldership or an “important” family will lead to a job transition that is entirely out of the youth minister’s hands. Sometimes a youth minister will transition into a different ministry role at the same congregation because it is what the church needs most. Sometimes youth ministers just get completely burned out and need a career change.²

But often, reasons for leaving aren’t as good. A lot of times youth ministers show up on the job with big plans and new ideas, and then get frustrated when things don’t quickly turn out exactly as they planned. Rather than stay, put down roots, and work to gradually make things better, they are enticed by the greener pastures of a higher salary or a larger congregation.

I don’t claim to know what the answer is, and I don’t know if Anderson’s figure of seven years is appropriate for youth ministers or not. I do know it is difficult for those teens who have to adjust to 2-3 youth ministers in their 6-7 years in the youth group, and that they feel somewhat abandoned each time they have to deal with a youth minister leaving. I also know that remaining at the same congregation for as long as I have has reaped rewards for me, as I am more trusted by the congregation now than I was when I first came, and as a result, am more able to implement new programs and ideas.

(2) Youth Ministers are never in the office working.

I know this is an idea that a lot of church members have, but really, I hear this said (or more often, implied) most by commonly by other ministers. A lot of preachers who spend hours and hours in the church office each week studying for Bible classes and sermons get frustrated when the youth ministers they work with are never around.

Certainly, I think it’s true that youth ministers spend less time in the office than pulpit ministers do, and I know from personal experience that if I call a church office trying to get in touch with a youth minister, it is more likely that I’ll end up speaking to a secretary who has no clue to the youth minister’s whereabouts than to the youth minister himself. But like a lot of areas in life, I think it’s important to avoid extremes when thinking about how often a youth minister should be in the office.

On one hand, if youth ministers are supposed to focus largely on mentoring, teaching, and working with teenagers, it doesn’t make too much sense for them to spend 40 hours a week in an office where no teenagers are present. Besides, it’s not like work can only happen in an office: just because youth events can be enjoyable doesn’t mean that they don’t also require a lot of work, and it doesn’t seem fair to require a youth minister to be in the office for 40 hours if you also expect him to spend a lot of nights and weekends at youth events.³

Fortunately, most churches (including, thankfully, my own) realize this and allow their youth minister to have a relatively flexible office schedule. Unfortunately, some youth ministers take advantage of this, gradually spending less and less time in the office until they reach a point where you never know when to expect them.

I think it’s important for a youth minister to work out a regular office schedule where, barring some unusual occurrence, other people can expect to find him there. The number of hours may vary from church to church, but it’s important for people to be able to get a hold of you, and since, as a minister, you are a visible part of the leadership of the congregation, it’s important for people who stop by to at least occasionally be able to see you.


This post has quickly become longer than I originally intended, so I think I’ll divide it in half and post two other criticisms later. In the meantime, what do you think? I know these are criticisms that are made, because I’ve heard them myself…do you think they’re valid?

• • •

1Lynn Anderson, “Why I’ve Stayed,” Leadership 7, no. 3 (June 1986): 76-82. Anderson goes on to talk about good and bad reasons for leaving a particular ministry but maintains that, as a general rule, ministers do their best work after they have been working with the same church for at least seven years.

2Youth ministry is difficult for a lot of reasons, but in particular, seeing teens in whom you’ve invested years of time and love make bad decisions and sometimes even abandon their faith is tough.

3For example, going to church camp each summer is hardly a vacation. Instead of working from 8AM-5PM, I get up at 6 in the morning and am responsible for the boys in my cabin all day (and all night) in addition to teaching class, preaching, coach, coordinating recreational activities, etc.  I always have a good time because I love working with young people, but if you’re comparing the level of stress involved, I’d take 40 hours in the church office any day. Same goes for for special trips that I am in charge of.

New Church Website

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been working on a new church website in my free time. It’s taken quite a while because my free time has been somewhat limited, but finally, it’s up.

There’s still a bit of content to add, and not all of the features are functional yet, but it’s a start. I like it more than the older version.

Design and Layout Samples

I’ve enjoyed tinkering with page layout and graphic design for some time, but over the last year or so, it’s something that I’ve been doing more and more.

There’s a new link up in the NavBar which will take you to some design projects I’ve worked on. Mainly it’s stuff for work, like our new church website or posters to advertise youth group events.

