I first thought I would love answering this question, but the more I ponder it, the more challenging it becomes. So I thought I would tell you a story of Jason, a student beyond belief.

Jason and I first met at the Christian group meeting at the private high school where he studied. Several of my other students led the group, and their debates on theological issues were surprisingly robust, so they asked me to pop my head in. Jason was a self-proclaimed atheist—and very specifically atheist, not remotely agnostic, he told me.

It’s important to point out that Jason is one of the most intellectual students I’ve ever had in my ministry. Ever. And I’m a pretty smart cookie, with a passion for Socrates, philosophy, the renaissance of wisdom, etc. Jason was at the Christian group because, like any philosophy student, he loved a good debate.

Challenge #1: Hearing Jason’s point of view, never condescending or defaulting to spiritualizing what, for him, was a deeply intellectual and rationally based conversation.

Let’s skip ahead to challenge #2: Jason (after a long, intellectual journey) became a Christian. He leapt into full-on, five-point Calvinism, and I was his favorite debate partner, though I was also happy to oblige.

After a long period of discipleship by way of conversation at the coffee house, Jason’s theological views shifted, not just slightly, but a lot—all the way to liberalism.

Challenge #3: Realizing I had something to learn from Jason’s processing and his story. Realizing that some doctrines are, in fact, subject to change, but well-thought-out values are not.

Learning to objectively reason with yourself is a hard skill, let alone trying to explain it or pass it on to anyone else, but I can say this: It always starts with me. In an argument, in a difference of a opinion, even when someone is angry with me, it always starts with me. What could I learn from this, what insights does this other person have?

God doesn’t need me to defend my traditions or my point of view. He prefers it much if I listen and weigh up what I hear from others so that he might have the opportunity to point something out to me that I haven’t seen before. I simply cannot know it all. In fact, the only certainty is that I do not know it all. We do not know it all as the church. We are sure as anything still figuring a lot of stuff out. And the more the world changes, the more we’ll need to figure out.

So I try to always be on the lookout to learn something new from those who differ from me. And it’s been an amazing journey. I have some friends who are of a different faith than I, but their faith has taught me a lot about the values of community in marriage and how individuals can truly respect one another. I am fascinated by what I learn when spending time with them, especially when they interpret the same Scriptures I am so familiar with. Their understanding leads me to understand more of God than I have before. Therefore, I don’t need to address them with fear or insecurity. God is God, but this is my learning opportunity.

Women are allowed to vote, but we didn’t always think that way, and somewhere along the way it had to change. Therefore, what is concrete? Just because this is how we have practiced faith, I need to be able to think through that commitment and those rituals so that I can always answer the question Why? in a way that is meaningful and authentic.

Jason has reaffirmed to me that we are never truly static in our beliefs and practices. The only thing that is really concrete is God and his gift of Jesus, the Son. But everything else is up for grabs, or at least requires thinking through.

So I carry two stones in my pockets, sure of what I know: that God is God and that I have much, much, much to learn.

He reminds them that we are God’s offspring, and as complex and multifaceted as we are, so is he. And just as we can be learned through study and observation, so can he.

In a nutshell, this is how I’ve come to look at church traditions, denominational theologies, and cultural mindsets. They’re good. I mean, they’ve gotten me this far, right? But how arrogant is it to think that the only right way to learn and know the infinite and indefinable God of the universe is the way that I happened to learn it first?

I realized that a lot of what I came to regard as sacred and sanctified as a young believer was just a matter of style and culture. Though that doesn’t discount it, it doesn’t deify it either. I’m black, so the dominant church culture and theology I learned was from that perspective. And don’t give me that “there’s only one race; the human race” stuff. We are different and different for a reason.

Paul says that reason is so we might pursue God by embracing and exploring the vastness of all his creation. To ignore my race and inherent culture is to ignore some part of God (and I happen to think it’s a pretty amazing part). It also makes the pursuit of relationship with God pretty boring. Seriously, if you put me in a room of my own people, I tend to rest on the idea that I already know them and what they do (whether it’s true or not). But in mixed company, I feel like discovering the unknown and seeing how it agrees or doesn’t agree with what I already know. It broadens me just to be exposed to different.

