The Mistakes I’ve Made in Youth Ministry and What They Taught Me

I remember one of the first times I delegated a ministry task to a student and it went badly. We had been planning a messy game night. We had built a CLUBBLE (Young Life idea, check it out here to know more) and decided the best use of it was to play messy games. Together we threw out a few ideas and one of our Freshmen boys said, “Let’s play ‘Hillbilly Paintball’!” I asked what that was and he explained that we use raw eggs and throw them at each other like paintballs. I said fine and set some general paintball rules, first being “no head or face shots.” Within 5 seconds of letting them go with raw eggs in the CLUBBLE they were targeting each other’s heads. One student ended up taking an egg to the face and it bloodied his nose. This is one of my mistakes as a leader, it is by far not one of my biggest bonehead moves I’ve made but it was one of the funniest mistakes I made. In almost 30 years of ministry I’ve made some big mistakes, here are my top 5:

One student ended up taking an egg to the face and it bloodied his nose.

I kept bad volunteers way too long:

This came to light for me when I had a leader that kept violating our volunteer leader rules and policies but thought they were doing good for the students. When I started the ministry I went over the expectations of volunteer leaders and gave them all a printed and digital copy (big deal in this era) of the policies and rules to be a volunteer reader. As I reviewed the list I heard him snicker and giggle like he was one of the teenagers. I should have known then that he was going to be a problem.

A few weeks later I had a couple of parents come to me and ask if I was going to keep him on as a youth leader, I said was. Honestly I thought he would step down as many volunteers do when a church introduces a new Youth Minister. These parents were not confident in his role as a volunteer, that should have been a red flag, but I did. not pay attention.

About a year after I started, he had a student reveal to him that they had gone out drinking with some buddies and gotten drunk. He laughed at the student and didn’t take any further actions. Our policy was to ask the student to tell their parents within two days, contact me about the incident, and then follow up with the parents to make sure the student followed through (if that was awkward for the volunteer, I said I’d help them follow up). He didn’t do either one. Finally the parents found out through a third part, got very mad at both the volunteer leader and me. After having meeting with the parents, that he handled badly, I said to him the safety of the kids is the most important thing, if he thought we were being uptight he should rethink his volunteer role, he got mad for me, “told me off,” solidifying my need to ask him to leave his volunteer role.

As a pastor/shepherd of the students and their families we need to look out for their wellbeing, not our ego or popularity.

I did see the signs earlier, but I ignored them not wanting an early conflict to hurt my new ministry. I assumed he’d fade away. Expectations had to be set, yet I was reluctant because I wanted everyone to like me, turns out everyone ended up mad at me. Moral of the story, don’t let bad volunteers hinder or hurt your ministry. As a pastor/shepherd of the students and their families we need to look out for their wellbeing, not our ego or popularity.

Communicated badly with parents:

This all came to a head when I was sitting in an elders meeting with my Sr. Pastor listening to a couple of sets of parents criticize my map reading skills. One of the elders stopped what was happening and wisely said, “There’s a story here, can we please hear it?”

What happened is that we had planned a cross country (4 states) trip during the summer. I was driving a 15 passenger van full of students and pulling a trailer behind with our luggage. That morning I had left the map (before cell phones) on the table at my house. I knew where we were headed and knew I could pick up a map before we got too far away. Unfortunately I didn’t communicate that with my parents who were there dropping off their sons and daughters to trek across 4 states with me. When questioned in the parking lot about the map, I said, “It’s no big deal I’ll pick one up.” My flippant answer didn’t settle well with any of the adults standing there. I proceeded to do disregard the parent’s request for assurance on multiple other occasions causing me to loose a lot of confidence.

There were a number of lessons from this incident. The largest was about my relationship with the parents of the students. We are partners with the parents, not the students. The students are in development, sometimes they look and sound like adult, but they are not. The parents may be overprotective in our estimation, but they are still our partners, we are on the same team with them. Parent’s want to have confidence in the people they are entrusting their kids to and we should be a safe place for them and their family. That means good communication, detailed plans, and giving parents space to constructively give us input for the sake of their kids. In this story I should have apologized, explained my problem, and shared with them my solution, hoping they would be understanding and possibly help me.