I am a rank amateur when it comes to design stuff, but it’s something I enjoy, and I’m pretty pleased with some of the results. And if nothing else, it makes for nice posters that I can decorate our youth room with.

New Website

I’ve done a pretty terrible job blogging lately, but part of the reason for that is because I’ve been pretty busy redesigning our church website.

There’s still some work to be done and some content to add, but for the most part it’s finished.

Hopefully this means more blogging in the near future.

Junk Mail

Of all the different forms of “junk” correspondence that I encounter, I would submit that junk faxes are the most annoying.

The somewhat ironically-named “courtesy call” on the phone is annoying, but you can always just hang up when you realize that’s what it is. It’s pretty easy to sort junk mail from the other legitimate stuff that comes to your mailbox, and it’s easily thrown away as well. Junk e-mail really isn’t a problem as long as you have a decent filter in your email system.

Junk faxes are the most annoying though, because in addition to wasting your time (which all the above examples do as well), they also waste your resources. Every time we get a junk fax at the church office, a sheet of our pristine 8 1/2 x 11 Office Depot copy paper is wasted. That might not seem like a big deal, but since we seem to get a couple of junk faxes per week, when you multiply it out over the course of a year, that’s 100 or so sheets of paper. Which still isn’t a major expense, but it is certainly annoying.

Most of these junk faxes offer cheap insurance rates, or inform me that I’ve won free vacations, or tell me that I’ve been selected for some version of “Who’s Who.” But one time a while back, I got one that was a little more interesting:

Dear Personnel Manager,

If there is a piece missing from your organizational puzzle, I believe my background and qualifications will fit perfectly with your company’s needs.

I am a results-oriented, seasoned professional who regards principle, balance, and professionalism as strategic components of my business philosophy. I have a proven ability to reach targeted goals and have gained diverse experience in sales, management, and marketing. I believe I can be an asset to your firm.

I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to explore how my experience could best meet your needs. Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

Some Random Guy Who Apparently Didn’t Realize That The Service He Subscribed To Would Also Send His Resume To Random Churches

Attached to this cover letter was a resume that contained the following highlights:

• Over 10 years experience specializing in Sales, Account Management and Business Development.
• While working at a parts store, was instrumental in the successful acquisition and assimilation of two competitors.
• Also while at the parts store, developed a culturally diverse marketing strategy for the location capturing 75% of the established Hispanic market and 95% of the established Asian market.

So after originally lampooning the idea of us receiving this guy’s resume, maybe I need to give him a call.

If hiring him would help us with the successful acquisition and assimilation of our “competitors” and also help us to capture the local established Hispanic and Asian markets, he’d be worth anything we could pay him!

Church Signs

Of my many work-related responsibilities, one of my least favorite ones is being in charge of changing the message on the church sign we have out front. People who go to church where I do could probably guess that this is something I don’t like doing much, because it gets changed very irregularly.

It’s somewhat of a pain to drag the ladder outside, pull down the old letters, come up with something new to put up, make sure we have enough letters for the new message, pick out and arrange the new letters and put them back up on the sign (which is partially broken and therefore makes the process somewhat more difficult).

Really, though, it’s not that hard to do, and I would probably change it on a (more) regular basis if I was convicted at all that it was important—if changing the sign out front actually did any good or was worthwhile.

Instead, I tend to think that church signs do more harm than good—someone driving by is more likely to be turned off by a hokey saying than they are encouraged by a thoughtful one.

For example, one local church that I drive by regularly recently proclaimed the following message on their marquee:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TEXTING

While I agree with this message, I’m not really sure that I would include it in the thoughtful category.

On the other hand, maybe the person who put it up was having trouble coming up with new ideas and decided to embark on an ongoing series. If that’s the case, they may have discovered a gold mine. Just consider the possibilities:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN FACEBOOK

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN BLOGGING

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN MYSPACE

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TWEETING

You don’t even have to stay mired in the world of technology, because this is a very versatile theme:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN VEGETABLES

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TELEVISION

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN MCDONALD’S

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN READING CHURCH SIGNS

Well, you probably get the idea, and I’ve spent too much time on this anyway. There’s other stuff I need to be doing—like changing our church sign.