This weekend I had the chance to sit down with three volunteer youth workers who were just coming out of significant times of transition in their churches. In listening to them share their stories, I could tell there was a whole range of emotion wrapped up in their experience.
The first two were a married couple serving in the church where she grew up. In her first thirty years at that church they had only had three senior pastors—not bad, considering the average tenure for a senior pastor in America’s mainline churches is only 4 years. But then, in the last ten years they have had four more, she told me… and then corrected herself: maybe five.
The other caught me in the dining hall just before he loaded his kids in the bus to head home. He seemed a little shaken telling me the story of his church’s selection of a new associate pastor to lead the youth ministry. “Except for life circumstances and a few details… I thought it would be me,” he said. And when I asked if it was a bittersweet moment for him when he rolled up the poster-size print of his group photo and literally handed off the baton to the new youth pastor during their final small group time, he said no, not sweet.
But their stories are not far off from the experiences of many youth workers, both volunteer and paid. In large part, they serve at the pleasure of the senior pastor. Many live under the shadow of fear that a groundswell of parent discontent will send them packing. And, as is often the case in marital divorce, these transitions in a ministry often do the most damage to the children and students who are left in the wake of such turmoil.
So here are four things a youth worker can do during a time of transition in the church:
1. Continue to point students to Christ. The primary relationship we are seeking to encourage is not student to youth pastor, it is student to Christ. By making the priority relationship the focus of our ministry, we are not only helping students through the inevitable leadership transitions in our church, but also setting them up for success as they prepare to go through a series of post-high-school transitions themselves.
2. Support whoever is in leadership. Notice that I didn’t just say do whatever he says or even like him. To support means we are offering our insight, counsel and service when sought. A church or youth ministry in transition needs to have leadership at every level standing beside the person whom God has appointed for this time.
3. Speak ill of no person. We often think what we say has the most bearing on who we are speaking of, but the reality is, it usually says more about who we are. In both of my conversations this weekend, I never heard a bad thing about the ministry or any of the players in the stories. And, though I’m sure the pastors they served under all had their faults and shortcomings, I walked away from these volunteer youth workers with a greater degree of respect and admiration for them because of how they told their stories.
4. Stay until God says go, and then go in peace. This has always been a key component of my personal philosophy of ministry. I have seen firsthand in many ministries how the consistency and continuity of leadership in youth and young adult ministry causes students and churches to thrive. But I’ve also seen there come a clear time when God seemed to be saying to someone that it was time to move on. So until it’s time, serve with abandon, when it’s time to go, go with peace.
Has your church or youth ministry recently gone through a difficult transition? What did you learn from your experience?
(Photo credit: Ricardo Colombo, www.sxc.hu)