Make Your Kids Glad That You're a Pastor

October was a crazy month for our family for a number of reasons, and this past weekend was the first weekend in a while that felt "normal." I took the opportunity to do something with my two daughters they had been asking to do for a while: go on a behind-the-scenes tour of our church (or as they put it, "explore the church"). There were no ministry events going on, so they had fun running around the church, exploring "hidden" (i.e. locked) rooms, and seeing what the children's building looks like when no one's around.

The best part about our adventure was this: they thought it was really cool that their dad is a pastor. They knew that other kids don't get to mess around in our church's prop room (they thought it smelled funny) or play unlimited air hockey in the youth wing. It was a fun moment, because they are--even at the ages of four and five--aware that there are also times when my role takes me to overnight youth events or causes me to miss dinner because I need to care for someone or another family.

I hope that they always think that me being a pastor is cool. Because from their perspective, there will always be costs associated with my role: pastoral emergencies, having youth events on Saturdays (their favorite day to spend with me), or missing out on bedtime to be at my ninth grade guys small group. For every one of those things, I hope there's at least one upside they can enjoy because I'm a pastor. Here are a few ideas to make sure that happens:

Full access to the church grounds. Let your kids enjoy your church building in ways other kids normally wouldn't be able to. My kids loved exploring the empty buildings. Other ideas I've heard include having a picnic on the auditorium platform and allowing them to invite friends to enjoy the game room when no one else is around.

Allow your kids a free pass into your office. My girls know that they can interrupt anything going on in my office at any time. The only exception is if someone is seeing me for pastoral counseling. When they knock, I stop what I'm doing to hug them and have a conversation. They even have their own whiteboard (right under mine) that they get to draw on. And if I'm in a meeting that can't be interrupted for a few minutes, they still get to come give me a big hug.

Allow them to be friends with other staff members. Sometimes I think my girls love visiting me at the office more for seeing all their "friends" than seeing me. I'm grateful to serve with a team that doesn't mind when my girls wander into their office or cubicle to say "hi" and sometimes get a treat. When they visit our church during office hours, they feel like a blessing, not a distraction.

Invite your family to youth events. Since my kids are so young, they haven't gotten to do this much, but they enjoy it when they get to come to hang out with the teenagers. Our girls came and played in a mud pit during our fall kickoff, and my family visited our fall retreat a few weeks ago for lunch on Saturday. They feel pretty special getting to come to things that only high school students are invited to.

Take advantage of a flexible schedule. Some seasons in ministry require extra time from us that can make it seem like we're cheating our family. During seasons that aren't as demanding on your time, make sure you cheat your job instead and spend more time with your kids. I'm well aware that not everyone has a job that offers the flexibility to go on field trips with their kids or take off a few minutes early to have a special "movie night" with their kids. And when you take some time off to spend more time with your kids, let them know that you've chosen to take off work in order to spend time with them. You don't have to make a show of it, but it's important for them to see concrete examples of you choosing them over ministry.

What are some other ways to make your kids glad that you're a pastor?

Video of the Week: Quit Outsourcing Your Kids to Youth Group

Another awesome conversation on youth ministry from the Gospel Coalition. The full article (found here) highlights the Rooted conference, which looks really cool. Check it out:

Quit Outsourcing Your Kids to Youth Group from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Video of the Week: "Don't Rob the Youth" from the Gospel Coalition

I love this conversation about the role of youth ministry in the local church, especially the question of how to integrate students into the broader church. Well worth five minutes of your time:

Don't Rob the Youth from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

The Supposed Superpowers of a Youth Pastor

Youth pastors are pretty great people. I might be biased (being a youth pastor and all), but I make that claim having known a lot of youth pastors. Youth workers not only tend to have big hearts, but they have some talents that sometimes border on superhuman feats of strength and skill. They can pull off an amazing summer camp on a tight budget. Part-time and bi-vocational youth pastors somehow find a way to prepare a Bible study each week and care for students between their two other jobs. And most youth pastors can still genuinely love teenagers even after a night of zero sleep at a lock-in.

Despite all that, youth pastors aren’t the superheroes some make us out to be.

Now, I don't think that I'm too bad of a youth pastor. I've learned a ton from experience and mentors, and I even have a fancy degree on my wall. But I'm no superhero. And even if I were, I probably would use my powers for my own benefit, and not for others. Still, I've found that some people believe that all youth pastors have a certain set of superpowers. Today, I'd like to set the record straight and let the world know that there are some superpowers that youth pastors don’t in fact possess:

I can’t make your teenager come to church. Listen, I really want your teenager to come to church to experience a loving environment and hear about Jesus. But if I could will him to come to church, I would have already done that by now. I’m happy to give him a call and extend a friendly invite or meet him for coffee if he’d be up for that. I'm flattered that you think your teenager would go to church if I told him to. I just don’t have that kind of influence over every teenager’s actions.