As a young person growing up at an African Methodist (then Baptist) church, I learned that the preaching pulpit was the absolute most sacred place in the church. That’s why it’s the center of the congregation’s view. Only the called and most revered could stand there. And everything he said from there was law! And if you stood there undeserving, you could assume the worst, whether it was from God or the head missionary with a mean pinch. I was also taught that we only did communion, with the little cups and broken crackers, once a month because that gave us time to think about all our sins and repent accordingly. I accepted all that as true and sacred.

Then I ventured out to a Presbyterian service, and the first thing I noticed was that the pulpit was in the wrong place. It was kinda to the right and not really as big or grand as the one from my old church. At the center of the congregation’s view was the communion table with real bread and only one cup of wine from which everyone was to dip. It was there every week, and people could choose to partake. Choose? What?! My first thought was, These people have it all wrong. Then I sat. Asked some questions. Listened. Tried it their way. And to my surprise, I still experienced God.

I won’t belabor your Slant33 reading experience with any theology lessons. I’ll just let you know that being raised and reared as I have has served me well, but opening up to learn the rituals and reasons of other expressions has made me a better, more rounded believer and follower of Christ. Somewhere along the way, I recognized that God was bigger, much bigger, than my experience. He was even bigger than the experiences of my ancestors. And in my exposure to other traditions, theological perspectives, and mindsets, I’ve gained everything, and I lost nothing. And yet I still think there’s more to God than what I already know (Acts 17:24-34).

Two years ago, my Army son was serving in Iraq. We SKYPEd a great conversation with him as we all lounged around in our pajama pants and sweatshirts. The next year, his sisters claimed that pajama pants had become the new traditional wardrobe for gift opening and our meal together—a concept he rejected. I remained neutral as the family gently teased their way through this holiday debate. The girls tipped off his girlfriend, and she showed up at our door in pajama pants as well.

We started with the opening of presents. My defiantly jean-clad son received the very first gift, and it was clearly marked from me. He opened it and rolled his eyes; he now had his own pair of pajama pants. He excused himself and went to change.

Pajama pants on Christmas is not my tradition. Yet my family is now clearly coming into the age of making their own traditions. The challenge for those of us who are keepers of tradition is to remain open to the full community’s experience, to allow all members of the family of God to find themselves represented.

Nearly thirty years ago John Naisbitt, author and futurist, claimed in the book Megatrends that “leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.” In these postmodern times, that line seems so relativistic. Yet, in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (4:8), he encourages us to assume this attitude: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

When we limit God only to our own limited experience of God, we are denying the omnipresence and the omnipotence. When we lead and cannot get beyond our own traditions, theology, and mindsets, when we fail to remain open to God’s ongoing revelation in our own lives, we find ourselves teaching about a limitless Lord from a nearsighted perspective.

To best avoid this, we need to think outside ourselves. Therefore we need make choices that get us:

Out of our box. When having God in our lives can be a source of comfort for our days, discipleship and being comfortable were not necessarily meant to be identified as complementary terms found in the thesaurus of faith. Our ministries are meant for “awe and wonder” and not boredom. We need to be mindful to challenge ourselves spiritually and continue to grow anew in faith.

Out of our molds. If the only adult volunteers or core team members we recruit are those cut out of our own molds, then we have only drafted an army of clones. We have a responsibility to recognize those who are different from us but are true, honorable, and just.

Out of our minds. Author Mike Carotta often wonders why we seemingly forgo the opportunity of preparation for the sacrament of confirmation to actually collaborate with the Holy Spirit and work toward driving kids out of their minds…and into the mind of Jesus. To do so demands that we are a little bit out of our own minds as well and working toward developing a spiritual whatever attitude about that which is excellent and worthy of praise.

