How many times did someone walk into the youth facility and see me playing some sort of game or immediately start shooting at them with a Nerf gun? How many times did I communicate poorly, get back from a trip late, and drive the church van through a huge puddle or over a dead dog in Mexico? The answer to those questions is a lot, but that was part of my job, right?

I’m a huge fan of doing things that are fun and helping shape memories. I think, as a whole, I did a pretty good job with all of that, and I regret few things I ever did (except driving over that dog). But I also know that, had I been slightly more aware of people’s perceptions of me and how I could have a greater impact if I came across a bit more professionally, I would have changed a lot.

For example, on Tuesdays each week at my current church, we have an all-church-staff chapel. In the life of our staff, this is a pretty important meeting because it’s usually the only time we ever all get together. I make sure on Tuesdays that I do three things. 1. I get there early. One of the major problems with youth workers is that there is a general perception that we always fly by the seat of our pants. Since my church staff members only see me in this type of setting one time a week, I want their perception to be that I am punctual. 2. I sit near the front. This sounds silly, but in general, I think most people expect the youth workers to sit in the back (after sneaking in late) and text during the whole meeting. Sitting near the front shows people that I am engaged. 3. I dress appropriately. Since this is the only time most people see me during the week, I try not to give the perception that flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt is my everyday attire.

Here are a couple other ways you can gain credibility in your own church:

Be consistent. This is especially important if you are younger because oftentimes the church expects you to be scatterbrained and hit or miss in your leadership style. Make every effort to maintain a solid demeanor, appearance, and attitude in all situations.

Promote expertise. Notice I don’t say be the expert. We need to expose our congregations to good research, practices, and ideas. But we don’t need to be the experts ourselves. Just know what books, speakers, and resources to let people know about. Be the conduit for good information and expertise in youth ministry. Your credibility will jump if people know you will either be able to answer a question or refer them to a source that can help.

Define your role. If you allow others to define your role and pigeonhole you, you will have difficulty overcoming their perceptions about what you do and how much you have to offer. For example, most of us were hired as youth pastors. But the reality is that a big part of our job is ministering to the family as well. Make sure to shape and define your role in a way that gives people a broader perspective of what it is you do. Then, when they have a family question, you might actually be asked what you think.

Communicate well and often. Parents are busy and don’t always read email. If you want them to know something important, you are going to have to reach them in multiple ways. A quick, two-sentence email about a major change sent at 11:59 p.m. the night before a trip isn’t a good way to get parents to think you know what you are doing.

Spend time interacting with the whole church. Early in my ministry, I got in trouble for being a “blur in the parking lot.” What I mean by this is that my goal was to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible with as few interactions as possible along the way. If it was a student I stopped to talk, but if it was an adult, I moved quickly. If you want to gain credibility in the church, you have to spend time with the church.

There’s obviously a ton more that could be said about gaining credibility. I’m grateful that there are two other columns here. My thoughts may be overly simple, but I can only speak from my own experience.

Aristotle argues there are three components of ethos: intelligence (mental habits); virtue (moral habits); good will (emotional habits).

Intelligence. What the older generation wants to know is that the young youth worker is competent. Essentially, do young leaders have the knowledge to figure out how to lead a youth ministry theologically and practically? How to gain intelligence?

Read. This is how I delegate my reading: 70% Christian (Bible, commentaries, theology books, ministry blogs) and 30% secular (adolescent research, New York Times, leadership resources). I also love reading biographies about the dead guys. There is so much to be learned from the guys who went before us.

Listen. Shut your mouth and listen. Listen and learn from other perspectives before giving your two cents. Spend time with others in your community who are way smarter than you and ask them questions about their success.

Education. I think it is huge if youth pastors are seminary trained and have a four-year degree in business. A business degree teaches you how to manage people, and a seminary education will teach you how to think theologically. If your church is willing to pay for an education, do it.

Go to conferences. Youth ministry conferences will teach you the how-to’s and force you to be around experienced and educated youth pastors.

