Again, Chris Folmsbee joins us to discuss the significance of too many youth ministers leaving youth ministry. We need your responses to this today ...By Chris: I don't think I am an alarmist. The word 'departing' in the title of this post may appear that I am but to me, the word 'vanishing' was too excessive. Another word that came to mind was 'deserting' and that just didn't seem fair.
At any rate, today I got news via a friend's email that a mutual friend of ours was departing youth ministry to plant a church in NYC. Normally I wouldn't think twice about the news as change in our lives is inevitable and youth ministers are departing their roles as spiritual guides to emerging adults everyday. However, this bit of news came in a long line of reports and personal conversations with youth workers who are leaving their vocation.
I'm curious... does anyone else see a greater number of youth ministers than what feels ordinary leaving their role in exchange for something other that youth work?
To me, it sure feels like there are more youth ministers leaving than what is usual. Perhaps this phenomenon is only occurring in the view through my little window of youth ministry.
NOTE: I realize that there has always been a fair amount of transition among youth workers. However, most of that transition has been from one church or ministry to another not a transition away from youth work altogether.
I have some thoughts as to why we might be seeing more youth ministers leaving their roles of serving youth and their families. I'm hoping you can help me fill out this list. Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. Theology- it appears to me that today's youth minister has a very different theological framework for approaching ministry than their supervising ministers and church boards. This results in youth ministers looking to other ministry opportunities and other environments in which to express their divergent theological convictions.
2. Methodology - I have found that in the conversations I am having with departing youth workers one of the main issues contributing to the exit strategies has to do with churches operating with an attractional model of ministry when many youth ministers are resonating more with a missional model. After a while it just becomes like two ships passing in the night and this leads to transition.
3. Leadership - I have also found that many youth workers feel as though they are ready for greater leadership challenges and influence and their supervising ministers are either not in agreement or completely unwilling to step aside to give the youth worker a greater amount of influence. I'm not saying the youth workers are ready for more or not, but one thing that is sure is that youth workers think they deserve more and unquestionably want more.
4. Expectations - There are a growing number of expectations being placed on the youth worker by others (church leadership, parents, students, peers, etc.) and this causes a working environment that is inescapably overwhelming. I'm not quite sure exactly what is causing the growing expectations but I have a hunch it has to do with the absolute disorientation most people feel as it relates to the most effective ways to make disciples of today's youth.
5. Calling - Sometimes God calls people to new vocations. I get that. I believe a fair number of the departing youth workers I have talked with are really being led to do something else.
6. Schedule - Youth workers work their butt off and often without a healthy balance. Some youth workers are just tired and the grass on the other side looks a whole lot more green, and often it can be.
Are you sensing a growing number of youth workers departing for things other than youth? What are your thoughts on why that might be the case? Do you have any solutions to offer us?
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I am a YP in a church that began 20 years ago by a "legendary" Youth Pastor who departed for the greener pastures of Lead Pastor in our church. Now, "Here's what you need to do" is a familiar phrase I hear during our weekly meetings. "This worked for me in the 80's, when my youth ministry reached national recognition." We might add "puppet-master syndrome" to the list of reasons for YP departures. With more and more former youth pastors taking over churches, there will be temptation to manage their own current YP's on how to do ministry the right way. As more former YP's move to greener pastures, my hope is that we allow our own YP's to be creative, to have an equal voice in the leadership of the church, and resist the "numbers-driven" pressures and unreasonable expectations.
For all the reasons mentioned in this thread, I can testify as a YP that the temptation to flee YM is always before me. A friend once told me that if I find myself in a church where there is weak leadership, blurred church vision, and/or faulty doctrine, then there are three typical outcomes: 1. the "frog in the kettle" - (going along with things, trying to change them but in the process being changed slowly over time); 2. cynical despair; and, 3. the YP exocus (sometimes leaving with burn-out or church split). None of these 3 options are very good, so pick your poison. Not to sound overly grim, but perhaps many YP's are not willing to have their convictions changed thru attrition, nor are they interested in becoming desperately cynical. So, they opt for the bail-out.