Our openness is a matter of hospitality. The vitality of our programming as well as our own personal faith should be considered in light of a farsighted sense of vision of acceptance to be able to get in front of the parade of all that is pure, lovely, and gracious, even if it originates from outside our own experience. Paul reminds the Hebrews (13:2), “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”

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.

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.

Fixate on him. This is my default response to discouragement. I keep thinking about the symptoms of the problem and how it affects me in adverse ways. This road leads me to create stories about how this problem came to be and how someone is intentionally dissin’ me or devaluing all that I have to offer. This response can become an all-consuming exertion of emotional energy, which always leads to frustration or another response I typically lean on, avoidance.

I have become a pro at avoiding things. Discouragement is often painful, and because I love my flesh so much, I usually try to protect it from any discomfort at all, including feeling bummed out. I let the discouragement set in and just leave it there and attempt to ignore that it exists by immersing myself in anything that will distract from the truth of what is really going on. Work and media are my two favorite places to hide from the roots of discouragement because they redirect my attention to things that make me feel good or just numb my senses from the pain that always seems to accompany discouragement.

One element of the cultural norms in Minnesota is passive aggression. Responding to discouragement with a sucker punch from the side becomes one of the ways I like to stay true to my Minnesota roots. So, after I have made up some incredible stories about the root of the discouragement, I try to get at those roots by taking cheap shots at them (always other people, never my own crap). And in true Scandinavian fashion, those shots look more like shadow boxing and not a real fight because they only occur in my head or in the presence of people who are not the intended target of the swing. This cognitive confrontation is soothing to my flesh and keeps it safe from counter punches at the same time; it’s wonderful.

Each of these methods leads to the same place: greater discouragement and greater sin. Each method is me choosing to believe some form of lie from Satan, “the father of lies” (John 8:44) and not the truth that will set me free (John 8:31-32) from discouragement. I am sinning in that I am leaning on my own strength and abilities to try to move away from my ol’ pal Idaknow.

Only recently have I been able to confront the roots of discouragement the way I should, and I hope you can too. Every discouraging thought is rooted in a lie of some type. Every lie is from Satan, and God’s Word is truth. If I am going to battle the root cause of discouragement (lies), I have to expose that lie to the truth in God’s Word.

When discouragement comes, pause and think about the root. What is the root intended to do? You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 ESV)

John 10:10 tells us that Satan’s purpose is to kill us and destroy us. Is the discouragement helping to do that in any way? If it is, then my guess is that it is from Satan and rooted in some sort of lie.

Expose the lie. We can’t just do this with our intellect because “our flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). Understanding lies is a spiritual exercise (2 Corinthians 10:3-6), and we must depend on the Spirit exposing lies through the truth in God’s Word. When I read the Bible, there is something supernatural that happens because the Spirit and God’s living and active Word work together in me, shining light in darkness and bringing life to me. The more I reading the Word, the more I am able to discern the truth from the lies I hear.

Believe the truth. I can choose to believe the truth. I can read a bunch and know Scripture, but if I don’t believe the truth there, I will continue to be held captive to the slavery of discouragement caused by believing lies. Ask for help of the Holy Sprit to give you faith to believe his truth and not the lies that have you bound in discouragement.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ESV)

When the feeling is subjective, learn to be objective. Discouragement is an “and” and “therefore” emotion. There are usually other feelings and thoughts associated with it. I use a journal to identify the emotions and work through them like below. It might feel a little silly, but just a couple attempts at this has really helped me!

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, so I wonder if it’s worth it, and therefore feel discouraged.

I feel lonely, unrecognized, and discouraged in my work. I give it everything I’ve got, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

Use your emotional vocabulary to identify the specific emotions and triggers. Assess each one objectively and reframe the feeling. For example:

I’m disappointed, sad, and angry that student made that choice, but other students have made positive choices. I can prepare my students, pray, and support them, but their choices are not my responsibility. And their choices don’t reflect my influence or the value of my work.

We are a product of what we think, so replacing subjective thoughts with objective and realistic ones is a key way to combat unhealthy thinking when we’re discouraged.