Virtue. The older generation wants to know if you have a strong moral compass in order to make it in ministry without burning or flaking out. One of the top reasons youth pastors don’t make it is moral failure. Character is everything. Character includes such things as self-discipline, modesty, teamwork, integrity, purity, work ethic, loyalty, honesty, courage, tenacity, intelligence, consideration for others, and determination.

Study Scripture on character. Let Scripture transform your character. Be patient, humble, and respectful toward authority (Matthew 25, Luke 8, 2 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 4, and 2 Corinthians 4).

Find older leaders to mentor you. The goal is to illustrate the Paul and young Timothy relationship (1 Timothy 4:12). Ask older and wiser adults to speak into your life. Surround yourself with older adults who have successfully managed work, health, marriage, raising kids, money, and ministry.

Good Will. Having good will means having a good work ethic. The older generation believes high productivity is associated with credibility. The goal is to be known as the church staff member who will always get it done and is trustworthy. Suggestions on how to demonstrate a great work ethic:

Work really hard, especially in the small and insignificant tasks.
Show up early.
Return every phone call and email.
Get excited and think positive when you work.
Set deadlines.
Volunteer for the tough assignments no one else wants.
Every day write down the top three to four tasks you need to get done that day.
Don’t multi-task. Multi-tasking increases your chances of losing focus.

Gaining credibility in the church takes time. Don’t feel discouraged when you are criticized for being young, idealistic, inexperienced, or passionate. Aristotle knew what he was talking about. Therefore, I encourage you to consider adopting Aristotle’s approach.

My first year in youth ministry I learned how to quickly lose credibility in my church:

Misplace the worship leader’s ten-year-old daughter at Disney World. Voice frustrations about leadership with other leadership. Try to fix things myself (FYI: Breaking down on the side of a busy interstate with a van full of teenagers always requires a call back to the church and professional help.). Be exclusively available to the youth ministry.

Looking back, I wish someone had been there to tell me how to own my ministry without disowning the church. There is no price tag on wisdom gained through experience. And my experience tells me, if I want credibility in my church, I’ve got to do a few things (there are others, but here are the few that come to mind first):

Display consistency in my walk with Christ both in and outside the church (over time). Model spiritual formation by developing habits of a growing Christian (over time). Respect leadership, even when I disagree, by communicating in healthy and loving ways (over time). Realize mistakes I make and do what it takes to make them right (over time). Include others by sharing ministry and training others in their gifts (over time). Let honesty be the rule, always choosing the truth over white lies or manipulation (over time). Take responsibility for my work by doing what I said I would do (over time). Help others with their work, doing whatever it takes to further the mission with the gifts I have to share. Seek forgiveness when wrong (each time). Let go of the chip. Whatever past hurt keeps me from focusing on the present needs to be given to God (each time). Lead well from the middle, getting rid of jealousy or feelings of competition, striving to contribute for the sake of the kingdom and for those who are lost. Be seen serving and loving people, in my everyday life. The temptation is to hide because of the social demands of ministry, but the body needs our example, and we need to be seen. My life speaks louder than my all of my words, tweets, and updates combined.

Notice the common denominator in all of these things: time.

For too long I jumped around, waiting for the perfect scenario to do ministry when, all along, the perfect scenario could be found as I remained in imperfect community, with humility, seeking to serve and share the gifts I’ve received with others. When I came to my current assignment, the word God gave me was remain. Remaining somewhere gives a person a track record that can be telling.
“I can trust you.”
“I’ve seen you weather storms.”
“I know you won’t lose track of my kids… Okay, you’ll probably lose track of my kids! But I know you’ve trained and equipped enough leaders that someone will notice quickly and you’ll have a plan.”
“I know when you tell me something, it’s the truth.”
“I know if I’m being corrected it’s because you love me, just like you’ve loved so many before me.”

If you want credibility, stay somewhere long enough for people to give it to you.