The Problem with Family-Based Youth Ministry

This is a post that I have started to write, stopped, deleted, and rewritten a few times over the past year. The reason I've been so hesitant to finish it and share it with the world is because I wanted to get it right, and I didn't want to say something I never intended to say. So before I dive in, I want to clearly affirm something:

The responsibility of discipling a child--whether a preschooler or a teenager--lies primarily (although not solely) on that child's parent. I think that's pretty clear in Deuteronomy 6, among other places in the Bible. It's a responsibility that I take seriously as a dad, and one that I want the parents in our church to take seriously, especially the parents of teenagers that I work with.

So now that you know that, let me dive into what I think of a family-based approach to youth ministry. There are many different ways to implement a family-based approach to youth ministry, but the general idea is that most of the resources (staff, budget, volunteers) is spent equipping and building up families of teenagers so that parents can disciple teenagers, rather than focus programming to connect with teenagers directly.

In some ways, it's a great approach to ministry. It's biblical in that it places the emphasis on parents being the primary disciplers of their kids rather than the youth pastor. That's a really good thing. It's empowering in that pushes parents to take responsibility for their role as parents in a culture where parents tend outsource the moral, intellectual, and spiritual development to "professionals" such as educators and youth pastors. I love that, and I try to do that myself: A couple of months ago a dad asked if I could come to his house lead a weekly Bible study for his kids, because their schedule wouldn't allow them to attend youth group. I encouraged him to perhaps be the one to lead the study, and pointed him toward some resources that would help him do that. Empowering parents is really important. However, there is a major flaw in a family-based approach to youth ministry:

It focuses primarily on church insiders rather than those who don't yet know Jesus.

Think about it: a big assumption of a family-based approach to youth ministry is that the parents want to be involved in the spiritual lives of their teenagers. I would love to live in a world where families are intact and teenagers have two parents who only need a nudge in the right direction to be the spiritual leaders of their home God created them to be. But that's not the reality I minister in.

Most of the guests who are invited by friends to our church don't have parents who are interested in Jesus--some are antagonistic toward him! I've had to drive students home because their parents were angry that they came to church in the first place so they wanted to make them walk the four miles back to their house. In the high school I've tutored in for the past four years, I met plenty of students with parents to whom it made no difference whether their teenager was at school, at church, or at a party with plenty of drugs. Sure, those are some of the more extreme examples, but the point is that for many teenagers in our communities, the parent-discipling-the-teenager approach isn't a viable option.

Teaching Teenagers that Sex is a Gift

Someone pointed me to this article titled "How Do You Feel About Sex and Teenage Sleepovers?" by Soraya Chemaly on Huffingtonpost.com this week. The entire article is an interesting read as an example of a worldview that encourages "healthy" sexual activity for teenagers. What really hit me, however, was this paragraph:

If you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality or challenging deeply-embedded ideas about sex being "bad," can you teach your kids anything different? In defiance of socially conservative mythology, approaches that are positive about sex do not lead to licentiousness, STDs, abortions and despair. On the contrary, the more you teach children about healthy, responsible sex, the more likely they are to treat sex in healthy, responsible ways. In general, they are more knowledgeable, more emotionally mature about it and "safer" in the scary-sex way. It goes a long way to understanding why the rate of teen pregnancy is the U.S. is four times that in the Netherlands, for example. (Emphasis added)

Here's the thing that bugged me most about that paragraph in Chemaly's article: She's right.

Well, not completely right. You don't have to be in youth ministry very long to understand that teenagers who experience sexual relationships are rarely--if ever--unaffected by severe and painful emotional and physical consequences that are conveniently omitted from sitcoms where everyone seems to be hooking up with almost zero consequences at all. So for the most part, I disagree with the article, especially her main point that encouraging teenagers to have sex with their significant others is a good and healthy thing to do. The statement that she's partly right about is the one I emphasized above:

If you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality or challenging deeply-embedded ideas about sex being "bad," can you teach your kids anything different?

