Some friendship seeds were planted but ended when people left to start church plants or moved away for new jobs. Others sprouted up quickly but were later revealed to be shallow and hurtful, destroyed by gossip and insecurity. Still others were choked out by the frantic busyness of life. Between jobs, kids, responsibilities, and ministry, friendships were relegated to the background of life.

Slowly but surely, a few friendships took root, and the roots sank deep. Some of these were fellow youth ministers at other churches. Some were fellow pastors in my own church community. Some of the deepest were the very people I was called to lead and disciple—my volunteer team and interns. It surprised me to find that my best friends at my church were those I served alongside.

With relationship comes risk, however, and there are a few that stand out to me:

A deeper level of hurt. The deeper you go in a relationship, the deeper you can wound and be wounded. When we initially arrived at our church, another couple seemed excited to be friends with us, quickly inviting us into the deep end of the friendship pool. We eventually learned that the motives behind this friendship were impure, and what appeared like the seed of friendship sprouted a root of bitterness. The couple eventually left the youth ministry. It wasn’t just a lost friendship; it was a lost ministry partnership, and students experienced the painful ripple effects.

A potential lack of respect. When you’re buddies with the team you’re leading, one’s sense of authority can quickly dissipate. A friend of mine recently had to confront his best friends and roommates about their attitudes as volunteers in his ministry. They were operating with a sense of entitlement, showing up late to meetings or not respecting some of the boundaries because he was viewed as their friend first and their leader second.

A closed community. I’ve seen plenty of volunteer teams who really like hanging out. They love each other so much so that they forget to spend time with the teens they’re called to disciple. The mingling before a worship gathering finds itself filled with cliques, only these are now divided between student and staff. Others may interpret “we’re close” as “we’re closed.” Without a sense of awareness, a team can become self-involved.

The risks in these friendships are weighty, but so are the rewards.

A shared mission. C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves that friendship stems from a common interest or insight, that friends must journey together toward something for their friendship to blossom. There is a clear common interest between pastors and volunteers: We all want to see young people grow closer to Jesus. That mission binds us together, gives us something to spark passionate conversations, and allows us to support and encourage one another in our endeavors.

A team camaraderie. When your team genuinely loves each other, it makes ministry fun; really fun. Some of my favorite moments in recent memory are the times I spent laughing and sharing life with members of my ministry team. Like any family, we have our dysfunction and quirks, yet we transcend these as we emphasize one another’s gifts and strengths. The love we share spills into our students, who see our deep friendships and strive for a similar sense of community with those around them.

An expression of the love of Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes this about Christ in The Cost of Discipleship: “He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality... Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.”

If Jesus is our mediator, what better place to find true friendship than with those who are also pursuing him? He is the source of all healthy relationship, and thus our partners in the gospel should become our dearest of friends.

Joel graduated from Multnomah University with a B.S. in Bible & theology and youth ministry. He is currently the high school pastor at Red Mountain Community Church in Mesa, Arizona. He and his wife, Katie, live in Gilbert, Arizona, with their two children, Copeland and Eloise. He blogs at http://joelmayward.blogspot.com/.

A good friend of mine who was a youth pastor at his church for more than four years was seriously burned by one of his closest friends who was a member of the youth staff. Because of their close friendship, the lines that separated youth pastor from volunteer started to become blurry. This volunteer started to make major decisions without consulting the youth pastor, which ultimately resulted in great division among the students. It wasn’t long before the volunteer left the church, along with about twenty of their students, and started attending another church up the road. My friend told me that their close friendship made confronting his volunteer that much more difficult and awkward.

Another caution I would offer to the youth pastor is in the area of accountability. I am not saying anything new when I say that ministers need to have relationships in their lives where they can be brutally honest and open with a trusted friend. They need to have relationships where they don’t have to be on and are able to hang out with people who are not parishioners in their church. My heart aches for pastors who do not have one or two relationships in their lives where they don’t have to worry about being judged or thrown out of their congregations because they shared something they thought or felt.

It becomes muddy and messy when youth pastors confide all their thoughts and feelings with someone within the church or a member of the youth staff. Even though youth pastors may feel as though they trust someone completely, when you share intimate details of your life with someone in the church, you are giving that person potential ammo to use against you at a later time. There have been times I thought I was sharing something in confidence, only to find my vulnerability used against me later. I know that sounds overly cautious, but pastors need to watch their own backs. I’m sure you have your own or have heard stories.

Finally, the last word of caution I would offer regards the gender issue. The work of ministry naturally causes people to draw closer to one another. We must be aware of how close we allow ourselves to get with members of the opposite sex. It only takes a few years in ministry to hear stories of pastors or youth pastors who do not create healthy and safe boundaries with the opposite sex and end up falling into sin.

