For Senior Pastors

The fact that you have gotten this far suggests that you are a pastor who has more than just a passing interest in the next generation.

  • Maybe you’re tired of the perpetual churn that has surrounded your youth ministry for years.
  • Maybe you’ve just lost your beloved youth pastor, and you’re facing the anxious faces of parents, volunteers and youth who look to you for the answer to “what’s next?”
  • Maybe you’ve got a consistently under-performing youth ministry, and you’re looking for an objective perspective about what is reasonable.
  • Maybe you did youth ministry in the past, quite successfully; maybe you know how it should be done but you simply don’t have the time for the daily management of your youth staff.

It is our conviction that no one will have the potential for influencing the building of a sustainable youth ministry at your church like you will.

In a survey of 10,000 Christian teenagers, kids rated only two qualities of church as more important than “a senior pastor who understands and loves teenagers.”(“The Cool Church,” Group, 05-06/01, p. 37). In other words, students said that the senior pastor has more influence on their choice of church than even their youth directors might.

You are uniquely positioned to give your church perspective about building youth ministry that few youth directors can match. You can instill patience in your church as they slowly, deliberately build a youth ministry that lasts.  And you can support your youth pastor when he or she is overwhelmed with criticism and broken on the sharp rocks of expectations that simply can’t  be met, at least this year anyway.

There are an extraordinary number of resources today to help youth workers. But in spite of the growing number of excellent resources, in our work with churches and youth workers we’re finding an obvious gap between concept and reality, between theory and results.

With a dizzying array of statistics from experts about how “different kids today are” or how “the ways we’ve been doing ministry just don’t work anymore,” senior pastors need a realistic picture of what is reasonable to expect from professional youth staff.

Thanks for caring deeply about the next generation of the Church.  You probably know more about building a successful youth ministry than you think you do. But if you find yourself in need of some support, we would be honored to help.

There are those that say, “The only thing harder than finding a good youth pastor is getting rid of a bad one.”  How many teenagers, parents, pastors and youth ministry search committees have been disappointed because  “Mr. Right” turned out to be … Continue reading →