My Experience as Youth Pastor

The fact is that Youth are not adults, they are kids. I'm not sure when the transition is, but it happens sometime after 21. Possibly after 30 because I"m not sure how much of an adult I am, but that might just be me because my wife seems to be pretty grown up, but taking care of 4 children can do that to a person. Not that I don't take care of my kids, but I tend to play more than anything, which might be why she seems so frustrated. If I were more grown up that might worry me ...

Anyways, my point has something to do with working with the Youth and the joy and frustration that can come from the experience. I don't knwo who said it, and I'm too lazy to try and look it up, but some famous director said once, "never work with animals or kids." I'm not sure if this is true in Hollywood, but in the church it is an absolute lie. Sure you have to go out of your way. My kids often need rides because their parents aren't going to bother. This can be a hassle. I have to tell them about 500 times, call them the night before, the morning of, and 5 minutes before, and still end up waiting for them because they forgot all about it. Nothing ever gets back home to parents no matter how many times I beg and plead and offer hard cash, ok money might work but I don't have that kind of budget.

Despite all the craziness working with the Youth is the best experience. I have more energy because of it for one thing. Plus, big church would freak if I put a pie in someone's face. I don't have to try to make them change as much as guide them as they grow, and that is a huge difference. Imagine trying to change the way a 50 year old oak has grown. It is almost impossible, but take a sapling and you can shape it while it is still tender so that it will lean this way or that way when it is grown.

People sometimes wonder why I work with teens. I guess I wonder why I have such a hard time getting volunteers. If people got it, I mean really understood then I think I'd have a waiting list. Now if I could just figure out how to make them understand?

I've heard tales of Senior Pastors that require the staff to be in the office 8 hours a day through the week. Fortunately that isn't my reality. Actually, I'd probably work less, but don't let my Pastor's wife know. Honestly she works very hard to make sure I'm not working too hard. This past week I put in most of my hours at the house. It is great being able to take a sick day but still get the work done that needs doing. I can relax instead of worrying about all the stuff that is piling up while I'm ill.

Actually this illness was particularly convenient as far as sicknesses go. My voice started to go about 2 minutes before I was going to preach to the Youth this week, but it held, just barely, till the end. We have a guest speaker for Sunday so I won't have to preach that night, so my voice gets to rest a bit longer as well.

Anyways, I've found that there are many obstacles to working at home. First, my computer is in the living room. If I had a dedicated office things would be much better when working at home. With my computer in with the family I get to deal with the fun of my 2 year old spinning my chair. Admittedly this is a nice distraction from time to time, but it gets old much quicker than she tires of it. Also, I am much tempted to watch Mickey Mouse Club House, which she insists on watching over and over and over and over and over and over ………………. Come inside its fun inside …………….. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the distraction of the TV. The other fun part is being right in the middle of a sentence and having an infant dropped in your lap with the phrase, "He wants his daddy."

Of course I tend to encourage my own distractions as well. I get bored quickly and will start playing with my daughter because she is there. Actually I find a million things to distract me while at the house, so I was happy to be feeling well enough to go to the office.

Of course the office isn't without its own distractions. Calls and visits from everyone but the Youth, who are in school, and various other projects that vie for my attention, and the school, which has been consuming more and more of my time. In short I'm hard at work but I'm not sure just how much I'm getting done.

Oh well, there is always next week.

So I stumbled across this pretty cool website. I mentioned it briefly in my post "Let's Talk Sex." It is a Text polling service. You can use it for free with up to 30 responses per poll and unlimited polls. There are fees beyond that based on how many responses you need to allow. Basically you make up a question, either multiple choice or text response, open the poll and provide the information to the people you want to respond.

I did this with my talk on sex and it went over great. They were asking this week if we would be doing that again. I am planning on doing this fairly regularly now. One of the really cool parts is that you can embed the app into a PowerPoint slide and it will show how to respond and also update automatically as responses start coming in. I was able to put a slide up and start talking while they were giving me feedback on what I was talking about. I think that is the most interaction I've ever had with my Youth. I will admit that there is a level of distraction, but face it, you are probably fighting them to stop texting anyways right? Might as well harness the problem and turn it into something fun and interactive.

Anyways, I'll be posting results from these polls from time to time, and just in case someone thinks this might be handy here is a link to the site.

http://www.polleverywhere.com

I know I've mentioned how much I love technology, but at the same time fight it. I think the main reason I fight my gadgets is because I push them beyond their intended limits. If I had a super fast computer and all the latest goodies I probably wouldn't have to fight it so much. Instead I have a meager budget and big plans that involve things I don't have. This combined with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with MacGyver equals getting the job done at the peril of innocent electronics.

For example, my Youth room doesn't have network and it is not feasible to install a wired connection. This means we need to get a wireless signal over to my building. This really isn't that hard and could be done very successfully for about $150-200. Unfortunately I don't have this money handy, so I'm researching other options. It turns out that there are a ton of DIY projects involving items I have on hand or that I can acquire for close to nothing. Some of them look a tad bit hillbilly, but much of this is concealed.

The biggest problem is that doing it this way will only lead to trouble down the road. I know this from past experience with forcing gadgets to perform outside their performance tolerances. On the other hand I might be able to do this for a couple of months and then be able to afford the upgrades the system actually needs, or more likely gets pieces of the total upgrade as I can afford them.

I know this sounds like borrowing against the future, but its really more like gambling against the future. If the gamble pays off then I get what I need now for the price I can afford now and then do things right down the road, if it doesn't pay off then I have to pay an extra $50-100 down the road. The question is if the gains outweigh to potential risk.

