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Usually, I’ll run a clip of an article and then offer the appropriate hyperlink. This Posting from Mark Riddle at the Youth Specialties Blog, I believe, is important enough to run in full …
<<quote begins>> I got off the phone this morning with John, a youth pastor, who will leave his church in 20 days because of the church’s financial situation. He’s built a big youth ministry with lots of kids and very few volunteers. “The church isn’t interested in working with teens,” he tells me. John is truly heart-broken for the kids and is reaching out to me to see if I can help the church in some way after he leaves. He doesn’t want to see it all fall apart and he knows it will after he leaves.
I didn’t tell him this. It’s probably for the best.
You see, somewhere along the way we youth pastors bought into a lie. We believe our job is to make things happen, to build programs, to attract youth all in the name of ministry, or building the kingdom. We bought into the idea that our job, our ministry is to make things go. We believe that somehow, our success or failure as a pastor is dependent upon our ability to motivate people to follow through and implement our plans and our dreams in the name of vision. In fact, we in the church are infatuated with visionaries who make it happen. The lie is pervasive these days.
Chances are this is a small reason why you love being a youth pastor. You have ideas, and you get to inspire and envision people to produce your programs. Chances are you are evaluated by how efficiently you bring others on board with your vision and how well you produce the goals and objectives you declared.
But this is a deeply flawed understanding of leadership and is destructive for church staff, and those within the church as well. This is a flawed perspective because it has unintended consequences. This kind of thinking is highly colonial and creates a level of isolation, entitlement and passivity that enables congregations to abdicate their responsibility to the leaders, who often gladly take it.
The leaders become strangers and distant from the people they are called to lead in this environment. In extreme cases people can become cogs in the details of a leaders mechanistic plans. Service is reduced to volunteer positions that must be filled.
It’s important for you to understand something.
You aren’t called to make things happen in your church.
Oh, you may be paid to make things happen, but it’s not God calling you to plan, lead and pull off all that unsustainable stuff. It’s not God calling you build it all, or convince others to build your vision either.
You will always have more ideas, more dreams, more hopes, more plans than your church should pull off in your ministry. You will always see more than can be done right now. You must learn to live with this tension.
> Your job as a leader isn’t to make plans and then have others buy into them.
> The role of a leader is to declare the mission, and create an environment in which people can dream and live into it.
> By making things happen you are robbing people from the God given responsibility they have to children in your church.
The difference is in the level of commitment of the people you lead. Take John for instance. John created a lot of great experiences, but the people within his church weren’t committed to it outside of a paycheck to a staff member. When John leaves in 20 days, his ministry will crumble and it will be a beautiful thing for his church. Because it will force them to make a decision about how engaged they will be for teens.
I know what you are thinking. His church won’t step up. They will lose kids.
Could be. It’s pretty common.
This is the commentary on how well we lead in the church though, not so much on the church itself. The people of the church are being faithful to how they were led. They are living out their ministry teens the way it’s been expected of them.
How many of our churches are this way and how many churches would lose people if the staff stopped making things happen? There is an entire culture of leadership within the church rising up based on this faulty understanding of leadership.
You see, not only is top-down leadership often manipulative, colonial and patriarchal, but it’s also reactive. It only creates more of the same problems that it’s trying to solve.
Whereas leadership that declares the mission and then cultivates an environment within which it can happen is restorative. It produces energy, not hype. It confronts people, and forces accountability. The kind of leadership creates accountability, without directly calling for it.
So is this the end of visionary leadership? Absolutely not. It is simply a change in the way churches approach the role of staff and the way the mission blooms within your church. There’s a difference between helping your community imagine a world beyond their currently reality (vision) and convincing them to live it your way.
What kind of leader are you? Do you feel the need to make things happen? Have you always been this way? If not, what taught you that this was the right way?
Or do you cultivate an environment in which people can engage deeply, or superficially? An environment where you let go of the implementation to the people of your church? <<end quote>>
Some stuff, huh??? I’d love to hear your comments on this. Is Riddle right and onto something? In what could be difficult economic times, does this challenge the way we are to be ministering??
