Category: Ministry

I was jogging on the track at the recreation department where I work out. The track over looks a total of four basketball courts throughout the building. As I was running I couldn’t help but notice two teams of young girls, probably around the ages of 10 or 11 squaring off. This one portion of the gym is surrounded by about a fourth of the track so as I was jogging I could see several plays transpire on the court and every time I made it back around the court I could watch more of the game.

On one of the teams there was this one girl, for some reason she just stuck out to me. She was the fastest by far on the court, she rose about half a foot to a foot over the rest of the girls, and her presence simply commanded attention. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought her dad or mom played for a professional basketball team, the way she took control of the game. She was grabbing offensive and defensive rebounds, splitting the defense with her dribbling, sometimes taking it coast to coast with the opposing team barely being able to keep up with her speed, unfortunately her team was losing. As I rounded the track over and over I noticed one thing, this girl. She never passed the ball, she always took the shot, but the one problem was this…she had a weakness…her shooting. No one could match her speed, her height, or her other skills, but she could not shoot the ball. I watched her shoot up close and far away, but she never hit it. She would ignore her teammates that were closer to the basket and wide open so that she could take the shot, no matter how well she was defended, she never shared the ball.

Watching this play out made me think about how there are a lot of youth ministries that continuously lose. Too many lead youth workers think they have all of the skills that are required to lead their ministry and they neglect those around them that may be stronger in a specific area than they are. Just like with the girl basketball player, she possessed certain skills, but she could not have been the best shooter, however she thought her skills trumped the skill of the shooters. Maybe a lead youth worker has a degree that they worked very hard for (and paid a lot of money to earn) and they feel that this automatically gives them all of the answers to successfully oversee a youth ministry. Or, maybe a lead youth worker compares himself to those on his team and thinks more highly of himself than he does his youth ministry teammates so he feels he must control every aspect of ministry around him to make it run effectively. Viewpoints like these only lead to individual focused ministry versus team focused ministry.

When a lead youth worker has viewpoints that are focused more on self than on the leadership team, sadly the outcome is failure. It is no wonder why youth leaders can pay hundreds of dollars on conferences and seminars and still not see success and health in their ministry. If only youth leaders would learn to pass the ball to our teammates who are qualified in the areas where we are weak, we could see some of our failures turn into successes. As a lead youth worker it is okay to be confident in the gifts, talents, and skills that God has blessed you with, but it requires godly humility to recognize that it takes more than those skills to accomplish great things. Pass the ball to a teammate this week; ask for their opinion on specific ministry items, ask them to take the lead in a ministry area, operate in your strengths and allow your team to operate in theirs!

I love Erwin McManus’ book The Barbarian Way. It has helped me change the way I look at the huge and awesome God that I serve. The theme of the book is about living out our Christian lives, as either Barbarians or as civilized Christians. As my perspectives changed, my heart changed, and with those changes I believe God took the opportunity to challenge me to see if the changes were genuine.

It wasn’t too long after I read the book for the first time that I felt God moving me out of my comfortable position as a full time youth pastor into a world that I had experienced before, but on a different level. God was calling me to serve as a bi-vocational youth leader. I believe there are two different types of bi-vocational youth leaders, the first is the leader who gets paid by a secular job and a minimum salary from their church, the second, is the leader who is paid by a secular job, but they are in a church that cannot pay them in their current situation (The full time volunteer leader). I don’t know what God has in store for me in the future, I never thought he would have called me out to do what I am doing now, but he did, and all I can do is follow, but in this journey I have learned so much, so here are a few highlights:

Bi-vocational is Uncomfortable: Life is already busy enough! When I was full time at my previous church I had a full schedule and at times I wondered how I would ever get everything accomplished. However, it was easy to have full days to focus on the ministry tasks at hand. Bi-vocational leaders have to balance work, ministry, family, and personal time and on top of it all we have to manage personal spiritual growth as well. It is uncomfortable, but God uses the uncomfortable. I have to rely on him more now than I ever have. It was real easy to rely on myself and the time that I had to devote to student ministry when I was full time, and that is why I believe the more comfortable we are, the easier it is to look to ourselves rather than to God.

Bi-vocational is Humbling: There seems to be a negative connotation in the pastor/youth pastor field when it comes to bi-vocational ministers. It’s almost as if bi-vocational ministers are considered ‘coach class’ versus ‘1st class.’ If bi-vocational youth workers look to other ministers for some kind of approval, many times it’s not going to come, and discouragement can easily set in. I get the grunts and the weird looks when I tell other youth pastors what I do and my situation. I have had people ask me, “What, you couldn’t handle it full time?” and I have heard others say things like, “Well, he/she must not be qualified since they are part time or a volunteer.” The criticisms and judgments are out there, but once again, it comes back to God and the position he has put us in, when we realize that it is God and not us, it humbles us to put all of our trust in God’s plan and not man’s opinion.

Bi-vocational is Rewarding: Bi-vocational youth workers have a distinct advantage over full time ministers. They have the opportunity to work and do life with those who are not believers. Full time ministers get bogged down by the details of the church and do not have the opportunity to spend a lot time with those in the world. Bi-vocational leaders have the opportunity to broaden their understanding and their methods of reaching out to unbelievers. My rewards are different than this. Another church hired me for publications and websites. I am working in a larger church and I get to watch and learn from a larger staff than where I serve in student ministry, and I believe God will use that in the future. It’s real easy to look at what we don’t have and all of the negatives of our situations, but if we are definitely in the position God has placed us in as bi-vocational leaders, then there are more rewards and positives surrounding the situation than you can see.