Combat weaknesses with strengths. Often we can feel super discouraged with our failures, perceived failures, and struggles. If you’re getting discouraged because of the tasks around you, ask yourself the question: Am I operating out of my natural strengths? We’ve all been in situations where we had to work in areas that are not our natural gifts, and we don’t feel up to the challenge. Database management, anyone? It’s easy to end up with a to-do list that’s uninspiring, people on your back wanting administrative deadlines met, and then feel unmotivated and discouraged. Thoughts like, This isn’t what I signed up for! start to swirl. Here’s the hard truth: Everyone has stuff they have to do but don’t want to do (usually because it’s a weakness, not a strength); it’s part of being a grown-up. So step up to the plate and use these simple guidelines to stop getting trapped in a downward spiral that leads to discouragement.

Get it done as soon as you can. Procrastination is like a beetroot stain. If you put it off once, you’ll put it off again and again and set yourself up to get beaten up. Also, if others are relying on you, you’ll prevent yourself feeling like you’ve let people down if you get on it ASAP. To achieve it, try using the guideline below.

Follow the 80/20 rule. Try as much as you can to spend 80% of your activity time (work, exercise, hobbies, family) doing what you’re good at, and give 20% of your time to the stuff you have to do. Try doing your 20% first so you finish your day in a positive frame of mind. That way your students, your bosses, your family, and your friends get to deal with the energized person working in his or her strengths.

Be honest with expectations on yourself and the expectations others have. If you really struggle with administration, deadlines, details, or creativity, it’s important to be honest with yourself and those around you. It doesn’t have to be negative. We’ll always be more productive in our natural strengths, and we need to debunk the myth of superhero, can-do-it-all youth workers!

I feel far more confident mentoring and training my youth volunteers than being the leader up front at every youth meeting, so I’d like to work with some of our young people to develop their skills in that area, and I’ll be more focused and effective if I’m not stressed about leading a meeting every week.

I find it takes me twice as long to update the database and email out the programme updates each week, so I’d like to ask one of our volunteers who’s really good with detail to do the updates and give me a summary each week.

I love being a youth leader, but I’m just not confident about leading a teaching night. I’d much rather make sure that everyone has a ride, that there’s enough supper, and make note of anyone who didn’t turn up this week. I prefer talking to students one on one or in small groups than preparing a 15-minute talk to present.

Accept that being fully human, fully alive, is to experience it all. Hopefully these strategies read like how to work through or address discouragement, not how to avoid it altogether. There is a subtle difference! It’s important for our own personal development but also for our students, volunteers, and bosses to see us dealing with discouragement in a healthy way. The key is to not let it get such a hold on you that it starts to chart the course of your life and ministry. Sometimes discouragement is a perfectly valid emotion to experience. But it’s a momentary response that needs to propel you into one or all of the following: self-discovery and development (what you can learn); change to environment (removing obstacles or unproductive habits); professional development (identifying skills to learn or acquire).

King David knew that our souls need quieting. Psalm 131 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, and I remember it when I’ve wandered from the well of rest that God offers to us all.

…I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me…

For me, practical ways to find solitude and rest need to be planned out long term, short term, and daily.

Life gives us seasons of rest, and we can expect lulls where we can come up for air. However, if we don’t plan, we may find ourselves caught in the riptide of life and unable to swim in to shore for a much-needed breath of air and replenishing of our strength.

Here’s what I try to do:

Plan long-term rest. My husband and I plan at least two weeks a year to go somewhere to completely unplug. It doesn’t have to be pricy; it can be anywhere at all, as long as we are somewhere away from phones, email, networking, and multi-tasking. We’ve found that planning to vacation in areas where there is no cell phone reception keeps us accountable, and we are truly able to get to a point of healthy detachment from the busy lives we lead. Underneath, we find our essence, the very thing that keeps us going, the heart of Christ becomes clearer in us, joy returns. It’s a wonderful place, and I look forward to this time during the busy seasons. Knowing I’ll get this vacation keeps me focused and hopeful when I begin to feel drained.