I was a youth worker in a church where student leadership was a major goal, but it was really hard to meet. Mostly what we were calling leadership was actually just laboring. Partly it’s because our leadership model was servant. In fact, in some cases it just increased expectation of their participation in additional Sunday school classes and volunteerism. In my final years of that particular ministry, I shifted the goalposts of what my expectations of student leaders were and how I identified and worked alongside student leaders.

What changed? Well, I realized that, for many of my students, a focus on leadership development didn’t make any sense. I could only help them become leaders within their communities to the extent of their abilities, charisma, and opportunities. Truth be told, though, there wasn’t a great deal of opportunity a lot of the time. Student leadership was also a way of proving yourself for students. They could climb the ranks of esteem within our community by being student leaders and volunteering for all manner of things. If a pastor did that, we wouldn’t call it healthy, so why would I want to teach this model to my students?

When those who were already serving and shaping their community became obvious, initiating those students into further leadership became all about the fullness of their being, not meeting my needs or the needs of my ministry in terms of labor.

For my students who loved music, not all of them wanted to be leaders of the band or had the skills to corral people. But one was super passionate about playing the guitar. More passion than talent to begin with, you know? Developing his leadership was all about facilitating learning experiences for him, including opportunities for him to fail well. As his ability and experience grew, it was only natural for him to share that with other students. Now he leads the band and works with a team around him, also encouraging younger musicians to grow in the same way he did.

Another example was purely practical. She wanted to become an events manager in her vocation, so facilitating her leadership simply meant giving her opportunity to practice by helping out with events and camps we ran for the ministry but only because she really wanted to and could apply the experience to something practical.

However, I think we need to be realistic. You wouldn’t teach your students to drive and then not let them behind the wheel for a few years. Remember how frustrated you were in the first few years of your own leadership experience—eager to spread your wings? False hope creates a fertile breeding ground for hard-heartedness, disappointment, and frustration.

As one student said to me this year, having just started at university, “So what am I meant to do now? I’ve been a student leader at youth group, and in my school, and now there’s nowhere for me to lead, nothing for me to do, and I just feel frustrated. What’s the point of teaching me how to lead if there’s not any chance for me to lead?” Student leadership in his youth ministry didn’t translate to leadership or influence within his broader church community, which was slowly eating him up.

There are two concurrent actions required: reshaping the goals and values underpinning student leadership and creating real opportunities for actual leadership within the church. We have to be prepared to let go of some of our grasp and to nurse bruised wings, rather than refusing to let students fall or fly out of the nest.

Invest time in developing students who want to lead and have opportunity to.

Your expectation or goal only needs to be their development into wholeness.

Don’t mince words: Students are tougher than they look, so be honest about how and where their actions can open doors of opportunity.

Stand aside, stand behind, stay wise: If others won’t step aside to make space for the students who have something to offer, then you be the one; it’s easier to give away what you have and put your money where your mouth is. Never be in a position where you can’t back them up, help them through it without helping them out of it, and keep the communication open all the time. If something doesn’t go well or students disappoint themselves or you, don’t be sad, don’t be angry. Be the person who offers healthy, constructive, graceful perspective to work it through and go again. That’s the nursing bruises part. You’ll become a trusted ally and friend.

The concept for how we build student leadership opportunities for our groups generally comes from how we identify the purpose of leadership. The church today seems obsessed with leadership culture, constantly hawking conferences, books, blogs, maxims, etc. Too often church leadership has been about creating personality-based kingdoms rather than being constantly enlivened by the views of the kingdom all around us. With this in mind, we have aimed to offer a variety of opportunities throughout the ministry year to allow students the opportunity to step toward the dreams and ideas God has given them.

Early in ministry, I succumbed to the concept that leadership required a charismatic personality and the ability to be front and center. I created a ministry team model where students fit niches within my ministry that helped establish the programs we ran regularly. This model worked in some ways, but when I got the chance to start over in my current ministry context, I decided to try a different path. Over the past few years, my students have taught me a lot about leadership from a much more organic model.