So, while there is not a black or white answer to the question, any and all youth pastors must use some level of caution and wisdom when it comes to initiating and sustaining friendships with their volunteer youth staff.

Jason is an associate pastor in Independence, Missouri, where he primarily works with youth and young adults. He thoroughly enjoys speaking and teaching God's Word and has done so at a handful of camps and retreats over the years. Jason always keeps his disc golf discs in the trunk of his car just in case the opportunity to play should suddenly arise. He occasionally jots down some of his thoughts at www.JayMcPherson.blogspot.com. Jason is married to Rachel, and they are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Part of this is for the simple reason of needing to keep your sanity. Ministry is an amazing privilege, and it can be life giving and a joy to be able to walk alongside people on their spiritual journeys. But it can also be hard. And draining. And frustrating. And there will be days when you hate it. On those days, you need friends and people outside your faith community with whom you can relax, be yourself, vent, and not worry about the repercussions. If you don't have those people in your life, it's going to drive you crazy, and you'll probably internalize a lot of stress, frustration, and anger, and that's not healthy or sustainable.

It's also healthy to have plenty of friends and acquaintances who aren't connected to your faith community or to any faith community. These are the people who will keep you honest, who will help give you a reality check every once in a while and provide much-needed perspectives that you wouldn't get from those in your churches and ministries.

There can be some real rewards of having close friends work as volunteers of your ministries. For one, it's a gift for our youth today when you can model what authentic Christian friendships and relationships look like. Serving in ministry with your close friends is one way to do that.

It's also an added gift to enjoy the people you're serving with; being in ministry with people who know you well can make it more fun and can help you get through those times when ministry gets hard.

But there are risks in having those close friends work with you in ministry. Your friends aren't perfect people (nor should you expect them to be!), and sometimes they'll do things that you disagree with. They'll be late to youth group, forget to show up, plan a game that isn't the smartest, or share things with students that may be inappropriate or that don't fit with where you'd like to see the ministry be theologically.

Having to discuss those types of things with volunteers is never easy; you don't want to offend, and you certainly don't want to lose them as volunteers. But it's even harder when the conversation has to happen with your best friend. I think there is the potential to want to let things slide or not have the important conversations that need to be had when these situations arise.

On the other hand, hopefully you have the type of relationships with your friends where you can be frank and to the point, and they'll totally get where you're coming from. That'd be great. But the reality is that those types of conversations have the potential to be pretty awkward and can hurt friendships. And when you're doing the tough work of ministry, you need all the friends and support you can get.

Being able to minister with your friends can be a real blessing, both to you and to the students in your ministry. But I encourage you to choose wisely which of your friends you ask to help out; depending on the strength and personality of your relationship, it could be a real blessing or a real frustration to your ministry.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus modeled an intentionally prayerful life. As a leader, I try to follow this path because I have found out that when I stray from this, not only do I begin to lose my footing, I begin to lose focus of who God is. Prayer is times spent with God, worshiping, praising, confessing, and petitioning.

As I was taught by my fathers and mothers in the faith who blazed a trail before me, I seek to pray regularly for myself, my family, my mentors, my fellow leaders and members of the ministry, families in our community, fellow disciples, the lost, and those in influential positions. My core desire is to become more like Jesus and continue to build on the movement he initiated thousands of years ago.

I often pray that God will send more supportive people into the lives of those in our ministry. I pray that God will continue to create a loving community of disciples who embrace newcomers and help guide me on how to better care for those in our ministry. I seek to pray for this ministry with others. I have a group of people I rely on for support and insight, a prayer team made up of those outside of the ministry context who resonate with what we are trying to accomplish.

My prayer life overflows into the ministry, since during all of our meetings there are opportunities to share how God has been directing each person. I discuss the importance of prayer often, touching on issues ranging from the challenges of finding time to being open to what God is saying. The meetings also provide an opportunity for me to pray for individuals, as well as be prayed for. I write down every prayer request that is stated during each meeting, which I seek to go over each night as I close out the day.

On another level, fasting is also a large part of how I pray for the ministry. More specifically, the first weekend of each January and July are set apart for prayer and fasting for direction for the ministry. This has proven to be extremely fruitful and a source of encouragement, especially when times get tough.

I hope this will encourage you wherever you are. Early in my life as a disciple, I sensed that the discipline to be intentional about prayer was one thing, but the ability to come to God, open to whatever took place during that time, was quite another. On my journey, I constantly have to challenge myself to truly listen to God and have faith that he will be watching over those he brings into my path.

