First impressions are always incredibly awkward. I remember my first ever time at a youth group where I was a brand new Regional Director (Intern with specific school responsibilities) we were leaving on a retreat and I had to drive my own car because I had to leave a bit early. There were about 60 of us in the parking lot and the youth pastor told everyone to get in the cars. Well no one came to my car so I immediately felt a bit of a rejection. The first impression I was portraying to the students clearly wasn’t that of being approachable. On the same hand my first impression of the “Leadership Students” of this particular youth ministry was that they were not very friendly to outsiders or new people, which was not a good trait to have in you leadership team.
Over the last 15 years I’ve both been a young youth minister and worked with a ton of them. When I was young I had some parts of this first impression thing down pretty well. I was committed to always being on time (10 minutes early) to our all-church staff meetings and also made sure that I was a bit more dressed up on that day. I spent time thinking about how I was being perceived as the Youth Minister and tried to distance myself from the typical stereotypes. But, there were things that I didn’t do very well. I didn’t answer e-mails well (especially if someone was mad at me). I didn’t answer my phone enough or return calls on time. I didn’t always walk over to a new person in a room and make them feel welcome.
But, there is another side to first impressions. Every week we would have new students at our ministry and they would always be coming up with first impressions of what the program and the people were like. This is the area that I think many of us are particularly weak in. We don’t think through enough how people will perceive the ministry and us. This is especially true if you have an established ministry and a group of kids who you are close to who are always around you at an event. I was reminded of this recently as a mom told me about three different conversations she’d had with other mom’s about how their kids didn’t feel welcomed to the youth group. I realized that their first impression of the ministry was not a very good one. They perceived us (and me as the leader) as not being very friendly and welcoming to them.
So think about it. How do you come across to students, parents, staff and church members.
Part 1: New Series: How to do this Youth Ministry Thing in a Healthy Way
Part 4: Boundaries, you will learn them easy or hard.
