I’ve been in my current position as youth pastor of the New Haven SDA Church now for two months. Though I have about seven years of youth ministry experience (serving as academy chaplain, Bible teacher, youth pastor intern, etc.), this is the first time I’ve served strictly as a youth pastor, and it’s been eye-opening. While there are countless challenges in youth ministry, I’m beginning to understand one of the more significant challenges. I wish I could just tell you with a word or two what that challenge is, but I can’t. The best way I can explain it to you is to walk you through it.
So, imagine with me that the youth ministry in your church is sort of a church within the church. (Let me just add a disclaimer here that the youth ministry isn’t, and shouldn’t be seen as, a separate church, but for the sake of illustration, humor me for a moment.) Well, if that were the case, the youth “church” here at New Haven would have a membership on the books of approximately 45-50 members. When you add parents (and you should, because a youth pastor is pastor not just to the students, but also to their parents), you’re looking at a membership of around 100-130. In the Adventist world, that’s a moderately-sized church. Weekly attendance, however, is closer to 70-80 right now (that’s including students, the parents of youth who attend their own Sabbath School, and the adults who help out in the youth room), which is pretty typical for a church these days.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post on Sabbath School, the youth pastor (me, in this case) is responsible for preparing an interactive “sermon” each week. There are also music teams and a drama team that need to be coordinated with a worship schedule, outreach projects that need to be planned and implemented, social events/activities that need to be planned and implemented, Friday night vespers, Youth Church, and the list goes on. Thankfully, I have a team to help me with all of this! (By the way, I’m not complaining; I love what I do!)
My point is that youth pastors are essentially expected to run a moderately-sized church. The difference, however, between a youth pastor and the senior pastor of a moderately-sized church is that an infrastructure is most likely already in place at the senior pastor’s church before he/she even arrives. In Adventist churches, at least, there are probably elected elders, deacons, deaconesses, and a church board already in place. If not, there is a system designed to put leaders into these positions in a somewhat timely manner. While these leaders may not have much, if any, training, they have a general idea of what’s expected of them, because of a precedent that has been established.
Theoretically, the average moderately-sized Adventist church could run itself in the absence of a pastor. In fact, many churches do run themselves for extended periods of time without a pastor at the helm. They can do this because there are systems and an infrastructure in place that ensure the sustainability of the church.
This is not the case in youth ministry. In most cases, when the old youth pastor leaves a church, and a new one arrives, the new youth pastor essentially starts from scratch. Why? Because there is no infrastructure in place in most youth ministry programs to ensure sustainability. This, I have found, is one of the more significant challenges of youth ministry.
One of my goals as youth pastor at New Haven is to build an infrastructure that will ensure the sustainability of youth ministry here. It’s not a flashy goal, I know, but it’s desperately needed here, and at any other church that cares about its youth.
You may be wondering exactly what I mean when I refer to a youth ministry infrastructure. Next week, I will blog a book review on Mark DeVries book, Sustainable Youth Ministry, which describes the kind of infrastructure a youth ministry needs to be sustainable. It is an absolute must-read for anyone who takes (or wants to take) youth ministry seriously, including senior pastors. In that blog, I will also talk a little about what I am working on right now.
What do you think of all this? What systems do you think need to be in place in order to ensure the youth ministry at your church doesn’t have to crash and reboot every time a new youth pastor or volunteer youth leader comes on board?
[image by Swedish National Heritage Board]
October 15th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
This is a frustration of mine too. It’s difficult to get an infrastructure going for a youth group and one that I have struggled with. Basically thus far, I have come down on making sure that there are leaders in place in the youth group so that when I’m gone it will continue to function.
I’ll have to check out that book. Sounds like a good read.
October 15th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Yeah, man, you should seriously read that book. I felt like I gained twenty years of experience by the time I finally set it down. It should be a required textbook in youth ministry classes. I’ll talk about it more in my next blog entry, but I highly recommend it.
October 19th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I wonder if there’s some systems that could be set up in order to help you build that infrastructure? Like if there was a good way to pinpoint areas of ministry opportunity for the church, and then an easy way for people to sign up for them. Just thinking out loud. That’s something I’m hoping to work in before the end of the year, is to have a volunteer coordinator to help funnel volunteer requests from the connection cards that we use.
October 21st, 2010 at 10:24 pm
I like the idea of a volunteer coordinator. Eventually, we will need to start thinking about integrating new youth into existing ministries. Right now, our primary concern is getting systems in place that will empower our current youth to get involved (and stay involved) in ministry areas based on spiritual gifts, passions, etc. One of those “systems” is a mentoring ministry we are preparing to launch. I will talk more in depth about what we are doing in later blogs.
October 26th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
[...] a couple previous blogs, here and here, I wrote about the need for a youth ministry to have an infrastructure and systems to [...]