I wish that working in the church was always healthy. Unfortunately, all of us bring some sort of baggage into our work and the nature of our jobs is we spend most of our day interacting with people just like us. Boundaries are important as we try to curb out “people pleasing” tendencies.
In your first few days, weeks and months on the job you will invariable be asked to do many things that may or may not be in your job description. At those moments you will need to do some negotiating with yourself to see how much those requests fit within the overall mission of the church staff and specifically if they require your expertise.
Here’s a brief example: I have a commercial bus license. My church in Los Angeles had a full-size school bus, 3 shuttle busses and a few vans. There was a time period at my church where we had all these vehicles but there was only a few of us who were licensed to drive them. I got asked to drive them quite often. More often than not I would say no because I was new in my job, struggling to keep my marriage healthy, taking seminary classes and generally just feeling tired all the time. Quite often I felt guilty about saying no but I knew that I would become the “official” church driver if I wasn’t careful.
Here’s an example of how I did it wrong: At my last church we often didn’t have anyone to lead worship in our youth department. So I stepped in and filled that role while also doing a large percentage of the teaching as well. At this church we had Weekend youth services on Saturday nights and two Sunday morning services. This meant that on a typical weekend I led worship and taught 3 times each. Fortunately I recruited some worship leaders after a while but it was a hard year. What that lead to at my current church is that it was two years of being on youth staff before I lead worship for the first time because I was so burned out from the past experience.
The best way I know to help you work on your boundaries is to encourage you to set up a list of priorities, goals and benchmarks. You need to know what you are doing, where you are going and how you are going to get there. Don’t be the youth pastor who shows up in the office each day wondering what it is you are supposed to do. You need to set a plan, pick a path and get moving on it.
Now I will say that there are times when you need to say yes to people. I recognize that there are no hard rules when it comes to the church and to people’s lives. You need to know that there will be times when you are asked to do something outside your job description or even outside your expertise that you need to say “yes” to. My recommendation is to pray and ask God for wisdom and direction. You want to be a servant leader who meets needs when they arise. But, you can do this in a healthy way or not.
Part 1: New Series: How to do this Youth Ministry Thing in a Healthy Way
Part 2: First Day on the Job
