Youth workers have a long history of falling victim to this problem. The situation is complicated by the dual role of senior pastors. They aren’t just our bosses but our spiritual leaders as well. When we feel let down by them, it’s not just about our own work. It’s also about spiritual direction.

Personally, I knew that if I wanted to continue working in churches, I was going to have to learn to deal with disagreement. Potential for disagreement is constant, and how I deal with it gauges my own spiritual and emotional health (and probably my ministry too). After years of really messing up this relationship, I have come to several conclusions that actually work when I don’t see eye to eye with my pastor.

Communicate. My gut instinct when I don’t like a differing idea from a pastor is to clam up and avoid talking about it. The result is always bitterness and separation. During that separation I build arguments for my position, have confrontations in my head with that person, play out scenarios, and, at the worst of times, go to others for support.

Instead of playing all these head games, the best thing I can do is have a conversation with the person I disagree with. I am always surprised by how much better a situation becomes when it can be talked through. Of course, I talk myself out of these interactions with self-justifications like, He won’t listen or, This won’t make any difference, but every time I actually initiate one of these interactions, I’m proven wrong. The other involved person almost always listens and accepts my perspective. Most of the time, this is the end of my problem.

Be fair. Senior pastors have to account for all of their people. When I come to him with a concern over the worship set and how teens are in danger of falling asleep, he hears me. He’s also thinking about how the sweet octogenarian lady told him that old hymn was the best thing she’d heard all week. If I really want to work through differences of opinion, I have to be willing to accept alternate perspectives.

As soon as words form in my mouth, I can see if I’m willing to see things from another viewpoint. When I accuse or exaggerate or use persuasive words to make my point, I’m not accepting another way of looking at things. Phrases like, “You don’t care about the teens because…” only show how limited my ability to accept is. So I need to be fair and acknowledge the pastor’s concerns as well. The point is, just because I am heard doesn’t mean my solution is the best or will be acted on.

Mind my own business. Occasionally, even after communicating in a fair way, I still disagree with my leaders. A great friend once listened to me rant for twenty minutes about one of these disputes. After hearing my problem, he asked me how I felt after talking to the pastor about it. I felt demoralized and devalued. It seemed like the pastor didn’t like me or think I was doing a good job. He then asked me if I thought I was doing the right thing in my job. Was I doing what I should be doing? “Well, yes!” I replied with a little concern about where he was going. He then told me that it was none of my business what the pastor thought of me. I couldn’t know for certain, and I shouldn’t be doing anything just for his approval anyway. This one sentence freed me from the burden of getting my self-esteem needs met by my pastor.

Disagreements are a big deal in the church, especially for those who work with teens. One of the biggest detriments to youth ministry is the problem of settling disagreements. I blame most of the transitions I hear about in youth ministry on this one problem, and while it isn’t all the youth worker’s fault, there is so much that can be done to help. As hard as it is, we need to work on these problems if we are going to continue to work in the institutions that support our callings.

While so many people I know and have been peers with in student ministry avoid conflict with all the strength they can muster, I’ve come to realize that conflict means both parties care. They believe in what they are doing and why they are doing it, and they want to see something through. Often when conflict arises in a church staff, the trend has been for the youth worker to ship off, thinking it will be better on the other side. But if that relationship with the senior pastor is to ever truly blossom and grow, how both sides handle the conflict will make a tremendous impact on the staff of the church and help set the trajectory for how conflict can be handled among other church members as well.

When the current senior pastor at my church arrived after I had been there nearly a year and a half without one, I was a young, new seminary student voraciously reading all kinds of new and emerging theologies and philosophies. We had just gone through the experience of losing a student after a horrible bout with cancer, and my predecessor as student pastor (and one of my closest friends) passed away in a tragic car accident just weeks before the arrival of our new senior pastor. Add to that, I was starting to ramp up toward change after being there nearly two years, right when the new pastor would come to provide stability. Worse yet, I had grown up in the church plant, with my dad being the founding pastor, and I can’t imagine what kind of situation this must have felt like for our new-to-the-area senior pastor.

Thankfully, I had a few mentors who provided some great insight into how to navigate that transition, which actually created the attitudes I try to embody when disagreement arises. They are simple but, when lived well, can perpetuate a living in the way of Jesus that helps set the pace for the whole church.

First and foremost, assume the best of your senior pastor. Don’t assume they are trying to personally attack you, frustrate you, or go against what you think or believe.

Second, if you can afford the time, let the situation settle for at least a day. Let your emotions run their course, and don’t be reactive. Try to listen to God, and even spend some time in silence to quiet your heart and spirit.

After slowing down and calming down if necessary, ask to meet with your senior pastor privately. Whatever you do, do not try to use a situation of disagreement to embarrass or intimidate your senior pastor in front of others. Often they are not even aware of the disagreement, and it is unfair to treat someone who is a leader in your life, who has been called by your church and God to fulfill this role, and is your boss, in this manner.