One of the issues that I have had to wrestle with in this free-flowing framework is whose ideas get the attention. For many years I have wanted students to help me create a program I envisioned. A while back, one of my students approached me with an idea inspired by Zach Hunter’s book, Generation Change. She hoped that as a group we could put on a Shack-A-Thon, helping educate people about homelessness and raise funds for a local shelter. However, I had an idea I’d been stewing on for a bit, so I took her idea and tried to redirect it. Needless to say, it never got off the ground. It wasn’t the vision God had spoken to her heart. It wasn’t until some time had passed and she approached me again that I was willing to lay down my ideas and encourage her to embrace her own vision. Leah’s Shack-A-Thon was a fabulous success this past summer with 50+ participants raising more than $5,000 and learning a ton along the way about homelessness, leadership, and how cold it can get in Ohio on an August evening.

So what does having a more organic leadership model mean? A few ideas I’ve learned in the process of the last few years of empowering students:

When you have particular opportunities for students to lead, it’s appropriate to choose individuals. Not everything has to be fair or open. After all, it was Jesus who selected twelve from among the crowds.

Allowing students to create and lead will allow opportunities you wouldn’t have thought of. I asked Leah to create a student leadership team for Shack-A-Thon, and she chose some students I wouldn’t have. But they did an excellent job because she empowered them when I might have overlooked them.

Creating a variety of organic leadership opportunities, some more structured and others less, allows for a wider selection of students to get opportunities because they’re able to step into options that more naturally fit their gifts. For us, this has meant that we offer opportunities including student-led Bible studies, establishing the room environment, coming up with their own ideas, and leading other students in pursuing them. Instead of filling up our program schedule with pre-planned ideas, we’ve been trying to put more choices back in the hands of our students, allowing them to make the decisions.

Throughout this whole process, I’m constantly reminded that leading is actually about serving. I lead my students best and model leadership best to them by serving them as they pursue Christ, rather than trying to get them to serve my programming desires. It reminds me that I have as much to learn as they do, and this equal ground creates exciting opportunities to lead together in directions I would never have imagined on my own.

Joel Daniel has been walking with middle school students on their faith journeys for ten years. Besides leading the middle school ministry at his church, he operates as their instigator of justice, giving direction to their Justice League, a collection of diverse individuals who explore together how to tangibly employ God’s love. Additionally, he provides leadership for The 330, a network of youth pastors throughout northeast Ohio and is the founder of Seismos, an intimate, conversational, non-conference for youth ministers. You can connect with him at www.about.me/joeldaniel

I grew up through a Christian youth group. As a teenager who lacked confidence, was relatively immature, and also struggled as a Christian, I would not have scored very high on any potential leader grids.

Nevertheless, the leaders incorporated me into the team, supported me, and gave me opportunities to lead and grow. My ministry today and indeed my faith have their foundation in that experience and those relationships. It wasn’t even that they took a chance and I surprised them and myself; my leadership and faith development were very much a slow-burn process, steps forward and steps back. (Even now I can’t help cringing when I think about the first session I led).

However, trying to reflect a little more on this, I’m going to go with identification of student leaders being a mixture of prayer, intuition, and of course their willingness. As a key part too, not rushing into having a set idea of who would fit the role—or who wouldn’t. There is a huge danger in an approach that identifies only students who seem to have it all together (they often don’t, or necessarily make the best leaders); or one that ignores the ones who are not such obvious candidates (being believed in and being given the opportunity may be exactly what they need). God took a chance on us, eh!

In many ways, though, it is a discipleship question. Students are going to grow more in faith when they are given the opportunity to go somewhere with it, to model it and be part of a ministry team.

I remember a shy teenager called David who, in one of our chats, confided that the whole youth group thing wasn’t really him. As we chatted, it emerged that he loved organising things, relished playing a part, but preferred being in the background rather than taking part in the malarkey. I asked him if he would run the Tuck Shop, which he then did brilliantly (profit reports, stock control; the works). Through that process of finding a place and a role, he eventually became a small group leader and was one of six young people I invested a lot of time in…and learnt much from.

