19 Things I Learned In 19 Years Of Youth Ministry, Part 14

It was inspirational. No question.
We responded enthusiastically. Standing ovation.

The Scene: Rockford, Illinois. My first staff training session for the ministry I was working for. I'd completed my year-long internship and was now going for two weeks to finalize becoming a full-time staff member.

All the big guns were there. We heard about the battle for this generation...because if Satan won this one, he won all the rest. We heard all the statistics on drug use among teens. We heard all the statistics on alcohol abuse. We heard the teen pregnancy numbers. We heard how many didn't go to church at all. We heard of those that did, only a small percentage of that number was "evangelical." We heard that 85% of the people who ever accepted Christ did so before their 18th birthday. Phrases like, "I can't enjoy the high school graduation ceremonies I go to because I wondered if that kid had accepted Christ. Because I knew that if he hadn't, a spiritual door had just slammed shut instantaneously with his had grasping that diploma."

The statistics were in, Jack. This generation = hell in a handbasket. The sky was falling.

But, we were there. We were youth pastors. The guys on the D-Day front lines storming those beaches. It was as noble a cause as there had ever been.

And those sessions had a profound effect in my life: Pride.

See, I believed that stuff at the time. I was all in. I loved youth ministry and everything about it. I'd always been a champion of the underdog and it seemed that being included among this underpaid, overworked, underappreciated, ragamuffin, noble group of folks was really about as good as it got. It was a pretty nice chip to have on the shoulder, too.

You could bash parents, because you could see their mistakes first-hand.
You could bash churches, because it was obvious their methods were dated and they were irrelevant and ineffective.
You could bash other youth outreach organizations.
You could bash school systems, teachers, administrators, coaches.
You could bash...

...pretty much whatever you wanted.

You had the moral high-ground cause and irrefutable evidence that you were needed.

But then you met other Christians with other passions.

You met the guy who had tons of medical school debt to pay off headed to the Congo because of the shortage of doctors there despite that nation torn due to civil war.

You met the guy who loved the senior citizens homes and established worship services in each and every one of them because he felt this group was neglected and wanted to do something great for them.

You met the girl who has a passion for translation of languages and was so adept at it she wanted to go spend 10 years to translate the Bible into a tribal language in New Guinea.

You met the girl who loved kids and had a vision for children's ministry.

You met the nice lady who loved the nursery & toddlers and wanted every one of them to have a ministry to come to, not a babysitter to kill time.

You met the guy who led worship on Sundays and recruited & trained volunteers.

You met the 70 year-old former pastor who still had the juice to preach, so he volunteered in the community, filling in any pulpit that needed a fill-in for a month or so.

You met the lady who loves to write curriculum and has a real knack for it, too.

You met the grandmas that got together to work on quilts. And, oh, yeah. They prayed for the church while they worked.

You met the people who rallied the troops for the poor in your own community and had creative and innovate ways to reach out, whether or not those people would ever darken our congregation's doorsteps.

You met the recent college grad with a heart for the Russian people...or the Czechs...or the Greeks...or the college kids in their own college town.

You met the lady who does the missions board every week at your church, putting up the new letters or adding a new photo or new thumbtack in the map.

You met the lady who loved to organize the kitchen at church.

You met the guy who really does love to greet newcomers and make them feel welcome.

I could go on and on with this...but what I realized is that those training days were a bit too laser-focused on student ministry. Sure, I was passionate about teenagers and the messages resonated within me to inspire me and spur me on. It really just threw gasoline on the flame that was innate.

And the 14th thing I learned is that Everybody's ministry is just as important as student ministry. When you start seeing that the lady who baked brownies and cookies and dropped them off every Sunday afternoon to the seminary dorm so we could have a touch of home, well, her ministry meant something.

It's the same for everyone in the Body. I mean, God wired them a certain way for a certain purpose, and if it's businessmen or ballplayers or little old ladies or toddlers or teenagers or criminals or artists or coffee crew or bulletin printers or some tribal part of the globe or saving the earth or U.N. delegates or whatever else God puts in people's hearts...

...that's noble to follow your passion for God's glory through His Kingdom.

No more than student ministry.
No less than student ministry.

And I wish I'd seen that earlier, because I missed out on the beauty of God at work in the world. It doesn't all happen with teenagers, man. It's cool when it does, and I'm drawn to it. But it's better when you see where you fit in the big picture rather than focusing on one slice of it. Trust me on that one.