Video of the Week: "Gotcha Day"

If you aren't too familiar with adoption, "Gotcha Day" is often used to refer to the day an adopted child is given over to his or her new parents. Many families celebrate the day each year like you would a birthday. Check out this video of one family's Gotcha Day...better grab a tissue:

Video of the Week: Just Like Me (Mother's Day Tribute)

Fun Mother's Day video from Igniter Media...check it out:

Hey Youth Pastor: You're Spending Way Too Much Time With Students

I was a sophomore in college when Peter, a long-haired youth pastor approached me while I was attending a church pancake supper. I'm not sure what it was that made him talk to me of all people, but I'd imagine it had something to do with the fact that I was the youngest person in the room by far, except for the teenagers running the pancake supper fundraiser. He asked if I wanted to be a leader in the high school ministry, and since I was a new believer who wanted to be a high school math teacher, it seemed like a good fit.

My first week at youth group, Peter handed me a 10-dollar bill and told me to choose one of the high school guys to go out to coffee with. The point was clear: my job was to hang out with high school students. That set the stage for an incredibly fun three years at that church doing youth ministry, hanging out at the bus station where kids would wait up to an hour for their bus, mentoring kids at coffee shops, and doing all sorts of "relational" ministry that probably would get me fired today, such as driving to see a movie with nine kids in the back of a pickup truck. By the end of those three years, I was hooked on youth ministry, and I got a job at a local church as a youth director when I graduated from college.

Ten years later, I still love the "incarnational" part of youth ministry: going to soccer games and high school musicals, having a coke at McDonald's with a few students, leading a small group of seniors, and being present in a student's life when their whole world comes crashing down in some way. That part of youth ministry is important, and any youth pastor who wants to do ministry like Jesus did and really love teenagers needs to be willing to be with teenagers. If that's not something you like doing on some level, you probably shouldn't be in youth ministry.

That being said, there's something you need to hear:

You're spending too much time with students.

To some youth workers, that will seem like a sacrilegious statement. Isn't spending time with teenagers what student ministry is about? Isn't that why we became youth pastors?

Guest Post: Are We Caring for the Spouses of Rookie Youth Pastors?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post for Youth Ministry 360 on the responsibility veteran youth pastors have toward young and/or rookie youth pastors. From that post, a conversation developed between myself and a professor at Western Seminary, Dr. Ron Marrs. For his Ph.D., Ron spent a substantial amount of time studying the experience of young/rookie youth pastors. He wrote about his findings in his dissertation, aptly (and robustly) named "Understanding the Lived Experience of Novice Youth Ministers in the Evangelical Protestant Tradition."

I was really interested in Ron's findings, and so I asked him to share a portion of his research on this blog. He graciously agreed to do so, and his post today focuses on some of the experiences the spouses of "novice" youth ministers had in their early years of ministry.


As a part of my reasearch, between 2009 and 2012 I interviewed 26 people about their rookie youth pastor experience. As part of my research, I also interviewed 24 people who supervised these people in their rookie experience. I found out many interesting things, but the one that burdened me the most was the experience of the spouses. Of the 26 youth ministers in this study, five were single (including the only two women in the study) and 21 were married. Sixteen of the 21 married youth ministers reported that their wives struggled to some degree during their rookie experience. In addition, thirteen of those 16 youth ministers reported not thriving in their position. But rather than simply share data, I thought I'd let you hear from the youth workers I interviewed in their own words regarding their spouses experiences while they were rookies. What follows are word-for-word excerpts from three separate interviews I conducted during my research:

Sample 1: “Another one would be—my wife wasn’t fond of the hours. She’s a stability, consistency type person and I’ll never forget her saying, “We are first—our son”—She said, “I feel like a single mom” ’cause I was usually out. And I was pretty good--if I was out really late doing something--I’d go in the office at noon the next day, but she was not fond of the hours. And that was tough for her. I was not the 100-hour-week guy. I wasn’t trying to be Superman, but if it was a long few days in a row, we’d have a conversation about that.”

Three Commitments I Want to Make to My Kids

My sweet, sweet girls

A couple of weeks ago, some (very public) discipline issues in our family got me thinking about how I'd like to handle such situations as our girls continue to get older. As I continued to ponder other parenting situations I might face as my kids grow older, I compiled a short list of three commitments I want to make to my kids when it comes to some situations that can often be very stressful for families. Obviously, it's not a complete list, but I thought I'd share it here:

1) That I won't ever be embarrassed of them when they get in trouble.
As a youth pastor, a tough thing I have to do sometimes is to call or talk with parents when their teenager broke a major rule at an event or mistreated another student. It's not usually a fun thing in itself, but what makes it really painful is when parents seem more concerned about and embarrassed by how their child's poor choice reflects on them as a parent than they are about what their child actually did. I never want my girls to feel like I'm embarrassed of them, even when their misdeed occurs in a very public way--such as when I have to be called away from what I'm doing as a pastor because one of my sweet girls threw a chair in their children's ministry classroom. While I may be disappointed in my kids' actions sometimes, I pledge never to be embarrassed or ashamed of them as people.