In terms of initiating student leaders, I think I’m clearer on how that might happen. Reflecting on my own experience and more recent conversations with teenagers in those roles, I think there are two really key components: 1. Be clear on what a task or role is and what is expected. 2. Review with them how it is going (or how it went).

I’ve recently had conversations with several teenagers who have been asked to get involved with the youth ministry among the age group below theirs. Two of these teenagers (in different churches) both felt that they didn’t know if they were being useful. They responded enthusiastically to being asked. However, without the clarity of what they should actually be doing, other than showing up; whilst also experiencing no review of how it was going, they weren’t sure they wanted to continue. Discouragement and self-doubt can easily sink young leaders.

If we don’t really work on the why, how, and then the review, we create a scenario akin to going bowling with the alley in total darkness. We won’t know what we are aiming for and, furthermore, won’t know if we achieved anything.

Reflecting on the young leaders I’ve trained, I’m sure there are some I’ve missed. I also know there are those where it didn’t work out as I’d hoped. I’m looking forward to see what the other contributors write about who, but I think the bigger question is the how.

For many Gen-Xers like me, no punches are pulled when pointing out what is cheesy and hypocritical in the church. We’ve authored zillions of tweets, posts, articles, and books over the last decade about how the church is irrelevant, suggesting that Christianity has become a cliché in and of itself. Much of this critique is warranted and possibly part of a greater redemptive good. But those who are committed to being part of a Christian community feel a sense of fatigue from this barrage of critique.

There is a certain attitude I slide into, one in which I exhibit a stance of having it figured out. This contributes to divisiveness as it delineates us and them—the sophisticated from the simpletons, the educated from the uneducated, the forward thinking from the stuck in the muds (is that another cliché? Someone stop me).

With these realities in view, I felt conflicted about pointing out youth ministry clichés. I am tired of being the squeaky wheel (cliché?). I don’t want to labeled as the contrarian, the dismissive idealist who tears everything apart rather than helping construct. I want to provide solutions rather than pointing out the problems. You feel me? (Darn, another cliché.)

So how do we offer critique that is redemptive? How can identifying clichés that need to go away move beyond targeting pet peeves? When I critique a cliché, is it just me being tired of its overuse in my circles, or is it a phrase that is truly losing its helpfulness? The danger with clichés is that they are here today and gone tomorrow (got me again). How do we walk the fine line of critique without sliding into arrogance? Is it possible to create better categories of language? I hope so.

The language we use is important because it shapes the way we think. Language is a way that we make meaning and identify ourselves. We must thoughtfully evaluate and refine how we speak, especially about God and the church.
So maybe it is good for us to identify clichés that hold us back from clearer and more substantive descriptions of our realities. Perhaps it is helpful for us to shed words and phrases that have lost their meaning by being overused or spewed carelessly and without context.

Now, I just have to think of a ministry cliché that really gets under my skin… That would really take this post to the next level!

Youth ministry becomes segregated from the church body. It becomes us (students) versus them (adults). Chap Clark calls this the Mickey Mouse Syndrome. Essentially, youth ministry becomes an extension and not a part of the church body. When only focusing on ministering to students, it becomes easy to drift away from the church. The problem is that there is no intersection between other adults and students in the church context.

Youth pastors cannot effectively disciple the masses. One adult can really only have a deep spiritual relationships with five to eight students, max. There is no way a youth pastor can do discipleship well for more than five to eight students at a time. Eventually the youth pastor will need more help from the community and church. This is why the youth pastor must get parents and adults to partner together in order to raise the next generation.

So if youth pastors are not supposed to only hang out with students, then what do they do? Why should a church pay for a professional youth worker? I think there are two primary tasks that define the role of the youth pastor.

The first task of the youth pastor is to mobilize God’s people to do the work of the ministry to young people. The youth pastor has to figure out how to get the church and the family to work as partners in raising students. God’s people are called and compelled to serve. Therefore, youth workers have to persuade adults they need to serve the next generation.

If the youth pastor is not empowering and equipping more adults to care for students, then no one ever will. Youth workers must approach everyone with the opportunity to work with this incredible next generation. Every youth pastor has to be thinking, How can I get more adults to care for students?