My prayer is that my fellow youth leaders and I would be leaders and people who are deeply rooted in Christ. The simple truth is that if we expect to effectively and faithfully lead and guide our students, we need to be people who continually secure our roots in Christ. We secure this foundation through a continual coming before Christ and asking that our hearts, minds, and lives be guided and directed by the Spirit. My guess is that every single student leader or pastor out there (who is honest) can share about times they have tried to minister to students when they themselves have neglected their own relationship with Christ and how frustrating and difficult that can be.

As youth leaders, we pray for our students’ families. I am a firm believer that parents are the number one influencers and shapers of students’ faith. Unfortunately, as I reflect on my local church, most of our students come from homes that are familiar with brokenness (divorce, abuse, neglect, etc.). Many of our students have also been raised in homes that lack any sort of Christian education or Christlike examples. Therefore, I encourage my youth staff to pray regularly for their students and their families.

We strive to pray for our students by name. Just this past week, our student ministry had the opportunity to get away from Kansas City and head out to the thriving metropolis of Pomona, Kansas (population 940), to go on a retreat. While I thoroughly enjoyed the speaker, the constantly lit fireplace, and the abnormally warm winter weather, the highlight of the retreat for me was a prayer time we had together Saturday night. After our small group time was wrapping up, I asked the students if they would allow me to pray for them by name. Even though we make it a discipline to pray for the students corporately, there is something powerful and special about praying for students by name, especially when they hear and participate in the prayer.

When we pray for our students by name, we are able to recall and recount their individual and unique stories and pray accordingly. As I began praying for Malachi, here is a student who hasn’t even turned thirteen yet. He has two solid parents who are deeply committed to raising him in the faith. My prayer for Malachi is that, as he navigates the seventh grade and begins his first year of ice hockey, he would seek to put Christ at the forefront of his life and strive to love others as Christ calls him to do. When he is faced with the challenge to join in the locker room talk, I pray that God would help him to speak words of love.

Sitting next to Malachi was Daniel. Daniel is almost eighteen and has had no more than a half dozen conversations with his father in his lifetime. Daniel’s life has been marked by instability and constant abandonment. He somehow ended up coming to the youth group when his sister attended a VBS at our church last summer. When I pray for Daniel, I pray that he would seek to know, love, and serve Christ. I also pray that Daniel knows he has a heavenly Father who loves him and is proud to call him son. Lastly, I pray that God would remind him that he is a heavenly Father who promises never to leave or forsake his children.

As youth leaders and pastors, it is important that we adopt the discipline and practice of prayer for ourselves, our youth staff, and our students. May we all strive to be leaders and ministers who make prayer the foundation of our ministries.

Jason is an associate pastor in Independence, Missouri, where he primarily works with youth and young adults. He thoroughly enjoys speaking and teaching God's Word and has done so at a handful of camps and retreats over the years. Jason always keeps his disc golf discs in the trunk of his car just in case the opportunity to play should suddenly arise. He occasionally jots down some of his thoughts at www.JayMcPherson.blogspot.com. Jason is married to Rachel, and they are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Inside this discipline, there are times for me to pray prayers of praise, proclamation, and petition. It is here that I pray for the people of the ministry I serve. These prayers, however, are never on behalf of the ministry itself (organization, programs, structure, budgets, etc.); they are only on behalf of the people in the scope of the ministry.

I suppose someone could say this question implies people rather than programs. However, too often I have heard prayers spoken that have more to do with the success of the person praying than with hope for and healing of people within the ministry.

Just last week I heard this prayer from a youth pastor: “…and God, help this ministry to grow in numbers so that the world may see our love for them.” What? The numerical growth of your ministry is directly related to how the world sees your love for them? Really? I think just maybe the “world” may know how much we love them by our faithfulness to serving them.

Too many people concern themselves with prayers that are, in the end, for them. So when a question like, How do you pray for your ministry? arises, it makes me want to strongly differentiate between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the people around us.

Most often, I find myself moved the most by praying prayers of confession as it relates to the people I serve. Here is an example of one of those prayers:

Heavenly Father, look upon our community of faith, which is the church of your Son, Jesus. Help us to proclaim his love by loving all our fellow creatures without exception. Under the kingdom reign of God, keep us faithful to Jesus’s mission. Forgive us for not always choosing to preach the gospel to the poor, blind, oppressed and brokenhearted. Amen.

Telling God the truth about my unfaithfulness in taking gospel action awakens one of the greatest gifts of Christian spirituality: forgiveness. It is within this forgiveness that I experience God’s mercy. It is God’s mercy that inspires me want to be more generous with others.

Do I pray for my ministry? No. Do I pray for those whom the ministry in which I serve touches? Yes. Does the question How do you pray for your ministry? really imply the people within? Perhaps. But perhaps we still could progress in our prayer practices with a strong distinction made between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the sake of others.