Plan short-term rest. I plan a day or a half day every week for this. I do something outside, avoid tweeting, updating, or talking too much. Tell your co-workers when this time is scheduled for you and ask them to honor it. Rest can mean focused prayer. Rest can mean a great nap. Rest can mean some much-needed time with your spouse. Something I always loved about Mike Yaconelli at National Youth Workers Convention was when he would say, “Some of you, instead of attending another seminar, need to lock yourselves in your rooms and don’t come out until Sunday.” He couldn’t have been more right. While there were probably quite a few NYWC babies that resulted from that approach, the other byproduct was rested and content youth workers who are able to lead out of strength, not out of emptiness.

Plan daily withdrawal. Every day. Exit the grind a couple of times a day. Withdraw to recharge. Pray. Play basketball at lunch. Take a walk around your building. Drive to get a snow cone. Change it up and find rest for your soul. When you exercise, you can’t have a conversation with more than one person, you can’t dial a phone, you can’t answer one (technically you can, but you shouldn’t unless you want that iPhone to be a cracked phone). Find a few ten-minute periods when you can read Scripture, be in nature, move around, and listen to the Spirit of God moving in your life.

I don’t have this figured out, but what I do know is that rest and solitude are essential. My life has never been busier, and I’ve never had more opportunity for emotional and physical breakdown. However, this one thing has helped me to recover and recover well.

You can read some other blogs I’ve written on the same subject.

Rest: We all need it.
The Best Four-Lettered Word for Your Ministry.

The questions are: Why aren’t you resting? ● What’s keeping you from it? ● Where is solitude found in your life? ● In the car, on a retreat, in focused prayer?

Wherever you find rest and solitude, go there often. You’ll be so glad you did.

Four years ago, a good ministry friend had just returned from a six-month retreat after retiring from eighteen years in ministry at our church. She offered me her unneeded block of time at a Christian retreat center. She apparently thought (and my wife concurred) that I would benefit from being silent for a few days, alone, by myself. Not wanting to seem like a scaredy cat, I took her up on the offer.

I checked in, I ate dinner, lay down at 7pm, passed out, and woke up fourteen hours later. I didn’t even know I was tired. After a day there, alone in a cabin, just me and God, I knew that I was going to need more than the two nights and stayed for three. This was honestly one of the most challenging things I have ever done. No schedule, no agenda, no something to have to get to next, no phone, computer, and then no watch. Just me and all my thoughts.

I read a lot, walked outside in the woods, sat in a sweet rocking chair, answered some questions from my friend Carma like, What is your relationship with yourself?, wrote some thoughts, read my Bible, walked some more. I discovered that my busyness was convenient in helping me avoid deep life stuff, that it supported the perception that I was in control, and that stopping required me to trust—trust I could handle silence, would catch fresh air as I dug deeper than ever before, and that God would want to hold me in his arms smelling the way I did spiritually.

I have been back every December since then. Intentional silence in solitude has become my rest, even if just once a year. I crave it, long for it, am filled by it, and see the amazing fruit from it for the rest of the year. I have coughed up spiritual hairballs, found out I was rebellious because of insecurity (which also explained why I got fired from my youth ministry job), forgave my mom, overcame the lies that made me fear being a father to my son, finally discovered that I have never really feared God, and have seen him give me that fear and awe I asked for.

After my five-day, four-night stay this last year, I received a love of God’s Word that has continued in me, making me hungry for it like never before. After forty-one years on this earth, God’s Word is working in me and changing my heart and making me want him like never before. My time away is not a perfect lifestyle of rest and solitude, but it is working for me and giving me the heart change to seek after rest more and push me further away from my dependence on my busy rhythm to sin and angling my leaning in to the one who requires my trust, fear, and dependence.

Satan does a good job at convincing us that what we hear about moving is truth i) I will get it later. ii) I don’t need rest. iii) If I rest, I won’t do what I need to do. iv) People will think I don’t care, am selfish, or am not a team player.