Be generous, and try to ask questions that lead to discussion rather than beginning with an accusation. Remember it is not about being right but about working together to fulfill the mission of God.

Ultimately, it is important to be open and honest with your senior pastor while being intentional to follow his or her lead, regardless of how things work out. How you handle this situation can affect your current relationship as well as how disagreements are handled in the future.

Really, just treat your senior pastor as you would like to be treated.

One contributing factor is that they are great youth workers and not so great staff members.

A key to my own longevity has been my willingness to think like a senior pastor. In truth, this insight came because, for 18 months, I was the solo pastor at a small church. (Everyone else quit!) I learned a lot about the role of the senior pastor when we didn’t have one, and I had to step in as the senior staff member. In attending meetings with the search committee, deacons, and trustees, I was forced to think globally about the impact of my individual actions on the organization.

When there were several staff people, no one seemed to care that I came in late some mornings because I was out late the night before or spent the morning at the high school. The unintended consequence of being the solo pastor and altering my work hours was that the rest of the church staff was confused about when they should start working. After all, if I wasn’t going to come to the office until noon on Thursday, did my secretary really need to be there alone?

When we finally hired some people and our staff (and church) began to grow again, I maintained a wider view of my impact on the entire church.

Another insight I gained during that period of time was a fuller understanding, particularly in small-to-medium-sized churches, that my role was to support and encourage the senior leader. That person is human too. They are going home to families, they have lives, and they want their jobs to be as successful as you do. That didn’t mean I had to be a yes man. But that did mean I had to disagree behind closed doors, allowing for consensus and then presenting a united front. Even when I sternly disagreed, I had to learn there was a right and wrong time and place to disagree, and there was a time to visibly support the mission of the senior leader.

It also meant that I had to wear my associate pastor hat often and do things far outside the scope of youth ministry (managing staff, overseeing other departments, and leading other non-youth-ministry projects).

I remember one key time. The staff had come to the conclusion that we needed to kill some programs in order for the church to invest in others. Quite simply, this 150-year-old congregation had way more programs than it could sustain. But in deciding which ministries to kill or maim, there was substantial disagreement (including throttling the growth of our student ministry). But when the day came and we presented these changes to the congregation, I stood next to and defended the decisions. More important than during the meeting, when the people of the church came to me looking for a voice of dissent, I stood by our decisions and leaned into my role as his supporter.

Why? Did I agree with everything? Absolutely not! But I supported these decisions because I believed in the long-term vision of the ministry of the church. And even though it’d kill me as a youth worker to see some of my own vision die, it was more important that the church survive than for me to get my way.

I think that’s the difference between a youth worker who stays for a season and one who stays for a career. In the long run, you have to see how youth ministry fits in and ultimately complements the whole organization in order for it to truly thrive.

As a teenager, I didn’t know my mother without knowing her suffering. As a result, things like the common cold or flu were no longer acceptable reasons to complain in my mind. It was almost as if I couldn’t be sick enough to justify staying home from school, church, or any other obligation. No one told me this, but witnessing my mother’s illness caused me to reevaluate the things I thought were worthy of complaint. As miserable as I am, there is someone more miserable than me was the thought running through my head. Suddenly my pain, heartache, and suffering took a permanent backseat to the pain, heartache, and suffering of the world around me.

Part of this was a healthy awareness that drew me away from a self-absorbed, adolescent state of mind. On the other hand, I was left with an unhealthy ability to ignore myself for the sake of others. Not addressing the suffering inside myself taught me the invaluable lesson that intentional ignorance of self only results in more suffering. My perspective on the existence of suffering and how to address suffering in a healthy way was shaped by my mother’s suffering, the suffering of those who loved her, and my suffering as a result of losing her at a young age.

The present suffering in my life shapes my internal climate. It shapes the stability of the emotional and spiritual platform I operate from as a leader. One of the consequences of having past suffering in my life is that I have lived through what happens when suffering is left unresolved. Unresolved suffering does not remain dormant. It expresses itself in uncontrolled, irrational, and reactionary ways. As a teenager I experienced this through different forms of self-mutilation. As a leader I experience this when, instead of exemplifying a Christian response to a current situation, I react without thinking.

Essentially, anything that is a part of the leader becomes a part of that person’s leadership. Recognizing this encourages me to work toward resolving suffering inside myself because I don’t want to operate from an unstable and unpredictable internal platform.

Future suffering is the anticipated suffering. I’m not addressing future or anticipated suffering because I want to suffer. However, as someone constantly working toward resolving suffering inside myself, I acknowledge that I am naturally preparing for a new season of suffering. When we open ourselves to deal with what has happened and what is happening in our lives, we allow God to prepare us for what will happen.