An Open Letter to (Some) Parents of Teenagers

Credit: Creative Commons (sporkist)

Dear Parent of a Teenager:

You don't know me, but our paths have crossed before in shopping malls, on Facebook, and in the grocery store. Do not think poorly of me, but through the years, I have occasionally overheard bits and pieces of some of your conversations about your teenage kids. Quite frankly, some of those bits and pieces of conversations I have picked up on have made me sad.

Please understand that I do not doubt your love for your teenager: As best as I can tell, you have provided your child with a safe home, their basic needs, and everything they need to thrive. There might even be some days when you look at a photo of you holding your son soon after his birth or a piece of art you've kept all these years that your daughter drew in kindergarten, and you remember just why you keep doing this crazy thing called parenting.

Still, I would kindly request that you break the habit of demeaning your teenager in public conversations--especially within earshot of your teenagers or on Facebook, where your teenager will read it. It has become, unfortunately, acceptable and even popular for parents to speak unkindly about their teenagers in a humorous manner. Your teenager does not need to hear you making sarcastic remarks in a public setting about how lazy he or she is or how you're fed up with him or her. I understand that it might have begun as simply a humorous way to cope with the stress of being a parent of a teenager.

However, your words have power, not just when others hear them, but they also have power over you when you say them repeatedly. When you say something often enough, you start to believe it, and I sincerely hope you do not really mean some of the things you've said. In addition, I'd like to point out that if I ever talked as openly about wanting to strangle my three-year-old as you do about wanting to strangle your teenager, I am quite sure that I would receive a visit from our local social worker. I'm not quite sure when it became so in vogue to publicly threaten the physical safety of our teenage children. There is nothing wrong with venting to or seeking the advice from a trusted friend. Parenting is tough, and the more people you can have supporting you, the better. But you and I both know there is a big difference between talking with a friend about how your teenager is failing three classes and saying some of the things you've said about her, which I'd rather not repeat.

Why Serving as a Team Is Better Than Serving on Your Own

Credit: Creative Commons (Matt McGee)

My wife and I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old at our house. We try to make a practice of having tons of fun, which often means making a big mess. In fact, just about every activity we do at our house seems to require a decent amount of cleaning up after the fun is over. Play-Doh? Needs to be cleaned up. Huge fort in the living room? Blankets need to be put away. Painting on the easel? Definitely a lot of cleaning up there.

Usually, we don't make a big enough mess that I couldn't clean it up with just a few minutes of quick work. What takes the most time is when I include my kids in the task. Here's the issue: by including my girls in the task of cleaning up, it usually increases the amount of time the clean-up process takes, and it sometimes can decrease the effectiveness of cleaning up.

If you're a parent, you know that the point of asking your preschoolers to help clean isn't because you want a sparkling house. You incude them because there's something bigger going on than just putting things back the way they should go. Including your kids helps them take responsibility for the care of our house and their toys, and it teaches them that when they make a mess, they clean it up. What's more, there are many times when they actually like to help clean up. (Cue the song: "Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere!")

The same is true in ministry. As a youth pastor, there are plenty of tasks that I could do myself--but that I shouldn't do myself. Why? Because just like when I ask my kids to help me clean up, there's something bigger going on when I ask people to lead with me than having things be just so and running a "sparkling" ministry (if such a thing is possible). Here are some benefits to not doing things yourself and allowing others to serve alongside you in ministry in a meaningful way:

You will have more fun.
If you don't like serving as a part of a team, then being a ministry leader probably isn't for you. When you have a team mentality when it comes to ministry, you will discover that doing ministry as a team is really, really, fun! Some of my favorite memories in youth ministry have come while serving with fantastic volunteers who also had become great friends.

Top Ten Posts of 2012

Credit: Stockerre (Creative Commons)

It's been another fun year for me writing on this blog. Thanks so much to those of you who trust me with your time by allowing me to be a part of your reading list. As I enjoy a fun week off with family, here are the ten most-read posts of 2012:


10) (Guest Post by Christine Niles): "Twenty-One Ways Churches Can Support Adopting Parents" (April 14th)

9) "Youth Ministry Tools That Will Be Relics in Ten Years" (June 5th)

8) "Three Signs You Aren't Preaching the Word in Youth Ministry" (August 14th)

Video of the Week: Parent Rap by Bluefish TV

This is a very creative video that Bluefish TV put together as part of one of their video Bible studies. If you like the video and want to use it for your next parent meeting, you can download an HD copy for free through today here. Enjoy!

