Changing the Image of the Youth Minister
For the past twenty years, the average tenure of youth ministers has been disgustingly short. “Fifteen hundred Youth Pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, getting a better paid position, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches” (Krejcir 1).
What factors are causing this? Do they have commitment issues? Do the senior pastors not trust them? Do they see the job as a stepping-stone to bigger and better things? This paper will demonstrate that the main reasons causing the short tenure of youth ministers are church bureaucracy, senior pastor skepticism, the stepping-stone mindset, the messiah complex, insufficient budget, getting hired, and depression (Cook 1).
Once a youth minister makes it past the enormous task of getting hired at a church, they are only around for a short period of time. “The average stay of a youth pastor is somewhere between twelve and eighteen months” (Cook 1). Teenagers are losing their faith left and right. In the same time period, there has been a steady decline of Christ following students. "Eighty-eight percent of the children raised in Christian families leave the church at the age of eighteen never to return. Only four percent of the "Bridger" generation, of Generation Y, will be Bible-believing Christians when they reach adulthood. All the while, the twenty-something male is almost completely absent from the American church…” (Gill 1). Simply put, youth ministers are taking the blame for the decline of students, and causing great skepticism concerning their commitment and efficacy within the eyes of the senior pastor.
Part of the reason for the importance of a relationship with the kids is that the youth minister is one of...
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...ied view of the needs of the ministry. Ergo what are the core values and how can we implement them better?
Works Cited
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Heaven is for Real. Dir. Randle Wallace, Perf. Greg Kinnear. Roth Films, 2014. Film
To say the least, I felt like a failure and that I had wasted people’s time and money. Reading this chapter helped me realize that it is important to learn through a failure (Fagerstrom 126). Failures happen in ministry often, and the way you respond to the failure is important. Chapter fifteen, “Developing a plan for lifelong learning”, is essential for effective leaders. Per Fagerstrom, there are four areas that need constant attention: skill (competency), wisdom and knowledge (learning and thinking), spiritual formation (godliness), and personal development (focus on the word personally)
I agree with Kitchens, Mead, and Roxburgh who all basically say in their own way that one change in ministry that we need to focus on more is the congregational life of the church. However, I think Mead explains it best when he says that the future church must be more intentional in the spiritual formation of its laity (Mead, location 919). According to Mead, the church is moving towards becoming a more missional institution that cares for the needs of the community. Therefore, oftentimes laity will be the ones on the front lines and will need the capacity to minister to people on their own without the help of clergy. In order to do this they will need more directed and intensive training to deal with...
Philosophy of Ministry: God's desires come first, I must always live my ministry God's way. I must live as a Christian (1 Corinthians 9:27) I must have a proper relationship of surrender to the Leader. In my personal life or in the Church I must understand that Christ is Head and Chief Shepherd (Ephesians 1:22, Hebrews 13:20). The “management” of Church is about relationships with God and Man, not just maintaining a social organization.
Welcome to Gospel Spreading Church. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2011, from Gospel Spreading Church: www.http://gospelspreadingchurch.com/
Swanson, Eric, and Rick Rusaw. The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community. Leadership Network Series. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Although written for church leadership, everyday church members would also benefit from understanding the concepts that Dawn is directing at God-empowered leaders. Ms. Dawn's work is predominantly scholarly, and she cites several other works at great length.... ... middle of paper ... ...
“The call is something that is an indescribable joy and an indefinable burden at the same time.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 32). There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a congregation of the redeemed moving forward in their faith. However exciting this may be, it is usually not the thrill that propels the pastor in his service. It is the burden placed on the pastor by God that compels him in his work. The pastor understands that he is largely responsible for the work of God being accomplished by his faithfulness to his calling. “All through the Word of God and down through the annals of history, when God has moved it has almost always been attended by the preaching of the Word.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 31)
One of the most amazing aspects of these armor bearers is the roll they filled following their service and obedience to their master. Elisha, David, and Joshua are a few armor bearers that became prominent leaders after fulfilling their ordained ministry to Elijah, Saul, and Moses. We applaud their dedication but the question arises within us, is there an immediate need for armor bearers? To grasp a full understanding of the question at hand, we need a true definition of today’s armor bearer. “A modern day armor bearer is one called by God to serve and help his assigned leader in life, ministry, and especially in the fight of faith. In essence, an armor bearer is called to attend to, minister to, care for, help, be of use, assist, benefit, promote, support, make easy for, nourish, and encourage their leader” (ministrydescriptions.oracion). This detailed explanation alludes to the rationale that armor bearers are very much needed in today’s church. “It’s been reported that about 75% of pastors go through a period of stress so great that they consider quitting and that the incidents of mental breakdowns are so high that insurance companies charge about 4% extra to cover church staff members when compared to employees in other businesses” (armorbearertraining.org). What is the pastoral turn-over rate and what are contributing factors to this staggering number? Can we surmise the spirit of the armor bearer has left the building and the days of Barnabas have ceased to exist? “More than 1,700 pastors leave the ministry every month. To prevent the continued flight of our pastors, we need to understand the cause of the problem” (churchleaders.com). “On average, a pastor is leaving the ministry every 30 minutes. The third most stressful job in the United States of America is that of a pastor”
Following a particular methodology or program does not guarantee success. One might greatly desire for the church to revitalize and grow, but genuine church growth calls for more than personal passion. It requires the Spirit of God. Church revitalization begins with laying the foundation of God’s Word as it is preached and followed through a movement of
I have not experienced anything quite so disillusioning as a crisis of faith. It is a gut-wrenching, world-warping realization that sets in slowly with increasing pain. But like an ice cube thawing in your hand, the agony yields to absolute numbness. For me, this tribulation set in after leaving my Christian community of ten years. When I started attending an out-of-state, Christian liberal arts school, Wheaton College, I was surprised to discover—in place of the diverse body of competing doctrines and life experiences that I had anticipated—a homogenous student body composed of two-thousand teenagers who were also nondenominational, also raised in megachurches, and also floundering to find a “church home” in the city with America's greatest number of churches per capita (Tully and Roberts 2008). In the three years since, I have sought to better understand the factors that impacted my drifting, and the search has led me to evaluate the megachurch in which I grew up. What I have discovered is a critical oversight in the “new paradigm” game plan—an evangelical church strategy designed as a response to secularization—that may be rendering evangelical Protestantism less relevant than ever for my generation. In my experience attending a megachurch, the movement toward consumer Christianity and its consequences for how church was conducted precipitated my departure and engendered an interest in attending smaller, more liturgical churches.
Aubrey Malphurs, The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting: A Guide for Starting Any Kind of Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), 82-85.
LaRue, Jr, John C. "A Glimpse at Christian Teens | YourChurch.net." ChristianityToday.com | Magazines, News, Church Leadership & Bible Study. 31 Mar. 2009 .
Missionary life begins with an act of reception; missionary zeal grows upon knowledge of the Spirit so received; missionary work is the expression of that Spirit in activity. The quest to understand theology as it relate to a church leader, three areas of focus are critical for growth. First, each church leader should care about the health of the church. Second, they believe that the church has a critical role to play in the community given its track record of being the dominant social institution in the community. Third, they believe that the rise and fall of the church depends on its
Young, D. S. (1999). Servant Leadership for Church Renewal: Sheperds By the Living Springs. Scottdale: Herald Press.
...this phenomena very well, “A “stained Glass Ceiling” tends to stunt clergy women's career development, even in the most liberal denominations”.