But it turns out they are lies. Mark 2:27 says that God created Sabbath and rest for us; that slowing down was modeled for us in creation (Genesis 2:1-3). Think about it: Did God really need to rest? Yet he commands us to stop and rest. Jesus modeled it as he felt the energy drain from him as he spent time with people (Mark 5:27-30). Just an FYI: Ministry is tiring. Mark 1:32-37 tells us that he left some healing undone to go and find rest and be still in the presence of his Father.

He couldn’t serve us unless he refueled daily with his Father. Couldn’t find direction until listening to God’s voice and will (John 8:28-29). And couldn’t serve us if he didn’t remain obedient to his Father by being still and knowing who was God.

The psalmist tells us: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Notice the order? Stillness followed by the knowledge that he is God. We often fear what we will discover in the silence. God says that he is there if we only submit and rest in him.

Isaiah 58:9-14. He wants us to cry out for him so he can answer.

I’ve started to think about it like training. It begins with understanding how solitude and rest help me be more productive and healthier, even when it seems to be an interruption to the schedule. Learning to have a long-term view of what’s going on with my work, my body, my mind, my spirit, and my community as well as a sense of self-awareness around how I function best and fine-tuning my recovery as well as I fine-tune my workouts. This way, I make solitude and rest a priority, and eventually I see the benefits in my output and attitude toward life!

First, identify the challenges to good solitude and rest:

Being an extrovert. I’ve learned that in order to be truly focused and productive with my time, I need people, even when I’m resting. Sometimes my best moments of rest and solitude have happened in a busy coffee shop, with my journal open or a good book.

Watching the clock. When my to-do list gets out of control, the last thing it feels like I should do is take time out. But my stress hormones and mind start to treadmill too fast for me to keep up and send me to panic mode if I don’t take space to breathe and form a plan to attack that mounting pressure.

Expectations need to be managed. The people pleaser in me rushes to the surface when an unrealistic deadline or expectation is placed on me. (Trust me, I never create unrealistic expectations for myself ;-), right?) We have to learn to practically address what robs us of rest and healthy functioning. In the first year of my internship, I was asked to do 6-10 hours but did nearly 20 hours every week to meet the unspoken expectations. Setting a healthy pace for myself also results in a healthy pace for my ministry, my volunteers, and my students.

Then, I need to make the most of the rest breaks. I find my creativity is at a high in the morning as much as I like to reflect on the day before as sleep brings perspective and insight. First I like to clear the decks, making lists of all the compartments, any practical solutions or actions I need to take to problem solve or move a project forward. Once my head is clear, then taking a walk. Either leaving the phone behind or turning it off helps. Energizing my creativity benefits my whole day.

Like I said, often the biggest obstacle I face is myself. Learning not to feel guilty about not taking a call or not booking a last-minute meeting in time I’ve set aside. I use daily ritual to measure my time. I start the day in a local café, I hit the gym at a certain time each afternoon. I guard those times fervently because they are valuable headspace.

I’ve learned I sometimes suffer from FOMO: fear of missing out. However, like most fears, it just needs to be faced. Missing the odd social outing actually isn’t the end of the world! The benefit is learning that I actually quite enjoy my own company at times. Sometimes a struggle with solitude is that we don’t really know the person we’re spending all that time with. We know ourselves at work, at church, with family, and with friends, but learning how to spend time with yourself is like any relationship. Quality time is the only way to get through that awkward stage! Think about it like taking yourself on first, second, and third date. By the time you get to double digits, you’ll have a much better idea what’s going on.

As a single person, I’ve sometimes felt the time demands and pressure double. While other ministers have families and commitments that keep them at home, sometimes people feel your time doesn’t have as many restraints. Push back gently on this. I don’t go home to share the burdens of my day with anyone; that part’s all on me!

I’ve often said that good structure allows for spontaneity. The truth is, keeping small and regular breaks for solitude and rest in my days and weeks means that I’m rarely at a deficit now.