List of Helpful Web Resources in Wake of Newtown, Connecticut Shootings

More than a few preachers, bloggers, and thinkers have weighed in with thoughts on the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT last Friday. As happens with the onslaught of coverage that follows such a high profile tragedy, some of the responses are better than others. Here are a handful of responses that have helped me in the past week as a pastor and as a dad:

Jim Burns - Violence on Campus: Helping Your Kids Cope with Tragedy

“In this information age - and with all of the media coverage, it's likely that only the youngest of children are sheltered from seeing or hearing information following tragic events like this one. Parents can play a vital role in helping their kids cope with the overwhelming tragedy associated with crises like this. To help you help your kids, I've put together some ideas that you might find useful.” (Read it all here.)

Making Much of Jesus in Our Family at Christmas

In our tiny brick house, there are a few signs that Christmas is around the corner. Some stockings are hung by the window (the fireplace in our 1929 house was closed into the wall an unknown number of decades ago for some unknown reason). A small artificial tree is decorated in the corner of our front room and is sporting multi-colored hand-me-down lights. On our kitchen table sets a gaudy train-shaped music box that opens to reveal Santa watching a toy train run in circles, curiously to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Let's just say we aren't going to be entering any Christmas decoration contests anytime soon.

Like many of you, my wife and I desire that this season of "giving" be more about Jesus' incarnation than about presents. This is a difficult task when strangers take it upon themselves to make small talk with my daughters while in line at the grocery store by asking them what presents Santa will be bringing them for Christmas. We are far from having all of this figured out, but there are a few things that we do as a family to make much of Jesus during the month of December:

We don't "do" Santa. Without going too deep into the issue here, the biggest reason we don't "do" Santa is because we don't want to set our kids up for what essentially amounts to an elaborate hoax. Now, we do "pretend" in some respects, such as pretending the stockings are from Santa (this is new this year at the encouragement of my lovely wife). As the kids get older, we'll also teach them the legend of Saint Nicholas. (For a great view on how to "redeem" Santa, check out Mark Driscoll's 2010 Washington Post article on "What We Tell Our Kids About Santa" here).

Great Book: Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing

We've had a copy of Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago at our house for a couple of weeks. The art, just like in Jesus Storybook Bible is amazing, and it's already sparked a couple of great conversations with my four-year-old. It's set up as kind of a devotional book, with only one "thought" meant to be read per day. If you're looking for a meaningful gift for your kids or a family, I highly recommend Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing.

A Meditation on Milk and Prayer

Every morning when my two girls wake up, they have some milk. Since I am the parent that usually is awake first, I am the one who dispenses the milk each morning.

Most of the time, I wait until there is a polite request for the milk before I give them the milk. This polite request can take many forms; I am not a stickler for a particular phrase. I am even willing to waive the requirement for a "please" so early in the morning. After all, they are still waking up. And besides, I know (and so do they) the difference between a sincere, polite request and a demand, no matter what words are being used.

It is not that there is a shortage of milk in our house that I must require a polite request, as though I must use such a tactic to ration the blessing of milk. Their mother keeps a sufficient (and often abundant, courtesy of Costco) supply of milk in the refrigerator. In fact, we almost always have two varieties of milk: cow's milk and soy milk, because the younger of the two cannot have too much dairy in her diet.

But still, despite our abundance of milk, I do require a polite request from my girls before they get their milk. I do, however, fully anticipate their request, and I might even have full cups already prepared before they even ask, because I know my girls, and I want to bless them. I know they like milk in the morning, and I know it is good for them.

Scratch and Dent

To My Daughters.


A scratch on the table


Dents where a fork

                    repeatedly

          banged on the table

                    repeatedly

          banged on the table


A crack in the bathroom sink

          where a shelf once was pulled over

          but you were unharmed


My electric shaver

          that has been knocked off its perch

          countless times


A stain on the bedspread

          from an adventure

          when you were supposed to be napping


A chip in a cup

          and another cup

                    and another cup


A bed whose frame is loose

          from repeated “wear and tear”


Carpet

          that will never be the same


A drawer that sticks

          from being abused during each and every opening

          several times a day


Even the scar

          above your eye


A thousand different utterances of

          "Uh oh Daddy, uh oh"

                    and

          "It broke all by itself"


I treasure each

          scratch

                    and

          dent.