This can only be answered by detailed research, or my preferred method, which is to try it and hope nothing catches fire.

I have a stack of books to read. Many are recommended non-fiction ministry related stuff. I haven't really had time to read much at all, but one good thing about being sick so much is I was able to squeeze in some time for reading.

One of the books I am reading is Saint by Ted Dekker. I have like three Ted Dekker books in my to read pile of fiction. The Showdown is the other book I was considering when I started Saint. I picked Saint because it sounded interesting. Generally the book has been enjoyable. Some of the explanations are a little strange, and even annoying, but I can suspend my disbelief for the sake of the story, it is fiction after all. My real frustration is that this book is essentially a sequel to Showdown. This information is not related on the dust cover and not really until I got almost halfway into the book.

Admittedly, so far this hasn't affected my ability to understand the book, but I still wish I had read Showdown first because now I think that I know too much about how that book plays out. This really is information that should be clearly printed on a book cover. I know Ted Dekker likes to keep you guessing and knowing the connection to Showdown might have ruined a small surprise, but not knowing either way means I know too much going into Showdown. Someone didn't think this through.

Anyways, some other books I'm reading or planning to read include: Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry, What Happened to my Church?, and The 7 Principles of an Evangelistic Life. I have several more on hand or that have been recommended to me. I think I need to schedule myself a day each week to get through them all. Seeing as I'm booked all week I have two options, I give up my day off, which all of my books on ministry tell me will cost my family, or I add an extra day to the week.

I know a lot of other people feel the same way, so I say we just start going with an 8 day week. I propose we add the day after Wednesday. I know that seems silly, I mean why not add it to the end or beginning of the week, but when you think about it the middle makes much more sense. If you add the day to the beginning of the week then we'll all have to hate a new day instead of Monday. That is just going to cause confusion. If we add it at the end of the week it will mess with the whole "day of worship debate." It is bad enough trying to decide if we are suppose to have church on Saturday or Sunday, if we toss a new day in the mix then, we'll end up with a three way throw down at the ministers' prayer meetings, and a three way fight is much harder than a two way fight. This leaves the middle of the week, and you know you shouldn't move hump day. A lot of people start looking for the weekend on Thursday, so that leaves after Wednesday. The advantage is, that people putting in a 5 day week can take off Friday, when half of them already checkout on, so we'll have higher quality goods and such. See it's a win win win win …

So if you agree please forward this to everyone on your contact list and God will give you your wish and good luck will follow you, but if you don't forward this you'll die in a horrible accident due to quality control problems from the Friday shift workers.

Anyone have ideas what the new day should be called?

It is my intention to start posting daily again. I went through an illness that refused to stay down. I finally, after weeks, went to the doctor. Good news is my blood pressure, cholesterol, and whatever else they checked is great. Bad news is I had a sinus infection. I say had because I finished off my antibiotics and it appears to be gone. Of course I'm coming down with something else now, but hopefully it will just run its course and be done instead of hanging on for a month.

It is that time of the year again when we all think about that December holiday. Of course I'm referring to Pearl Harbor day. I know that December also gives us Christmas, but I think Pearl Harbor day loses out to the bigger holidays on either side of it. I was fortunate enough to visit Hawaii, and while there I went to see the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor and Diamond Had, where the casualties were buried en mass.

It was a very solemn experience and also surreal at the same time. The surreal part is the fact that so many Japanese tourists visit these landmarks. I wonder why, not enough to ask though. I know they did have some casualties at the site, but I kind of think it is because of what the attack brought. It is hard to say if we would have gotten into the war otherwise, or if we would have dropped the bombs if it wasn't for Pearl Harbor. Regardless, we did enter the war immediately after this attack and we did drop two nuclear bombs at the end of the war.

Many people died in this war on all sides including a great number of civilians. The face of the world was changed in so many ways. We are approaching a point in time when Pearl Harbor and the rest of the war will only be history. The survivors are reaching the end of their natural lives. History is starting to shift. People are making movies that show the war in a negative light and fewer people are able to stand up and say, "Hey I was there and that isn't what happened."

I know I missed posting this before December 7^th, but take the time to honor the lives from this day anyway.

Ok, so first off I'd like to thank the people from over at SCL for their prayers. I posted that I was talking about sex with my youth and wanted prayer.

I'm glad I asked. I post more detail on the discussion but I think it went well. I showed 3 videos, two dealing with the same study done by Tyra Banks show, and one about another study linking TV and teen pregnancy rates. I also used some text polls and my group responded. I was not very surprised about the results because they reflect much what the other polls were showing.

We had some serious technical difficulties but I had several backup plans in place and some additional help from one of my youth so everything ended up working pretty good. It seemed the enemy didn't want this to work but God was with us.

I came very close to switching to a backup topic at the last minute. We had 4 visitors, 3 of which I had never talked to before. I was barely comfortable enough with the subject for the teens I usually have, then I get other people that don't know me don't understand me. This went well also.

Anyways, I wanted to share some of the responses to the text polling. These are the results from the responding group (which was a bit less than half my Youth).

Will you wait until you are married to have sex?

45% said yes

27% said no

27% said I don't know

How far is too far?

0% said 1^st base

27% said 2^nd base

18% said 3^rd base

9% said all the way

45% said it's all good

My responders ranged from 12 to 22 and these numbers don't really surprise me. This is why we need to talk to our kids about sex and get parents to talk to them. We need to get the message across that sex is a wonderful gift from God but is best expressed in marriage because of all the crap that happens when things go bad. That is what I tried to get my kids to understand tonight and I hope some of them got it. I figure I'll do this again soon and keep up the message because the statistics I've been seeing are down right disturbing.