As a result of my personal approach to suffering, when I recognize that one of my kids is experiencing a form of suffering or when the community is experiencing suffering, I approach the situation much differently than I would otherwise. First, I don’t ignore it, and I don’t let anyone else ignore it. Period.

Second, I am intentional about articulating the importance of accepting suffering in one’s own life and for the members of the community to support one another in accepting their suffering. What I commonly run into with my kids when they are suffering is what I said when I was a suffering teenager: “It’s not that bad. Really, it could be worse. Someone somewhere has it worse than I do.” The truth is, that is an unhealthy and hypocritical state of mind to live in, or to believe is acceptable.

Third, I take the time to discuss issues of death, suicide, mourning, transition, and other situations that bring about feelings that could be marked as suffering. I want them to know that God didn’t ignore it, neither should they, and neither will we.

Taking the time to address suffering as people, as leaders, and as ministry communities can be overwhelming, difficult, and scary. I encourage you to try it anyway. Why? Because it’s godly, healing, and loving. I promise.

Being fired was one of the best things to happen to my career.

In the time it took me to move from a performance-based evaluation to being let go, I plumbed the depths of my calling. It was a painful, frustrating, and rewarding experience. I got back in touch with the reasons I began working with young adults. Never had I intended to work at the church of what’s happening now or to build the best programs or to have the biggest events.

Inside of all this soul searching, I found out something about myself. My passion lies in awakening possibilities in teens and in those who work with them. If I’m not doing that, what’s the point?

As I pondered the many new opportunities from my previous church’s outplacement service, I began to build a new way of doing youth ministry that fed my soul. It wasn’t that programs were bad; they just weren’t necessary if I was doing the things I loved.

Reading through the gospels, I realized that there are few—if any—stories about people being changed from sermons. More the norm was a transformation that grew out of a personal encounter with Jesus in the context of a small group or one-on-one encounter. Why was I spending so much of my time working on a broadcast message when it was the less effective method? Presentations took a back seat to building real relationships.

At the same time, God was working on my perspective of the gospel. A friend put new thoughts in my head when he told me, “What you save them with is what you save them to.” If I bring teens into the church through attractional, bait-and-switch methods, they have little grounding in the actual good news of Christ. My understanding of the gospel moved toward a personal message that confronts specific pains in our lives instead of a ticket through the pearly gates.

As I solidified these paradigm shifts in my life and ministry, a new person emerged. Previously in the interviewing process, I researched churches and figured out what I thought they wanted. Now I shamelessly went in and told them who I was and what I was about. I was absolutely convinced of the kind of work I should be doing. After I was hired, I sought the lead pastor and told him my problems instead of waiting to be called in.

The effort I spent in ministry became more focused and concrete as well. Instead of spending 80% of my time finding a better ice breaker, I developed deep bonds with teenagers. At some point, I stopped preparing and started doing. My time with students became more dynamic instead of a static, one-sided meeting. Surprisingly, more and more of my time went into prayer and personal development. It made me more effective.

All of the suffering I went through changed me. It made me a passionately focused agent of change for youth and their families. As I look back through these times of hardship, I know God used them to sharpen me into a better instrument for his kingdom. Suffering is the best gift I have received from Jesus. It makes me more like him.

Conversely, I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could have traded in my pastoral role for my old corporate job. Yes, that career was unfulfilling. Yes, the longer I did it, the more bored I was. But at least it didn’t hurt so bad. When I was betrayed, I could speak up. When I was wronged, I could relay my issue to a human resources professional. And when I failed, I could deal with being passed over for a promotion or a raise. Sitting in a small group of my peers, I could talk about my job sucking or my boss being a jerk and get empathy from people in similar situations.

But in ministry the stakes are so much more personal. And it’s a very private struggle. The isolation and lack of camaraderie are ultimately what hurt the most. All too often when you reach out with a struggle, you are rebuked or even belittled. At least for me, this meant I carried a lot of burdens. Suffering became part of my ministry.

In truth, this personal suffering was enough. I understood it as part of the calling. But what caused unnecessary suffering was the impact of my vocation on my family. My wife couldn’t just be a wife and new mother. She had to carry the mantle of pastor’s wife and receive unlimited and unwanted advice from the hens of the church. When our kids misbehaved, we felt the judgment from fellow congregants.

Early in my ministry, I allowed the weight of suffering to shape my attitude and self-image. If I were made of Play-Doh, my body would have been flattened. But, as I’ve gotten stronger, more used to the weight and its impact, I’ve learned that there is a healthy suffering that just comes with being a follower of Christ, which I can deal with.

But, there is also abuse that comes my way that I no longer permit to have the impact it once did. I’ve become like a junkyard dog in protecting my family and the families of my ministry friends. That’s the weight of ministry I no longer allow to shape them.