Prophetic words! Very wise words. Thank you. New and challenging. I agree wholeheartedly with your stand. I wish they would not call it youth ministry but parish ministry for youth. With leaving a long time CYM position this summer, the decision was for the parish to take a year to look at the needs, to set a vision, to call forth parish young adult and adult leaders to find the path and not to just hire another youth ministry coordinator. My hope is that they look at the entire parish, especially faith formation on all age levels. They are links in a chain and have a powerful effect on each other. One of the statements made at a conference this summer was that we are asking young people to claim us as their chosen faith community, how are we claiming them? how are we embracing, welcoming, energizing, accepting them? In Venerable Solanus Casey’s words, “Blessed be God in all his designs.” Let us take it to prayer and listen to God’s plans for his people, for his young people. We may be surprised at the answers.
Comment by Linda Jarvi — Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 7:29 am
Should be required reading for anyone engaged in Catholic Youth Ministry, along with all bishops, pastors, and pastoral council members. Scott, I’d love to see you take the key ideas from this posting and turn them into an article for the Catholic community, who may get lost in the “youth pastor” language. As the first responded noted, it is the parish that is responsible for ministry to young people; the youth leader’s role is to marshall the parish’s resources so that the ministry can occur. Thanks for the great website and the opportunity to respond. Congrats also for your daughter’s great achievement. Toast!
Comment by Dan Mulhall — Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 9:07 am
Thank you Scott for your wise words. They do well to remind us all of the importance of including within our busy schedules time for reflection on just how well our parishes are being empowered to lead.
I have found along with reflection this will also involves a plan. I think we might consider sharing resources that delve into the very practical leadership strategies neccessary in allowing a parish to own such a vision of becoming. Also important is the provision of implementation tools for parishes to create such plans. The Book entittled “Growing an Engaged Parish” by Albert L. Wiserman( Gallup Press, 2007.) gets at some of this topic. In a perfect world leadership would invite staff to create a practical checklist of desired outcomes and then invite parish councils and members of the parish into the process.
I consider myself blessed to have such a parish but I fear the reality is that many parishes do not pay attention to this process.
I feel for John, I agree with you that there will come a day when the parish will identify the need to care for the youth and that they will eventually own the effort. In the mean time someone’s( John’s) time intensive efforts, passion and progress have been interupted.
I would love to hear what others are doing within their parish to empower a vision that many own and does not reflect only their understanding of that vision.
Thank you Scott for creating this website, I think it is great!
Anne
Comment by anne sharkey — Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Scott:
First of all, I hope you’re doing well.
Secondly, thanks for posting this article. I read it on Marko’s blog the other day, and have been feeling very convicted by it. Seeing it on your blog is kind of like watching a movie the second time and picking up on things you missed.
Here are some of my thoughts, not necessarily in any order:
- So, I agree with everything that Mark said in his article.
- I think that anyone that chooses the vocation/profession of youth worker has a wonderful ability to serve and to incarnate God’s love in a community. Any youth minister that has this quality is more than likely good at this.
- Although I’m sure this is the same in the ministries of our Protestant brothers and sisters, it seems like Catholic pastors and parishes evaluate the work of youth minister (meaning, the person on the parish staff who is hired specifically to work with young people) based on the outcome of programs: how many teens are getting confirmed, how many teens came to youth group, how many teens participate in Sunday Mass?
- The lie that Mark discusses in his article (which, I can say that I’ve bought into and am currently living) is, in my opinion, caused by two things. The first is youth ministers who are either not equipped to be effective leaders or choose to “get things done” instead of empowering other people to take ownership. The second is the motivation of “getting things done” is NOT because any youth minister wants to work 12-13 hours a day. It is simply that we want our pastors and parish staff to know that we are actually earning the salary we are paid. So, producing a video about a trip or hosting a clothing drive are much more tangible measurement of job performance than the counseling/prayer time/teaching moments with and for teens.
- We are visionary, top-down leaders because, well, we feel like our job and our salary and our “authority” depends on it. Rightly or wrongly, youth ministers, particularly in the Catholic Church, have been put on a pedestal. My spiritual director said to me once, “No one wants your job.” I think he was only expressing what many adults feel: youth ministry is good and necessary but thank God there is someone to deal with those teens.
- So, youth ministers need to change their focus. A college student asked me for help on a paper she was writing on ministry and posed the question “What would you do differently?” Being a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers I wrote, “To be more Phil Jackson, and less Kobe Bryant”. There are people who are good at youth ministry. But the people who are REALLY good at youth ministry make other people good at youth ministry.