The second task is assimilating students into the church body. The goal of youth ministry is to assimilate authentic disciples into full participation in the life of the community of faith and the church. As Jim Burns of Homeword and Mark DeVries of Family-Based Youth Ministry have said, "The degree to which students will stay in the church, get involved, and make significant life decisions for Christ is directly dependent on their sense of belonging to the church community.”

The aim of any youth ministry must be that students see and experience themselves as participants in God's family of faith. One of the best and most practical ways for students to play an active role in the life of the church is by creating avenues for them to serve inside the church. Bottom line: The youth ministry programmatic strategy needs to move students from youth group participants to church body participants.

I must admit that during my first year in youth ministry, I thought youth ministry was awesome because I didn’t have to deal with adults. In fact, church adults annoyed me. I thought my job was to be the cool friend to all the youth. After my first year, I realized there had to be a more robust framework. After some seminary education, contemplation, praying, and reading I was convicted that youth workers are theologically responsible to train all generations to care, love, and serve the next generation. The more committed adults the church has to care for students, the more sustainable the students’ faith will be.

It is really tough to change the mentality I only work with students to I mobilize God’s people to care for students. But trust me; getting more committed adults in the lives of students is such a healthier and sustainable way to do youth ministry. So let us shatter this cliché.

I think it only continues to promote the idea that the youth pastor is merely a stepping-stone job to some senior role or is for overzealous twenty-somethings who want to hang out and have an excuse to revisit their high school years. I suppose—on a good day—it could be a caution that the job might be harder than one thinks. But beyond that, I’m not sure it has much merit.

I also think those of us who have accepted a call into youth ministry need to take a hard look at what we signed up to do. I know several youth pastors who have been at three or four churches for three years or fewer each time. I also know plenty who have been in the same spot for more than ten years. But when you move on for a third time after a short stay, I stop believing the church is at fault and start to believe it’s the youth pastor. The truth is plain and simple: Mentoring teens into young adults is no short-term process, and if we are just one more revolving door in their lives, then we should have little reason to believe our impact will be much different from the example we’ve set. If their faith comes and goes, well, so did we.

In addition, if you only stay three years and then leave, depending on the age of students you’re working with, you likely won’t even have any understanding of what it is your ministry is producing. About the time you get a chance to see any real fruit, you’ll be headed for the door, never once serving alongside a student who came fully through your ministry and is back to serve with you. It’s a tragic loss to the kingdom of God and even your own personal story. Let’s stack hands and destroy this cliché once and for all.

Your youth ministry is full of cliques. Really, please tell me, what group of people in the world is actually clique free? It seems that every sports team is one or has many. I’m guessing every small group ever formed is one. Workplaces have them. Schools have them. Churches have them. We could build a solid argument that Jesus and his disciples were an exclusive clique. Maybe Peter, James, and John were yet another.

I’ve been told more times than I’d like to admit in the last eighteen years of youth ministry that someone’s child won’t come to my high school ministry because it’s too clique-ish. Nine times out of ten it’s just an excuse from a student who sits in the back, is uninterested, won’t talk to anyone, and is looking for someone to blame.

The truth is that we do have cliques, and we do all kinds of things to try to both build and destroy them. We build them all the time by trying to help students form small groups, serve in community, and build deeper relationships with a select few. Once your youth ministry has more than ten students in it, they’re going to form friendship circles, and not everyone is going to hang out with everyone else. The student claiming our youth ministry is full of cliques is almost never the one trying hard to make new friends or risking saying hi to someone they don’t know. They are actually not really even upset that we have cliques; they’re just upset that they’re not in one yet.

We also work against cliques in our main gathering especially, working hard to pay attention to those who are new and introducing them into existing friendship and small group circles where they would be a good fit. Instead of falsely fighting cliques, we strive to keep them open and use the bonds of friendship and connection to help students gain ownership of their faith and our ministry.

Perhaps some cliques need to go, but so do the clichés that people use as excuses for lack of risk and investment.