I wholly resound with this post. I'm there right now. I was never really interested in youth ministry, but always in serving my church. For 6 years I've been our associate, hired within the church with a ministry background, but 4 years of service as a volunteer as I did other work.
As I said, I'm in that struggle right now. I love our youth, love teaching and working with people who truly are working on their relationship with God and excited about it, yet, frustrated by parents spiritual immaturity, fundamentalist theology or lack of apparent commitment to the church. I am tired of sorry vision statements & stale programming & activities with little overall purpose or pace within the overall direction of the churches mission. I do not want to do this all over again at another church. My wife is a high school teacher (more secure and better pay than I) & we have 2 small kids, which is not easy to keep balanced in youth ministry.
Do I continue through frustration & provide some leadership from the second chair while our church gains some focus within the ministry.
Do I consider a call to another church in a different leadership position?
Do I plant a new work in our community to reach non religious people?
Need more prayer & fasting...
Perhaps we need to rethink the whole idea of following cultural trends by isolating our youth into a separate category, thus contributing to the elongation of the awkward, neither child, nor adult period that we call adolesence.
Give the youth a real place, with real decision-making and leadership responsibility in the church. Paul told the young Timothy to "dispise not his youth...and to be an example for the believers" (both old and young).
My observation is that young men and women who have a lot of adult interaction and influence as opposed to peer interaction embrace adulthood more quickly, more gracefully and grow up to become more mature and better adujusted adults. I am a junior high day school teacher and I regularly have opportunities to observe the difference in maturity level between home schooled children and children who have had a steady diet of peer dominated classroom instruction from pre-school on.
If I were currently a youth minister, I would recruit adult mentors and get my youth paired up one-on-one and in small groups with them. I would do my best to get a better mix of young adults and older adults participating in the regular gahterings of the youth, both worship and social events. And as mentiioned above I would do my best to involve youth in service days, outreaches and retreats that in the past have been seen as exclusively either adult or youth activities. Instead of separte activities, integrate them. Also, I would find a way to allow some of the more mature youth to participate in the decision-making board of the church, along with the youth pastor.
I for one would be happy to remain in children and youth ministry “forever” in the right situation. But as I have learned about leadership, church culture and our wider cultural context, I don’t see how I can build the kind of children and youth ministry I envision from my position as Director of Children and Youth Ministries. Too much change is needed in our congregation’s culture, and at least as I understand it, you can’t lead cultural change from the second (or third or fourth) chair.
I’m now beginning a process of looking into the possibility of becoming an ordained pastor, mostly because I hope I am listening to God, but motivated by the fact that effective children and youth ministry happens in the context of a congregation that is together intentional about making it happen. As I understand it, the only place to catalyze that kind of intentional context is from up front, from the first chair.
I have been a youth pastor 13 years now and I have seen many of my friends and colleagues in youth ministry leave to either pursue a "next-level ministry" like a lead pastor or worship leader or go into a field not even closely related to youth ministry or the Church like business, sales, etc. I've worked with youth leaders who burn out too quickly and never come back for various reasons from personal and family to frustrations with the church. From my graduating class of youth ministry majors, I believe I am one of about a dozen that are still in youth ministry. Some youth pastors I feel leave to help better provide for their families. The solution to helping the burnout rate is a tough one! I think churches really need to support the youth pastors by providing strong volunteer leadership, parental support, time to rest and study, and strong encouragement into an integrated vision of the church as a whole, not just a separate entity in and of itself, but respected throughout. I feel many youth leaders become too busy and miss the importance of their own personal spiritual development, over time this causes them to burnout and unable to give themselves fully to their calling. I am concerned about the state of youth ministry personally and pray that more will see that the harvest is ready...but the workers are few.
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