Youth Ministry Egos (its not breakfast food)

Have you ever played a sport? How about played a video game? Ever placed a bet on anything? What about Fantasy Football or some other fantasy sport? Played Golf? Do you have a favorite team of any kind?

The reason I ask is because many times those activities bring out something inside of us that we don’t always like. It brings out this sense of ambition and ego. You want to win and sometimes at all costs. You push the limits of yourself physically or you have expectations that others will do the same. When you are unable to achieve your goals or you watch others fail to do what you expect, it makes you crazy. It almost feels like they have betrayed you or at least betrayed the cause. If you have ever gotten so upset that you yelled at the TV because someone missed a shot, dropped a pass, lost a race, or couldn’t hit that one last guy on Fortnight, then you have tapped into your ambition and ego. They are blinding emotions that make you forget others are struggling to achieve their goals and in some way you think you can do better.

Now take that and apply it to your ministry. Have you ever been envious of the ministry down the street who’s ministry seems to be doing a little better than yours? Have you gone to conferences or read books looking for the “next big thing,” because you want to have better stories at the next meeting of youth pastors in your area? We all want our ministries to grow and prosper, but at what expense? When ambition and ego get into the mix many times we think that the lack of growth is all due to our lack of work, lack of popularity, or just inability to be an amazing pastor like that guy on the platform at the Orange conference.

Ego and ambition can get us off mission so quickly that it creates tragic outcomes (you’ve heard the stories of pastors who thought they were above getting caught because of their egos). That’s the American way, or at least its what we have fallen into. I’m not sure we ever intended to be ego driven jerks as Americans or as Christians, but some how the evangelical church in America has fully embraced consumerism as a way of doing things. The tragic thing is we are reminded that if we don’t develop an ego (thick skin) and pursue ambition (life mission) then we will get passed over and forgotten. Which scares many of us to death.

Let’s talk about the way The Church in America has embraced consumerism as a way of thinking. Somewhere in the mid 20th century we started seeing the “magic” of marketing and started thinking that maybe we could communicate the gospel by taking on the techniques of Madison Avenue (it wasn’t until we saw Don Draper that we realized how sleazy that was). When we took on those ideas something unique started to happen, we perceived that our credibility was going up, or at the very least people were starting to think the church had relevance in culture again.

Then comes the advent of the “mega” church or as our friend Skye Jethani puts it VLMs (Very Large Ministries), mainly because he doesn’t see the VLMs as churches in the classic or Biblical sense, they are so big that we will go to crazy lengths to keep it from failing, because failure in the church in some way equates to God failing, and we can’t have that. He also says this translates into VLMs not being able to create the community that most of us need from a local church.

As the VLMs started to flourish other churches started to mimic them and started to create metrics based on the same standards that they had for their ministries. That causes us think we could measure the success of our ministry by butts in seats and bucks in the offering plate. Our metrics started to sound like a boardroom: what was our growth sector this month? What demographics have we been reaching? What is our BPA (Baptisms Per Attendee — yes this was on the KPI dashboard at one church)? If we offered more upbeat music and shortened our teaching to 18 minutes we’d have the same success as TED, can we make that happen? How do we capitalize on our media production this month?

When this happened, it was inevitable that the younger pastors who started to join our staff’s got caught up in the lure of numbers, demographics, styles, and growth percentages. I’ve been to my share of pastor conferences where the topic and breakout discussions were how to grow our ministries faster, strong, and with more creativity than the church down the street. When we look to these conferences for guidance we want to know who’s going to be there, how big is their ministry, and can I duplicate it effectively?

Ego and ambition are not bad but when they are driven by the consumer mentality of numbers, growth charts, and money metrics, we quickly loose the plot….Our churches start to look less like a safe community that loves its neighbors with the good news of Jesus and start to look more like those cringy moments in The Office when Michael Scott (Steve Carell) tries so hard to get people to like him that he misses the point of why they are at work in the first place, and at times misses the fact that these people want to be his friend, he just doesn’t need to try so hard.

If you watched “The Office” then you know exactly what I’m talking about. As I watched reruns a few years ago I realized why I felt so awkward when I watched the episodes of Michael Scott’s awkward moments, all I could see were Youth Ministers who tried desperately to be relevant to a bunch of High School kids who really didn’t care about how “cool” he was, they just wanted a safe adult who could help them. But because he needed to feel accepted, wanted to grow the group, or because his ego needed him to to be liked by a group of teenagers, he tried way too hard. We’ve all met the Michael Scott of Youth Ministry and if we are honest, may actually have become him at different times. Mainly because we feel that anxiety to do well at our jobs.

That is how the ego and/or ambition can derail your ministry, make you forget why you are there, and turn us in to parodies. If we let the constant pursuit of “big” drive us or the constant “need” to be seen as cool motivate us, we are going to loose significant opportunities to impact students.

How then do we keep from letting ego and ambition drive us?

1. Remain humble and focus on serving others. It can be easy to become caught up in the recognition and praise that comes with success in Youth Ministry, but it's important to always remember to stay humble and focused on serving the students in your ministry and the community where you live — it was why you took the job in the first place.

2. Laugh at yourself. Part of being humble is to realize that we all make mistakes and have flaws. When you do something worth laughing at, laugh, it shows your students what healthy self image looks like.

3. Be open to constructive criticism. It can be tempting to be defensive when receiving criticism, but it's important to receive criticism with humility, ultimately it will help you grow and improve. As my speaking team is fond of reminding me, “Criticism is a gift…"

4. Set healthy boundaries. It's important to be aware of your own emotional and physical boundaries and to be respectful of the boundaries of those around you. See the blog I wrote about taking sabbath and rest. It will remind you that this ministry is God’s work through you, not your efforts for him.

5. Ask for help. It's important to seek out advice and guidance from other experienced and knowledgeable people in the field. If you need any help, we want to come alongside you to help you slow down a bit and find your authentic self so you can design ministry from there.

6. Be authentic. It's important to be true to yourself and to your values. Don't let your ego or ambition drive you in a direction away from those values. If you are not sure what your authentic-self looks like, we are here to help you discover who God when he made you. Contact us at stew@nucleuscoaching.net