Let me start this post by saying I was a Young Youth Pastor once. Now I’m not. But, I don’t necessarily feel any different than I did back when I was young. I’m just different.
This isn’t a post that is aimed at saying that older youth pastors are better. I’m also not saying that younger youth pastors are better. I just get frustrated when we in the church put too small a box around a job
description and say that “only” a certain age or life stage could do that position.
Over the years I’ve gotten to know some 20 years olds who act and think more like 40 year olds. The reverse is also true sometimes when older youth workers act totally young. Both of those scenarios are scary to me.
What I think is best is when someone with the right passion, skills, talents and gifts match up with an organization who needs those things. Regardless of age.
I don’t want to write a blog post about all the things that are great about being an older youth pastor without also listing all the things that are great about being younger. In fact I work with 13 younger youth workers and I love it. I can’t imagine every doing my job without surrounding myself with them. They bring so much to me in the way of encouragement, knowledge and action. I told someone recently that I’ll never go to another event alone and will always bring along some of my younger staff. My muse for doing that is
Mike King who is always surrounded by younger people. I want to be like Mike.
So here’s some things I love about younger youth workers:
1. Energy- I hate admitting this but it’s true. I despise all nighters.
2. Flexibility- Your life often comes with more of it that’s a good thing. I have a standing date at 7:40am every day where I drive my kids to school.
3. Cultural Adaptability- You grew up closer culturally to students than I did. To a large extent you are better at translating.
4. Positive Outlook- This isn’t true about everyone but I do remember being a lot more optimistic when I was younger. I’m not a pessimist now but I definitely find myself more on that side of things.
5. Freedom- This is similar to flexibility but a bit different. You are unencumbered by a lot of things including debt (hopefully), mortgages, medical conditions, history etc.
I could go on and on listing great things about younger youth workers but you get my point. There are great things about them and a church needs to see all those great things when they do hiring processes.
But there are also some great things about older youth workers. Again please know I’m not trying to contrast the two and say any one happens to be better. We are different and God uses us all.
Here’s a few things I love about Older Youth Workers:
1. Wisdom- This is different than “knowledge” which many of my 20 year old friends have. I only mean that with age comes the ability to apply that knowledge to different settings. I like to call this “contingency plans” and pray that my team always has them. You learn about making back-up plans when things go wrong. If you’ve been in youth ministry for a long time you’ve had things go wrong.
2. Stability- I like to think of myself as pretty stable. I have 3 kids. I am done with school. I have a pretty structured life and it I don’t want it to nothing changes very often. Older youth workers often have already gone through many of the life changes that younger youth workers will go through. Because of that we tend to be more stable. (Please know I don’t mean mentally here. Many older youth workers are probably crazy) I just mean life stage.
3. Knowledge- When you’ve failed as much as I have you tend to know what works. Youth Ministry has changed a lot in the last 20 years that I’ve been doing it. I’ve tried just about everything and have a fairly good track record of doing a few things right. Again this doesn’t mean I’m “smarter” than any 20 year old. In fact my last post on this blog was showing curriculum written by 2 amazing 20 year olds. But, I have been doing this for a long time so I do have a certain amount of knowledge of what works.
4. Relationships- Again this comes with age and being around for a while. I have relationships with people that have been built over a long time. I can call on those people for help when I need it. This is part of my network love too. I like to hang out with people and partner with them.
5.
Calling- I’m Presbyterian and “calling” is a big deal to us. I’ve been wrestling with this for 20 years and God has made it pretty clear that Youth Ministry is where he wants me. It has shifted a bit as I used to have college in my realm and might shift again sometime to include younger students but I no longer doubt what I’m supposed to do. Older youth workers have a pretty distinct sense of God’s call on their lives. I have a bunch of older friends who are doing youth ministry.
Rawd Jones,
David Grant,
Mark Matlock,
Mac McCoy,
Shawn Small.
Here’s the full list of the Youth Ministry Falsehoods.
- You must be with students 24/7
- You must be young
- You must be single
- You must be irresponsible and fly by the Seat of your Pants.
- You must be theologically trained
- You must be an extrovert
- You must a great upfront communicator
- You must be wild and crazy and a kid magnet
- You must be willing to be poor
- You must want to be a “real” pastor some day
