My Experience as Youth Pastor

OK, so you have shoes, and possibly socks that are cool but not something that will scare your parents, now you need to figure out the whole pants situation. Sure you can just slap on any old pair of jeans or work the white slacks that were oh so popular with preachers in the 80s, but if you want to impress your youth enough to be allowed on the cool van then you will need ot think about what you wear.

Shorts:

One of the most dangerous pitfalls any person can face is choosing the wrong shorts. You need to know your body type before you can wear shorts. If you have chicken legs then don't wear anything shorter than your knees or overly baggy since it will just emphasize those stilts you call legs. If your legs reflect and amplify all light in the room then please do us all a favor and skip this step.

Slacks:

OK this is a clothing item that will be required for certain situations. I have 3 basic fall back slacks. Khaki for your everyday have to dress up a bit clothing; if I am attending a wedding but not officiating I might go with those, or maybe I am going to a meeting with a particularly picky parent. I might mix it up with flip flops if I want to say, hey I'm casual and fun but still dressed up so parents don't freak too much. OK I probably wouldn't do that but you can if you want. I also have pressed grey and pressed black slacks for needing to dress up a bit more. Color is dependent on what else I'm wearing. Both are intentionally bland so I don't draw too much attention to myself. These are for special occasions like official parts of weddings and funerals as well as other fun events that I might be expected to dress up for. I have nice shoes, shirts, and jackets to go with these.

Jeans:

Now this is the huge decision. Seriously you will probably wear denim more than anything else. Again your body type will define the basic styles of what you will wear. Don't try and pull off the pipe legs if you are quite large, it will look like you are walking on tightly packed sausage, and it doesn't matter how expensive the jeans are that won't impress your youth. The other big danger is the artificially deteriorated look. You can spend big money on something that was damaged before you bought it or pick up something from Salvation Army and do it yourself. In all honesty the brand will say a lot to your Youth, but if you sell yourself on that then you will have to keep buying the new hot brand. The important part isn't how much you pay but how many holes we are talking, and the location. Holes in the knees are cool, holes in the seat and crotch are not. General rule of thumb, if anyone can tell if you are wearing boxers or briefs then you need new jeans, the auxiliary to this rule is that if the answer is briefs you will lose significant cool points. I'm not saying you can't wear briefs, but if your Youth see them it will super gross them out more than if they see boxers. Another good rule of thumb is to limit the tears and holes to 5 per pair. This isn't as much for the Youth as it is for the parents. You don't want some helpful mother going out and buying you new pants because she thinks you can't afford un-holified jeans.

Join me tomorrow for shirts and jackets, followed by accessories on Thursday and head wear on Friday.