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.

We all have relational currency with everyone we encounter. I choose to spend a large amount of the available currency in each individual relationship with my youth focused essentially on helping them articulate their faith. That’s what we’re all here for, right? To help the young saints of our communities grow in their faith. One mark of growth in faith is the ability to articulate that faith.

In my opinion, articulation is a product of conviction and practice. My kids like to joke with me about what happens when I start asking questions. “Oh, here she goes again!” they’ll say. We laugh about it, but those questions are how I help them grow. Those questions provide them with the opportunity to articulate in a safe place what they believe. Sometimes those questions are directed at the group, and sometimes the question is more appropriate for an individual. It can be healthy to wrestle with issues of faith as a group and individually with proper support and encouragement.

I’m not referring to the equivalent of a firing squad that has them leaving their time with you feeling as if they aren’t Christian. I’m referring to challenging them in a healthy way to say what they know in their hearts or what they are learning as a part of their personal growth. They will say things that even surprise themselves; things that create more questions and things that spark strong convictions.

In addition to these opportunities to state what they believe within the community of the group and individually with me, corporate opportunities within the community of the church are powerful moments for the youth and the church body. Some of them have testimonies of faith that rival the lives and testimonies of our own faith stories. When they have come to a place where they are comfortable to approach this opportunity with even an air of confidence, our support, advocacy, and encouragement will be invaluable. We might even end up as their bulletproof vests, but that’s okay too.

The greatest gift of youth (and young adult) ministry in my life is to have the opportunity to advocate, encourage, and support my kids as they grow in their love for Christ and articulate their faith. I’ll take a hit and sacrifice a win for them any day, and I’m sure you’d do the same for yours.

Questions are better than answers. Most youth leaders fear the socially awkward silence that follows a question in a meeting. That pause is a golden moment. In that absence of aural noise, thoughts happen. Too often, we don’t give time for students to think through the truths we teach. It’s impossible for teens to internalize new ideas without time to process them. I began using the Socratic method in my teaching. This teaching style focuses more on processing questions than on finding answers. Questions need to be open ended, provoking the stillness needed to develop a response. Binary questions (those that can be answered yes or no) shut down thoughts and conversation. So I learned to shape my questions into those that couldn’t devolve into a one-word answer.

How you think is more important than what you know. At the same time I began developing my questioning technique, I saw a flaw in the educational system. This flaw focused teaching around memorizing and regurgitating facts. Teens weren’t being taught to think. Realizing the need, I began to organize logical trains of thought, much like the Pauline epistles. When considering a topic, I tried to consider what questions students would have from their perspective. Progressing logically through a subject helped model a way for students to reason through questions away from our time together. I began seeing youth using these skills outside of church.
The process is more important than the outcomes. Here’s the real kicker for this way of teaching. If you use this method, there will be uncomfortable moments. As you wrestle through some tough thoughts and allow your students to ask difficult questions, it will challenge both you and them. Those who look for an easy answer will be frustrated. I constantly remind my group that life doesn’t always resolve itself. Faith believes even when we don’t see the outcomes. We are called to work out our faith even into discomfort.

Warning: This way of leading discussions isn’t for everyone. It pulls teens from a pre-adolescent, concrete mindset into the abstract perspective of adulthood. As you introduce this method, the potential for frustration will be high. Acknowledge that what you are asking of your young adults is hard. Thank them for participating and encourage them for growing into a new way of thinking.

So, why would you do this if it has the potential to frustrate students? I get that question often from new parents. If today’s adolescents are going to be able to stand firm in their faith, they will eventually have to own it. All discipline causes discomfort at the time, but then it produces amazing results. If teenagers are going to be able to articulate their faith, they will have to face the discomfort of working through it for themselves.

As a result of their collective traits, with the fun and joy of working with these young men comes significant thought about intentional ways I can help them develop an articulated faith. Each and every week (and the communication/community touch points in between) I absolutely must be purposeful about my passing on of the faith.

Below are eight intentional ways I am helping students develop an articulated faith.

1. Putting myself in situations where my life of faith and their inquiries about faith converge.
2. Allowing my group to ask any question at any time about anything in order to re-narrate their questions around faith in God.
3. Send them various resources they can read and interact with in order to stretch their thinking and come into their own understanding of life and faith.
4. Help them develop a communal hermeneutic—a way to read the Bible as a community that gives them a framework for interpretation and application.
5. Be a visible presence at our church’s gatherings so they can see how important developing an articulated faith is to me.
6. Help them (by modeling it) with an ability to lean all of their past, current, and future understandings about the Christian faith up against what Scripture says about any given theme (if it does), what the church has believed through its growth over time, what their own abilities to reason help them conclude, and what the personal and practical experiences of their own faith help them understand.
7. Inspire them to see how their faith development and the ability to articulate that in both word and deed impact the world and participate with God’s mission in the world. In other words, help them try to finish any sentence about their own lives with the phrase, “for the sake of the world.” For example, I play football, for the sake of the world. I am going to study education in college, for the sake of the world. I am engaging acts of mercy for the sake of the world. You get the point.
8. Provide situational ways in which students can engage the narratives of this world. Every time we plan a day of serving in our community, we’ll spend time reflecting on that experience, and I’ll help them navigate through conversation as to what meaning they are making for themselves but in the context of the entire community/small group.

If we aren’t being intentional about helping students developing an articulated faith, then we are shaping and guiding students into spiritual formation for the mission of God. If we aren’t shaping students into spiritual formation for the mission of God, then we are most likely running a babysitting/recreation/daycare/etc. organization. Isn’t that the most offensive, unfair perception placed on a youth worker?

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.