Be vigilant with your family:

In the above story, the on part I left out was that I left for the cross country trip on my first wedding anniversary. Yeah, I know, putz…

The story goes that I struggled to find a week that camp would work for this group of students, they were quite active in their schools. After a lot of going back and forth we settled on the first week of August. Being naive, I thought my wife would be okay with me leaving on our anniversary, this was my job. I was very, very, very, wrong! She was upset with me because I had not tried to move the departure time. I tried to make it up to her and do something fun on the weekend before we left, but it did not make up for my gigantically bad judgment.

One scholar calls that “Sabbath as resistance.” I was committed to a lot of things, but the Kingdom was calling me to my family, so to communicate my priorities to all those places I was committed, I had to carve out time for them.

My saintly wife put up with this for a few years following this event. Then one night after working late I walked in to a quiet house, cold food on the table, and a my wife asleep in bed. I cleaned up the food (not sure I ate anything), brushed my teeth, tried to give her a good night kiss but was rebuffed, which was code for, “we will talk in the morning.” We talked and I realized how much time away from her and our daughter I was spending. My wife, who hates conflict, simply put a video on that she had taken of our daughter seeing me come home and how excited she got because I was hardly there. It was sneaky but it got her point across. I was not using my time well.

The obvious lesson here was about taking time with my family. Not assuming they would be there when I wanted them to be there, but to carve out time to spend with them. One scholar calls that “Sabbath as resistance.” I was committed to a lot of things, but the Kingdom was calling me to my family, so to communicate my priorities to all those places I was committed, I had to carve out time for them.

Be empathetic to where your students are:

Honestly this one took me a long time to have it sink in. Early on in my ministry I was trying to get the students to do what I wanted them to do because I wanted to make a big name for myself. As I calmed down and figured out that I was serving the students, I still struggled trying to be empathetic with the students. Mainly it was because I had fallen into the trap of job performance, I wanted to please my supervisors and elders.

One weekend on a retreat with another youth worker, he reminded me that my wounds were keeping from seeing where others were coming from and it was harming my ministry. Then I had a student reach out to me the following week who had seen me at the retreat and told me that I was a good person and pastor, but wished I had listened to them more.

Listening to the students so you can minister to their needs and meet them with the good news in their lives is paramount. If you don’t stop and listen to their needs so you can help, you will find out that you aren’t leading anyone, you are just taking a walk (as John Maxwell says).

Grass always seemed greener on the other side of the fence:

So when you are striving for excellence, its always easy to get caught up in the comparison game. You go to a conference, camp or just a coffee date with other youth pastors and they start telling you what they are doing, you immediately start to compare your ministry/kids to theirs. You think things like, “Wow I wish my students were like that.” OR “Why aren’t my elders/supervisors like that, theirs sound amazing.”

The first thing I realized I had done was forget that most people don’t tell you about the hard stuff unless they are going through it then and there or their whole experience has been bad. All pastors struggle and all pastors have great moments they love to tell everyone about. If all. you did was talk about the things that were a struggle your friends wouldn’t want to hang out — Debbie Downer :).

That brought me to my second realization, not everything I’ve been doing is bad. I needed stop and be grateful for the good in my ministry. If all I did was compare myself to others, I’d drive myself crazy. Taking a moment everyday and just praying over the good things in my ministry changed everything. Sure other churches had different attendance and different reactions to mine, but God had called me, with all my talents and shortfalls, to this place for a reason. He was at work and I needed to stop and notice it more often.

I have shared a few thoughts here about what I’ve done wrong and what I learned from them. You can listen and lament for me or you can listen and review your ministry to see if these or other things apply to you. Every January I take a personal retreat, try to be quiet for a few days, and review my year to take a sober look at what was good and what was not so good in the previous year. It is sensible to do that regularly, be honest and learn from your mistakes. If you need help let me know stew@nucleuscoaching.net