It’s like everyone online has their own twenty-four-hour satellite TV station running at full broadcast power, all the time, and we just change channels or tune in and out depending on what’s on. It’s one of the few areas I think it’s wise to put caution before anything else. Digital reality is removed from all the nuances of body language, tone, and context. The danger is that anyone using social media can reveal too much out of context or inappropriately. When I think about young people dealing with normal or out-of-the-ordinary life and angst, my fear is that using social media as an outlet or a source of reassurance can push young people out of healthy contextualized relationships where they can deal well with their issues and frustrations.

Similarly, it can create false expectations, false ideals to live up to. It’s easy to portray for yourself or observe in others a life that is better than—leading to unhealthy imitation or perspective. So here’s a few things I do and encourage others to do:

Be friendly with lists and privacy settings. You have to be transparent (so, perhaps consider living and displaying the kind of life on Facebook that doesn’t need any privacy), but you also need to be smart. Not all your family and friends on Facebook want to interact with your students. Always create lists and manage your post visibility according to lists; customize your security settings. This includes chat settings.

Can we talk about it offline? Rarely will discussing it online be helpful in the long term. I often make myself unavailable to chat online with students or with students’ parents. Both groups need face-to-face or phone time. However, if I’m online and a student chats to say hi, no problem. If the conversation turns serious, I take it to a phone call. Often students find the courage to type before they talk, but it’s my responsibility to turn text into talking by getting them on the phone or in a room. Same with text messaging; it’s just a no-no.

The drama queen and the passive-aggressive tragedy. We all have those students, and they can be difficult to deal with face to face but can be even worse given social media tools. You know the ones. They take potshots at the “friends who disappoint” them and use social media to talk about how lonely they are, “but it’s no surprise.” The dark underbelly of blogging and social media is that it creates a platform to talk, even if no one’s listening. My rule is that I simply won’t engage in the public forum, but if the pattern of online behaviour matches offline, real-life behavior, then it’s time to intervene and address the issues.

Should I be friends with my students on Facebook? Probably the question everyone starts with. So long as you can treat students with the same level of respect that you would hope for, then yes. But you need to think it through and let your supervisors know what your plan is so that you’re working from a basis of positive trust and in an affirming environment from the outset.

What about randoms? Very few people become friends on Facebook first and transpire those relationships to real connections. I’m lucky; one of my best friends and I met online, but our friendship has transcended that and lasted ten years. We were peers, however, and the balance of trust in our relationship was equal. As a youth worker, you have a level of trust from parents, students, your church, and society that must be maintained. I’ve often had to decide what to do with random requests from speaking at an event or students who came to youth group once. Reading the above, can you guess my response? Of course I’ll say yes, but everyone goes into a list!

Human communication is complicated; there’s no two ways about it. We weren’t really designed for one-volume broadcasting, and we have to remember that. We were designed for layers of influence, relationship, conversation, and the beauty of the spoken word. Social media should only ever be a springboard into a better, deeper, relational swimming pool.

The highest ideal and supreme example of communication is found in God, who became man and brother to us. In our liturgy, we pray that we might “come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” That Jesus Christ came to earth in bodily form to repair the fractured relationship between God and man powerfully exemplifies the importance and significance of real relationships. Jesus walked among us. He listened. He spoke. He told stories and shared meals. He cried at the loss of a friend. He healed others with forgiveness, a touch, or a vocal command. Jesus Christ is the fullest experience of God being in relationship with us. We who desire to communicate God’s love for others and the invitation to be disciples of Jesus must recognize the value of real relationships in our various ministries.

Virtual relationships only hint at intimacy. We who believe in the incarnation recognize the highest value being placed on relationships where we “dwell among” others. Because of this, our relationships seek and desire not a transitory acquaintanceship but the fullest of commitment to one another.

In virtual reality, there can be a false perception of closeness, but it is not true intimacy. In our faith, we understand the truest intimacy to occur when we are in communion with one another. The earliest Christians understood the role of communion, intimacy, and relationship building as imperative to discipleship. In the Book of Acts (2:42-47), community is articulated: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.”

It sounds contrary to speak in the ideal of intimacy of Christian relationships but then put on the brakes. Consider these issues: There is a difference between being friendly and being friends with children and youth. I do not include young people in my social circle. Healthy boundaries between adults and young people must be maintained. It is uncomfortable and inappropriate when there seems to be a special relationship between an adult and a young person who seems to be a favorite. The appearance of special relationships will always undermine one’s effectiveness in addressing the whole community. As ministers, we are called to objectively assess how others might perceive or misconstrue your behavior and the behavior of the adults with whom you minister. Social networking makes it difficult to maintain the perception of treating all equally. There is great risk in patrolling the internet for the young people to whom you minister. While a young person should have no expectation that statements made online are private, it is the parent’s role to monitor their child’s behavior, and those who minister to young people on behalf of the church never should usurp the role of the parent. Intentionally monitoring and probing where young people have shared their intimate thoughts violates their privacy, not unlike picking up a participant’s retreat journal over a meal break.

