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Earning Their Respect

I preached a message one Sunday morning, and afterwards a lovely, gray-haired, older lady came up to me and offered some encouragement. “You’re going to make a wonderful pastor someday,” she said with all sincerity. I smiled and said thank you and went about my business. I was pretty new to full-time youth ministry at the time, but I still remember exactly how that well-intentioned remark made me feel. I have no doubt she meant what she said to be an encouragement, but here’s what I heard: “You aren’t a real pastor yet, but when you get your chance you might get to be a good one.” We’re the Rodney Dangerfields of ministry. “We don’t get no respect.”

If you’ve been involved in youth work for any significant amount of time, I have no doubt that you’ve had similar experiences. In a church with multiple pastors on staff, the youth pastor is the lowest on the pay scale. Want to find the youth office? Look for the smallest room with a couch. I’ve even heard of youth pastors who—as part of their job descriptions—were required to mow the grass and shovel snow. We work with the most fickle and confusing group of people in the church. We’re the ones who stay late and field countless phone calls at all hours of the day and night. We spend hundreds of hours sleeping in gyms and church basements. We travel more than most, taking teens to all parts of the country and (with a few exceptions) bringing them home safely. We’re responsible for teaching a new generation how to love and serve a living Savior, yet when it comes to everyday respect, we get very little.

Before we get too critical of churches, I think it’s important for us to understand that, in many ways, we’ve dug this hole ourselves. The lack of respect we receive as youth pastors is directly proportionate to the way many of us have abused the position. We’re the ones who have used youth ministry as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. We’re the ones who, in order to get our foot in the door of a church, have agreed to serve as youth pastor knowing full well that it’s not really what we want to do or what we’ve been called to do. We are the ones who use, yes “use,” teens to further our careers and climb the ecclesiastical ladder of success.

How many senior pastors, education pastors, and mission pastors got their start working with teens? I’m not suggesting that all former youth pastors are people who have used youth ministry just to further their careers, but I am suggesting that some of us have been less than honest with those we’ve served. We’re a select group. We’ve gained the trust of teenagers—those who give their trust to very few. We’ve told them that they’re important to us, that we love them, and that we would do anything for them. And we’ve done this with little or no intention of sticking around to see them through these toughest years of their lives.

We’ve earned the lack of respect in many ways because we have a reputation—and it’s not a good one. We stay at our ministries for an average of 14 months, and oh, how we love to blame churches for that statistic, too! But the reality is, churches spend thousands of hours and dollars looking for the right people to minister to their teens—an indication that the church does indeed value youth work on some level. Then the person they labored to find moves onto greener pastures after little more than a year. Can we blame those churches if they begin to view youth ministry as an entry-level job? That’s what we’ve communicated to them.

So, how do we change the perception? How do we get the respect we feel we deserve? We can rant and rave to our church leadership and write scathing articles in the church newsletter, but I don’t think that’ll have much of an effect. How about this: we can look deep inside ourselves and discover that we’re part of the problem. I have little doubt that churches need to change the ways they view youth ministry. But, in order for that to happen, the way we view youth ministry needs to change first. We need to stop treating our ministries as a training ground for more important things. We must see our positions for what they really are—a valuable, worthy pursuit, calling, and career that deserves our full, undivided attention.

We all grow and change in different ways, including our vocational passions. And I’m not suggesting we stop pursuing other areas of ministry. If, in God’s providence, we’re called to move into other ministries, wonderful! But, until that time, we must put our whole hearts into our youth ministries and refuse to give into the temptation to use them as preparation for our “real” careers. Anything less and we’re dishonoring those we serve. Worst of all, we’re dishonoring the God we serve.

Brian Hennon is the youth minister at Living Water Community Church in Harrisburg, Penn.