The second half of the Indispensable Youth Pastor was about keeping and loving your job. We started off the second day with a quote from Andy Stanley talking about mediocrity. "Momentum is never created by tweaking something old... get new choir robes. You can't tweak yourself into momentum. New triggers momentum. New is expensive and risky, so we default to tweak tweak tweak. Minor improvements doesn't create momentum. It just takes what's mediocre and makes it a little better." I think this says a lot about how some ministries and churches try to just change up the little rather than taking the big steps needed to reach people.
The last portion of the session dealt with loving your job. This part really resonated with me as I knew I was leaving my ministry. Jeff gave us some secrets to Loving Your Job...
1. Get Used to the Money: Even as much as we complain about our salaries, most youth pastors make better money than most of the world. We need to realize we will never make a ton of money doing ministry. I believe most youth pastors make the same as teachers when I comes to salaries. We need to figure out how we can make it on what the church can offer us. We need to push as much as the church will allow but remember that the church only has so much.
2. Organic View of how Youth Ministry Works: Every youth ministry goes through seasons of growth and decline, we need to recognize that. We need to learn to work within the season. If our ministry is down, focus on the few who are there and get them ready for the season of growth.
3. Make It Easy on Yourself: We need to work to replace ourselves. We need to focus on building our teams, so that others can do some of the work. In the word of Mark DeVries, build a Sustainable Youth Ministry. You need to build a web of people to help you get your stuff done. They can help with directories , annual calendar, job descriptions, planning events and most.
4. Find a rhythm to the work you do: What does your work week look like? Is it hectic? Do you spend most of it running around with no clear plan? When you find a rhythm to your work, it makes life easier on you. This involves determining where your time goes before it comes up. Jeff showed us a process of putting each day into 3 blocks and making sure your sabbath is the first thing you block off.
5. Learn to Juggle: Juggling is the art of keep multiple balls in the air. In youth ministry, we need to learn to juggle the various aspects of your ministry but instead of doing everything yourself, you get others to take a ball and work on that. This way you multiply yourself.
6. Love Them Anyway: In our lives, we must deal with all kinds of people. We need to learn to deal with each one the way Jesus would. We must deal with criticism in the right way because it will come. If we can devise a plan ahead of time, then when it does come, you will be able to handle it the right way.
Every youth pastor needs to follow and learn these six secrets. Ministry is a hard job. If we can recognize that and learn to go with it, our lives will be all the easier and our ministries will last longer.
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