Now, when I share my personal policy not to friend young people under the age of eighteen, I do get some pushback. How can I celebrate kids’ birthdays…? How can I publicize upcoming events…? How can I monitor the loves lives of the kids…? And the questions each end in “…without Facebook?”

Facebook has not even been around a full decade yet. There are ways to develop pages that give your church a presence online. As for the rest, those of us who have been around for a while still send birthday cards through the mail and keep our ears perked during pizza breaks.

What’s the point? Jesus is calling you and I to enter into students’ lives, live incarnationally among them, and embrace the inherent danger that brings. Jesus isn’t calling you to do anything stupid or to break the law. But he often calls us to do things others consider stupid, unsafe even.

Youth ministry is dangerous. It will bring you into temptation. It’ll bring you face to face with your deepest fears and greatest annoyances. It’ll cause you to create policies and break them at the same time. Chances are, as you engage with students online, you’ll see all of that and a whole lot more.

I remember several years ago, when Xanga was hot, stumbling around and finding most of my students’ blogs. I was shocked by what I read. Many of them shared intimate details of their lives they’d never shared with an adult in our ministry. Fears, doubts, experiments, dirty deeds, the whole enchilada. That knowledge forced me to consider my response. Since I had crossed the line and found them in space they presumed to be private, what was I going to do about it?

In the end I decided not to broach the subjects, either directly with them or indirectly through my choice of teaching topics. To have done so would’ve revealed that I had violated their privacy. Sure, they hadn’t password-protected those things to keep me out. It wasn’t as though I had done much more than surf around to a few links. But I didn’t go there because I hadn’t been invited either.

Invitation is the dividing line in my eyes. I think that, as we engage with our students through social media, it has to be about permission. I know many of them say things in Facebook messages or chat that aren’t honoring to God. I know many of them have secret Tumblr accounts and private circles on Twitter and/or Google Plus. But I don’t want to force myself there without permission. I don’t think my role as a youth worker should come with expectations that I’m an FBI agent, cracking into their private spaces to discover what they really think.

That’s my advice. Don’t go sneaking around where you haven’t been invited. Instead, live before your students with open arms and invitation to deeper and deeper levels of intimate, incarnational discipleship.

The second question is about your own disclosure. Should you encourage students to friend you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, read your blog, or add you on Google Plus?

First, I think your church leadership should wrestle through this question together. I know it sounds lame to think about drafting a policy, but there are both philosophy of ministry and legitimate liability concerns to think through. Most school districts do not allow teachers to socialize with students on Facebook. There is good logic there that is worth wrestling through as a staff. Whatever the policy is, it’ll take the staff team policing one another to enforce it.

Second, I think that when you do engage your students, you should do it through a ministry account and not your personal account. For instance, it’d be a good idea to create a Facebook page for your ministry or church and then interact with your students by using Facebook as a page. It’s a nuanced difference but an important one. It puts you in a position where you are obviously an agent of the ministry instead of the individual person. Because, at the end of the day, that is your role. Just like you attend a Friday night football game as a representative from the high school ministry, you engage with students online as a representative of a ministry.

As we unpacked that, he talked about the danger of wrapping up my identity with my vocation and the practical implications for that when things went well in ministry and when things didn’t go well. His rant stuck with me. If I don’t see a burning bush or get suddenly blinded by Jesus, then “calling” is probably not the right description for a job hunt.

That little exchange changed my view on working in the church for the next ten years. We over-spiritualize the whole work/life relationship. It’s a job with a task, and we are professionals hired to fill a role. No offense, but your ministry gig is just that—a gig. That doesn’t mean you love it any less. That doesn’t lessen your significance in the ministry. But it does mean that it’s just a job, and you shouldn’t make it something that it isn’t. It’s what you do, not who you are.

So how do I know when it’s time to leave? Here are a few criteria I’ve used in helping others through this process.

Are you still having fun? Working with teenagers in a church and dealing with all of the ancillary stuff is hard work. And if you aren’t having fun anymore, it’s time to move on. That doesn’t mean every minute has to be filled with games. But it does mean that there is a tipping point between joyfully doing the stuff you don’t like that goes along with the job and looking at your calendar and only seeing things you dream. If you don’t like what you are doing and where you are working, you should quit.

