We have an incredible opportunity to pour into the lives of students at such a crucial moment in their lives as Youth Pastors. Do you ever stop to think through the beauty of that? The beauty of your call?
God called my wife and I from an amazing group of students in Illinois to serve a completely different kind of student here on the North Shore of Boston, and we are still getting to know them. But there is beauty in the fact that I am a complete outsider to this culture. I am still learning what it looks like to live in Boston, what these kids look like, and what they need. There are many times where I feel completely inadequate to minister to them.
But at the same time, God called me to minister to them. I didn’t end up here by mistake.
And God called you to be at the church you are at, with the specific students you have. Are you being a good steward of that?
I think we often make the mistake of seeing something work at a Youth Ministry across the country and trying to replicate it in our own context. We do ourselves and our ministries a great disservice in this process.
Right now, I can think of one specific failure that I thought was going to be a great success based off of another ministry who had done it. Heck, I think , no I know, that even if I had done this at my last ministry, it would have been a great success. But here, it was a colossal failure, because our kids, and our ministry, have a completely different culture.
The thing that failed was a strategic planning idea in which all of our activities would be after Youth Group, since students and leaders were already there, and it would ease the stress on all involved on coming out for another night of Youth Group stuff. So with the exception of 2 activities and a fall retreat, everything else happened right after Youth Group.
For many Youth Groups, maybe this would work. And many Youth Pastors might say thats fine and dandy, get away from activities, Youth Group is more than activities.
And while I may agree with the sentiment in that last part, we strategically do activities for fellowship and building connections. And in our context, something that I neglected (partially because I had to plan a calendar after living in the area for 2 weeks) was the fact that our 40 kids represent 23 different schools. Add to that the fact that the 12 months before I got here saw the departure of nearly 10 Adult leaders in the ministry. So I should have taken into consideration these 2 facts about our context: Our Students needed stability with community, and most of our students really take refuge with their church friends because its such a battle up here to be a Christian, and they need those relationships. We weren’t providing the places for those relationships to foster and the students felt like they were losing valuable and much needed relationships.
So again, this would have worked elsewhere, but it didn’t work in our context. A Failure, but one that we learned a lot from.
All of that to say, minister to your students. God put you where you are for a reason.
