19 Things I Learned In 19 Years Of Youth Ministry, Part 16

"Good morning. We're with the Internal Revenue Service. We'd like to ask you a few questions regarding the accounting practices of this organization, especially regarding Mrs. Jane Doe."

That's how it started.

Three months later, we'd lost four full-time employees, and were $138,000 in debt. Mrs. Jane Doe was never found guilty, the I.R.S. agent-in-charge mentioned that it was either very shrewd embezzling or incredibly ignorant accounting. Oh, yeah. The health insurance hadn't been paid for any of the employees and it wouldn't become active until we'd paid up the last 6 months. Oh, yeah. The 3% fee to our national organization hadn't been paid in 2 years, either. Hence, your 501 (3)(c) tax-exempt status was in jeopardy. For those of you that don't know, that's the death knell of any fundraising ministry.

Tracy and I spent two-and-a-half more years resolving the debt incurred by others. They were very long years, too. Short on pay. Long on ministry. Exhausing emotionally, physically and spiritually. It wore us out. It ended well, though. The ministry bank account was at zero when we left...but we left with no juice.

That was one of the biggest ones. There were lots of others.

Such as when my executive director my first year in ministry told me to go ahead and put Christmas gifts & presents on the credit card because "we always get a nice Christmas bonus." Well, we didn't that year. In fact, we missed a paycheck that December.

Such as when a colleague in my community acted as my friend, sent "spies" to a meeting, intentionally misquoted me and misrepresented me in a letter he sent out on his church's letterhead to his entire student ministry mailing list. The church, nor the individual, never apologized but agreed that mistakes had been made. The solution was to let the youth minister find other employment out of state.

Such as when I went on a job interview the morning after Shelby was born. It was a weekend in North Carolina and the pastor and I hit it off incredibly well. The search committee and I hit it off incredibly well. The teenagers and I hit it off incredibly well. The church wowed me, too. The sermon was excellent. The people were nice. They were doing some incredibly unique and exciting things. The city was beautiful. They took me shopping for real estate the morning before my flight left. It was a done deal. Until a week later when they told me they had to blow the process up because I didn't have a seminary degree, which had caused some dissension after the interview. Yeah. That was visible from my resume.

Such as the church that you adopted your junior year and considered your church home wouldn't even take your resume for their vacant youth pastor position. It was that incident that had Tracy and I heading off to seminary some 7 months later.

Such as when we got our first student ministry here in Texas and it paid $100 a week. The pastor promised that "as the ministry grows, we'll bring you on full-time as soon as we can afford to." Well, the ministry grew. Big time. They voted to purchase a riding lawnmower once instead of helping Tracy and I with a $100 payment for our health insurance. Then they hired another part-time guy without giving us a raise...and he made more than I did, too.

Such as finding out the leader of a prayer ministry encouraging other church members to pray that "Brent would get another job somewhere else."

Such as the mean seminary professor.

Such as hearing news by telephone call that you never in a million years thought you'd hear by telephone call. Or at all for that matter.

And don't even get me started on the day-in, day-out complaints.

But there's also a flip side:

Such as finding out that the I.R.S. folks respected your integrity and enjoyed working with you because you weren't running from anything. Such as hearing the members of the board of directors thanking you constantly for your diligence and attention to detail. Such as other ministers calling you out of the blue telling you they were pulling for you. Such as your regional director calling to let you know that the folks at the national office were taking notice of your work and were making their legal counsel available to you at no charge. Such as when the ministry was reaching unprecendented attendance figures, both at large group and msall group discipleship. Such as when those kids raised the money for your moving van when you moved, even as it broke their hearts to be doing it.

Such as when the times were tough and there was literally no food in the house...and some complete strangers drove up and said, "Are you Brent and Tracy who work with Campus Life at Huffman High School?" Upon hearing an affirmative answer, they said, "Well, we're representing the prayer ministry at Parkway, and we prayed for you during lunchtime today and we felt the Lord wanted us to shower you with two weeks worth of groceries." They did. The good stuff, too. Not store brands.

Such as when families in our community bent over backwards to express their appreciation for you and your wife in their community, and apologizing profusely for their church body and hoped they would honor Christ by how they handled "that situation." Such as your own church body teaching you all about how to give grace as well as accept it during that same time frame.

Such as the head of the search committee asking for your forgiveness with how they hadn't defined their non-negotiables as it related to any pain they had caused me. The pastor calling to make sure we were okay and being apologetic himself.

Such as the senior pastor, who you knew relatively well, calling after it was all said and done to tell you that the reason he wouldn't take my resume was because he couldn't tell the congregation that he was stepping down and he wanted the new pastor to have the decision over the needed upcoming hirings. It really wasn't anything personal at all...he just couldn't tell me that information at that time.

Such as those kids at that part-time church. Their spiritual growth at that time was amazing to watch. Their spiritual growth after that time is even more amazing to watch. There are seminary grads and youth pastors and computer folks and homemakers and the whole lot of them are being precisely who God created them to be. They're certainly NOT of this world. And that part-time music guy they hired? Pretty much one of the best friends you ever had since you got married. The times you had with their family in that duplex were some of the most enjoyable times of your life.

Such as being at the wedding of one of the kids of that lady who prayed for you to leave and she talked about how much she missed you later, largely because you loved her kids and she was sorry she didn't see that sooner.

Such as the other 10 or 12 seminary professors you knew who you admired for their faithful and consistent walks with Christ, which was evidence of their love for Him.

Such as the love you've experienced by a congregation that seems to have made it their business to encourage you, to ask how you're doing, to let you know they liked when you preached last Sunday, who seem concerned about your new job description and want to know how that's going so far, who let you know that they're glad you're there. Such as the co-workers you've seen the very best in. Such as the elders showing you how much they love Crossroads.

And don't get me started on the day-to-day e-mails, phone calls, baked goods, MySpace comments, lunches, coffees, pats on the back, laughs & jokes, blog comments, hallway chats that start with "I read your blog but never comment, and I think..."

I've learned, unequivically, no matter how unfaithful people can--and will--be, Christ is always faithful. And the most common way I see that is when His people follow Him, and show me that He is alive and well, and at work through His Body.

He never leaves me nor forsakes me.
Nothing can ever separate me from His love.
He never fails.

The ways He shows me that might be very common.
The ways I experience that are extremely uncommon.