Is this just a valley? I spent eighteen months as the solo pastor at a church after the other two pastors quit suddenly. I know valleys. Those eighteen months were survivable because I knew it was just a valley and we’d be okay when we popped out the other side. During those eighteen months of weddings, funerals, pulpit supply, and endless elder meetings, I gained a new appreciation for the role of the senior pastor. On top of that, when we came out of the valley, the joy was that much greater.

Do you love the staff? I was always jealous of the teams I saw at the big leadership events. They seemed to love each other and want to hang out all the time. I don’t know if that’s the model for ministering together we should strive for. But I do know that you should love doing life with the people you work with.

Do you still love the people? There’s a difference between having healthy boundaries between your ministry life and your personal life and just plain not liking the people in your ministry. If you don’t legitimately like the people in your community, then it’s probably time for you to do something else.

Are you there because of fear? I think a lot of people stay too long in vocational ministry because they are afraid that they can’t do anything else. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You can be a youth worker without being an employee of the church! Never stay at a job because the inconvenience of looking for work is worse than staying at a job you hate.

At the end of the day, there isn’t a formula for knowing when it’s time to double down or time to get out of town. But I’ve learned that there is great value in asking your spouse, your close friends, and a couple other advisers periodically.

How are your heart and soul? I work at a church that I love. I love my staff, the students, their families, and the whole community. I wake up in the morning thinking about the church and am really excited about all the possibilities. Most of the time I feel like I am valued. I worked at a church once where I didn’t feel that way. That was hard. I think self-evaluation of how you are doing at your soul is a huge step. If you feel like you are at a place that nurtures and cares for it, then you are in a good place. If the opposite is true, then you might want to consider a transition.

How are you compensated? I mean way more than money, but I’ll start by talking about strict finances. Do you get paid enough to live on? Are you able to make ends meet and not eat noodles every night? Does the church have a plan for how you might be compensated better during life transitions or milestones? Often in our world, churches don’t take care of us differently when we get married, have kids, or graduate. This is especially true in today’s tight economy. But this is a long-term question you will have to wrestle with. It may be that you are compensated fairly, and I don’t think money should be at the top of your list when it comes to transitions, but it is a factor.

Is there opportunity for growth? This sounds way more like a business question than a church question, but I think it’s still worth asking. If you’ve been in your job for a while and do it well, is there any opportunity to take on more leadership and responsibilities? In many cases, the answer is yes, and you could see yourself sticking around for a long time because there are places you can move into as your life changes. I’ve moved into more of a leader of leaders role as I’ve gotten older and been around longer. It’s a good place for me. If you are in a role that will likely never change and you feel already like you are butting up against a ceiling, you might want to consider a transition.

What happens when you graduate from school? I’m a huge proponent of education. Graduation is a natural time of transition. I left a church after I graduated from seminary. It was a great transition, and everyone celebrated with me. It may be that you are more qualified for a different role after graduation and doors are opening to you. Or you might find that your church wants to move you into something else or increase your salary.

Are you done? This is a simple yet profound question. The hardest year of ministry for me is always the fifth year. It is the year after the first group of students I started with as ninth graders graduate. We are not supposed to have favorites, but in general, that first class I spent four years with will always be mine. So the year after they graduate is a difficult year. I miss them a ton. At one church, I was done in my fifth year but stuck around for two more. All of us will get to a point where we recognize that we know we are finished with our role. But many of us like paychecks and hate transition and just stick around because we are too scared to follow God somewhere else.
One thing I really like about the Slant 33 blog is that you can read two other people’s thoughts here about transitions. Getting multiple opinions is probably really helpful. All situations are different. My last bit of advice is that you have to weigh all factors before making any decision. Focusing too much on any one factor will probably lead you to make the wrong decision. I did that once. I decided a location I wanted to live and a beach I wanted to spend a lot of time at. My blinders came up, and I didn’t weigh all the factors. Great beach, wrong church.

In my position, you get to hear and celebrate all the testimonies that get reported. Unfortunately, you get the unpleasant task of hearing and knowing about people’s struggles, slip-ups, and downright failures in living the righteous life. And If I’m completely honest, even though I believe in our church slogan, there’s a side of me that sometimes says, “Everyone’s a minister…except him.” I know, I know. We all sin, but my sin ain't as big as theirs. At least, that’s what I tell myself. My sin is still inside the boundaries of permissible.

Nobody would admit that they think that way out loud. I'm not even admitting it out loud. I'm confessing it behind the safety screen of my computer, where I'm guarded by a degree of anonymity and geography. Truth is, while it's spiritually polite to say we're all priests, I think we secretly harbor a grading chart that systematically disqualifies people who screw up from being able to minister, and I guess I had settled with that religious bigotry until I got a sobering reminder that “every member” means every member, even the ones who mess up.