- BUT, if we youth ministers have to change, so does the culture of expectation of the youth minister in our parishes. And that has to start with our pastors and parish staff. There needs to be better understanding of the characteristics of a professional youth minister. We should not be defensive about why we do what we do, but to clearly state that if we are not in our office during normal business hours for the rest of the staff, we are leading a lunch time bible study at a school or networking with other youth workers or supporting teens at a sporting event or play or, fancy this concept, praying.
- If a youth minister is supposed to advocate for others, who will advocate for the youth minister?
- We in the Catholic youth ministry world need to rethink how we train and empower the men and women who serve the Church and its young people. Yes, we need to have training on how to better run a Confirmation program or youth group night or mission trip or relational ministry. Some people have gifts in certain aspects of ministry and need to learn how to be better in other areas. But, if we buy into what Mark says in his article, all of us, regardless of experience, education, charism or training, need to be leaders. If there is truth in what Mark says, I would say that many youth ministers either don’t know how to lead or forget that leading other people is part of their ministry. I am personally in both categories. And, trust me, it’s not a good place to be.
Mark’s words are certainly challenging. But, how can those words become a reality?
Comment by Pat Villa — Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
I absolutely agree with this article. Our job in ministry is to help people identify their gifts and use them. We are all called by our baptism to ministry and when you or I think we are the only ones called or qualified to do it all then we do not allow others to answer that baptismal call. I started in youth ministry 23 years ago and when people ask me how I lasted this long I tell them that I didn’t do it alone. I always have a team – called by God!
Thank you for your great website!
Comment by Lisa Kurnik — Tuesday, October 7, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Such great comments and questions. My only suggestion is that the “how” question wait a bit. Asking the “how” question too early never allows for change, it only leads to more of the same. The questions you are all asking are so good, they lead to more questions, which helps you understand in greater detail what this might look like. As you’ve said, what are the implications for expectations for parish staff?; is this an style a leader can just switch on, or does it take a community making a shift and how does that happen?
I appreciate you joining in the conversation. I’m learning from you. Thanks.
Comment by riddle — Wednesday, October 8, 2008 @ 8:20 am
I was curious…. what do see is the role of the youth minister?
Comment by Jess — Wednesday, October 8, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
Jess- you might be asking two different questions…
1) What is the role of the coordinator of youth ministry?
2) Who are youth ministers?
Mark Riddle’s article indicates, and I agree, that the role of the coordinator of youth ministry is much larger ad bigger than working with a small singular group of kids within the parish. S/he is the leader of a core team, making sure that venues are available to our young people to explore their faith.
The youth minister, therefore, is the catechist, confirmation sponsor, volunteer, program leader who assists/ collaborates within a venue in service with young people. The parish provides youth ministers and does not delegate away its responsibility to serve the youngchurch.
Comment by Scott — Thursday, October 9, 2008 @ 10:57 am
Great article! As much as I started out thinking I would be leading teenagers, I am now so much more aware of how I lead parents, youth ministry volunteers, parishioners, and staff!
I know I have to have help in order to make youth ministry grow. My challenge is to push myself into uncomfortable places and encourage adults who are downright afraid of teens. My comfort is to work with the teens, but my call is to help other adults learn about, try, and find a love of working with our teens!
Comment by Katie — Sunday, October 12, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
I’ve been conflicted about this ever since I first read the article, but didn’t feel I should post something until this morning.
But I take objection/offense to the way Mark describes his attitude to the youth minister in the story he tells to introduce the article. You can go back to the top and read it. But here’s the quote:
“I didn’t tell him this, but it’s probably for the best.”
I DIDN’T TELL HIM THIS, BUT IT’S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST?
I don’t know John. Never have, and will probably never meet John. But if he responded to God’s call to serve the church, he should be shown a great deal of gratitude, not kicked to the curb and told to have a nice life.
I can relate to the attitude John expressed in his phone conversation with Mark. I can honestly say I’m in the same place.
John probably made the same mistakes I’ve made (which were all pointed out in the article). Many of you reading this have probably made the same mistakes too.
However, doesn’t the parish leadership and community have some accountability in this? It’s sad that “it’s probably for the best” has to come at the expense of a humble servant. Because if this is case, then we should all join John and resign now.
While John and me and other youth ministers have failed at “asking for help”, we still embraced the mission of advocating for young people.
Then the question becomes, who will advocate and stand with the youth minister?
Comment by Pat Villa — Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
[...] made pitches regarding not going it alone in catholic youth ministry and involving many others to make it all happen. Here’s even more motivation… to quote the internal thought of the Clinton [...]
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