Allison is a girl from my youth group. She’s had a remarkable summer of rededicating her life to Christ. It’s a change you can see. She’s brighter, happier, and more purposeful. At youth group she’s stepped out of her shell and has started engaging more. She worships openly now. She comes to the church and volunteers. She Facebooks and tweets scriptures and prayers. She doesn’t really have any obvious aspirations to be in ministry, but she’s definitely taken on the priestly robe. I’m proud of her.

One day, Allison sent me a text message that read, “I need to make a confession.” My stomach dropped, but then I thought, How bad can it be? Maybe she cheated on a test? Lied to her mom? Thought negatively about me or some kids in the group? Whatever it is, it’s probably nothing really serious. So we met, and as we sat on the floor, she recounted recent events that left me speechless. Nothing serious? I couldn’t have been more wrong. When she finished, there was silence. Words escaped me, but I had thoughts that there was no way that she was gonna be a minister at youth group right now. At least, not up front.

As we began to talk through her confession (and recover from it), her countenance shifted. Her head lowered. Tears rolled continuously down her face, so much so that she gave up on wiping them away. It wasn’t a loud and obnoxious cry, but it was clearly coming from deep within. I could tell that this had gone from being a disappointment in herself to a real and true godly sorrow. As I looked at her, I flashed back. I suddenly had a rush of remembering that moment when the last thing I wanted to do was hurt God's heart. Sitting with her in that broken space made me really reflect on the many transgressions of my life. And not just on my transgressions but on the days when contrition was right.

In truth, I’ve come to a place where some days I sin and think, Ehhh, no biggie. God and I are cool. I'm still going to heaven. But in this moment, as I watched this teenage girl confessing and lamenting, she ministered to me. She truly ministered to me. As she was walking and working out the salvation, love, and reverence for God that I had taught her about, she re-taught it to me in turn. Sitting in this moment of confession, she ministered to me. As Jesus used the woman caught in adultery to teach the self-righteous crowd of onlookers, so God used this girl to teach me. And I was just one judgmental thought away from missing it. A defining reminder that yes, indeed, the priesthood of all believers is real, at work, and nobody—even those who sin or struggle—is disqualified.

More adult leaders were interested in serving due in part to the opportunity on their part to share from their experiences as well as provide words of encouragement and correction. Authentic LA found that mentoring relationships proved more meaningful than simply sharing a generic sermon from the platform hoping it would hit the youth where they were at.

Previously, my youth ministry experience was more reflective of a modeling perspective of ministry. Here, events were crafted so youth would experience God in the confines of church buildings and Christian camps. Leaders sought to help youth relate to God in the safety of ministry functions, centered largely on preaching and worship. There was a large emphasis on understanding who God was, with little time spent by leaders seeking to understand who the youth were outside ministry functions. Leaders didn't venture into the homes or schools of youth or actively seek out youth to build relationships with them outside of ministry activities to hang out, chat, or learn. Instead, youth were audience members, being entertained rather than trained to be and make disciples where they were. It was more about engaging youth and hoping they would continue to invite their classmates to ministry events.

The differences between these two types of ministries truly illustrate an organization’s commitment to empowerment. The biblical concept on this subject is the priesthood of all believers. The idea that everyone not only has access to God but also is empowered to live out their callings is what the priesthood of all believers is about. The question I was faced with years ago was, How are we preparing the youth in this ministry to be disciples right now? On a day-to-day level among youth, my role is that of both a model and a mentor. I am a living work in progress who is accessible in my home and can be found seeking out relationships with youth outside of ministry activities. I am a leader who helps provide accountability, support, and tangible resources to youth so they can live out their callings.

From an structural level, I am responsible for helping organize the mentoring aspect of the ministry. This includes recruiting, training, and providing ongoing support and resources to adult mentors. I also help to shape the direction of the ministry with other leaders as well as lead some of the weekly transformational small groups that provide the dynamic venue for youth to develop as disciples.

Four weeks later I questioned my own wisdom. One by one, the students grilled these couples. None of them waited until they were married to have sex. Three out of four of them married someone their parents disapproved of. All of them seriously considered divorce. All had deep regrets.

On one hand, it was an opportunity for me to teach that God isn’t interested in perfect people leading his church. On the other hand, many of my students walked away from those interviews with a new level of permission for their sexual promiscuity.

It was the opposite outcome from what I’d hoped.

I believe the primary task of a leader is to take people where they would otherwise not go themselves. George Patton wasn’t a great leader because he was brilliant at giving speeches to Congress about the nature of war. He was a powerful leader because his aggressive positioning of tanks worked. Likewise, Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t a great leader merely because he was a powerful orator. He backed his words up with actions and led people where they were too afraid to go themselves.

The question for Patton or King was not, Am I afraid? Certainly, they had fear. But they recognized that their fear was not going to lead people to where they needed to go.

So they faked it. They recognized that standing before their people and blabbering about their fears and the hardships they might face was not going to lead their people somewhere. Instead, they led people toward something that seemed impossible: victory over insurmountable, impossibly defensed enemies.

As I teach the Bible to my students, I recognize that it’s important to be authentic. But I also recognize that in my attempts to be transparent, I may overshadow the portrait of what God can do with what I’ve been unable to do.

You see, sometimes the most authentic thing you can do is fake it.

Our task as leaders is not to treat the teaching platform as the couch of a daytime television show. It’s to communicate biblical truth to adolescents. Sometimes, in order to lead them where they can’t go on their own, you have to put on your unscared, tough-guy face and show them how brave you can be.

The opposite of authentic is not fake. The opposite of authentic is untrustworthy.

Today’s students have lives filled with people who have contractual obligations to invest in them. They aren’t asking, Is this person willing to talk about their worst sexual encounter before a room full of teenagers for a dollar? They are asking, Can I trust this person? And, Is the Jesus this person represents worth following, even if it’s scary and leads me somewhere that costs me my life?

If that’s the question, then forget being authentic. I want to be fake all day.

she will likely inaudibly weep in thanksgiving that we are together and that others are missed. As my children now become adults, I find myself experiencing the same. No words are needed, just the openness of tears shared.

We all understand the power of being present when we witness a birth, baptism, or wedding and sharing in the joy. The same power is there in moments of loss and grief. It is even there when we accompany others in a shared experience at a work camp, conference, or just a cup of coffee. No words needed, just the sharing in being present.

And yet, sometimes, we choose to use words. So how do we determine that very thin line between vulnerability and over sharing?

Consider the Latin adage Cui Bono? It translates as, To whose benefit? In investigating a crime, it is usually more expedient to investigate those suspects who have something to gain.

Often, what trips us over the line from vulnerability and into the hazards of over- sharing is when we find ourselves the benefactors. In the Strength Finders assessment, one of the identified talents is that of Significance. People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.

In the Catholic church, our National Directory for Catechesis (faith formation) helps us discern what constitutes an authentic presentation of the Christian message. It establishes a “hierarchy of truth,” which first and foremost asks if the message “centers of Jesus Christ.” It also places a prominence on “proclaiming the good news of salvation.”

When we as spiritual leaders (and there is no denying that is how others perceive us, even if we fail to see it in ourselves) preach the gospel (which we are doing at all times—again, even if we fail to see it in ourselves) and choose to use words, I wonder, Who benefits? Does your witness make you seem like a likeable, real person, or does it empower me with my own story of challenges and faith? Does your story set yourself up, or did you call attention to the One who is Good News, even in hard time?

If you are my spiritual leader, I’m not sure that I ever need to hear about your alcoholism, your academic degrees, or even your smokin’ hot spouse, unless it somehow points me toward my own relationship with the Lord.

More specifically, youth ministry thrives on the relationships between the youth and the adult leaders. The call to vocational ministry as a pastor requires constant discernment in all arenas of life, especially when navigating relationships with those you lead. However, the cornerstone of every relationship, no matter the situation or the context, is trust.

Part of relationship building is creating trust through authentic presence. That presence is most commonly communicated through quality time in conversation where both parties are, in some capacity, vulnerable. This happens most often by reciprocating that which the other chooses to share.

For example, one of your youth comes to you and says, “I cut. I don’t want to, but I don’t know what to do about it. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop.” It is possible that as a teenager you struggled with self-mutilation and an addiction to cutting. The natural response would be, “When I was your age, I cut too. I understand some of what you’re feeling.” Or maybe you struggled with an eating disorder, a pornography addiction, attempted suicide, etc. It takes a certain level of vulnerability to share that information. Responding with something of equal personal value reciprocates the relational investment and builds trust.

In leadership, vulnerability may not simply be a reciprocal response. At times, you will feel led to share your struggles with your youth. That is a step of faith you must discern. Your youth may need to know that you’ve been where they are in order for them to trust you with their struggles. In this situation, vulnerability may feel like you are over sharing. Trust and discern.

The place I often struggle to discern the appropriateness of what I desire to share is when I’m responding to a question. Youth have a tendency, when they trust you as a leader, to ask questions where your first response is difficult to even think about saying aloud. The truth may be that the same issues they’re sharing with you through the question are issues that you’re still struggling to resolve. Since the cornerstone of every relationship is trust, the only option in those situations is to embrace and engage vulnerability. Carefully choose how you share that you are still struggling with the same issue because, in this situation, the truth that builds trust may compromise your leadership. Generally, when posed with a question, respond honestly.

The one constant in every relationship, context, and situation is truth telling. If you’re gossiping, you’re lying. If you’re lying, you’re over sharing. Don’t lie. It will only ever break the trust and damage the relationship, compromising the effectiveness of your leadership.