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Sacrifice: What Does It Really Look Like for a Youth Worker?

Sacrifice. I think I’ve always understood that to be a youth worker I would need to sacrifice. But lately I’ve been waking up to the reality of what that sacrifice really means. I’m a second-generation minister, so many of the intricacies of a ministry lifestyle are well ingrained into my default operating system. And though I’ve spent the past 34 years of my meager existence perfecting my finely-tuned coping mechanisms, I recently encountered a familiar set of emotions far too close to the surface—a lonely feeling mixed with righteous anger and clear loss of control over the variables in my life…but it’s even more complex than that. The chinks in my well-polished armor are showing, and I need to take cover. So I hopped into my ’85 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (the same one the kid from the lock-in puked all over earlier today) and hit the road to think.

Youth ministry wallows in a sort of underdog persona—much of it well-founded. Let’s face it: many people just don’t get youth work. Why would anyone want to devote a life to connecting to the most turbulent time in the development of a human being—one most people would like to forget? So while most of adulthood is busy disconnecting with youth, we take on the daunting task of being a lighthouse in the stormy teenage years. We face political opposition inside our churches, marital volatility because of the schedules we keep, deep disappointment when students let us down, and organizational nightmares (how about the 5th chartered bus breaking down in the middle of the Yukon on a service trip?).

We fuss and we fume over repeated injustices served to us by those who don’t understand. We desperately long to see some small piece of our unquenchable idealism realized. Sure, we revel in the one or two kids who choose to become youth pastors, but the joy is cut short when we realize the life we’ve just encouraged them to lead. And when they pick up the phone after five and a half months to call you with tears behind every word, it quickly becomes more fuel in the fire against all the injustices served to us.

But something is gnawing at my guts, something deeper and more profoundly troubling than I can adequately express. This little verse haunts me, about having to take up my cross and follow Jesus. I wonder what he really meant by it. Is there something I’ve missed, or more conveniently, forgotten? I’ve preached and “youth talked" these verses to death, and I’ve always thought I was a pretty good example of what it meant to be a cross-bearing follower of Christ. But there I was, yelling my head off at my dear wife, screaming about how my life was not my own and why couldn’t there just be a few hours of one day where I could do what I wanted to do. And I realized that I’d started to think that I didn’t deserve to sacrifice so much for this job, sacrifice so much for Christ.

Can you see my dilemma?

What do we sacrifice as youth workers? The cross shows us two levels of sacrifice: the first, superficial and physical (beatings and crucifixion); the second, deep and personal (God turns away). This second level might look especially different for each follower of Christ. As a youth worker, when I dig down past the superficiality in my life, I find some deep stuff that I’m not sure I’m ready to lay down and sacrifice, especially in the areas of sanctuary and identity.

Sanctuary

This is that place of peace, rest, and well-being. I’m a busy guy, but this is more than just about not being busy. It’s more than just giving up moments of solitude and silence. It’s also about giving up the ability to sit buck naked with my favorite beverage and do whatever I jolly well like.

A friend of mine suggested to me that I should go check out a local retreat center run by nuns. He assured me, “You spend one day there every week, and you’ll be able to hold your middle finger up to all other agendas and focus on God’s agenda for your life."

That would be great, but how do I do it? What does my senior pastor think about me not being in the office or not being able to hang out with kids because I want to take time for myself? And I can see my wife’s eyes glaze over with longing—wishing I wasn’t behind in planning that next event and able to spend one more night with her and the kids. How can I be that selfish? “What are we paying you for?" I hear the review committee saying.

The fact is, the experiences of sanctuary are rare, almost nonexistent in my life. And when they do come, I’m riddled with guilt for taking them. And if they were rigidly scheduled, would that really be sanctuary, or would it be escapism? Isn’t sanctuary supposed to be a place you can run to at a moment’s notice?

I’ll read Brennan Manning, even attend his retreat, but Brennan is strangely absent at 3:00 a.m. after I’ve spent the night with a kid who wants to commit suicide. The fact is that my life is not my own. There’s the external expectation of work and home and the internal, haunting thoughts that whisper my own inadequacies, both of which keep pushing me to go, go, go. And I can dream that somehow the expectations of my boss (or bosses), parents, and other agencies don’t affect me—but then I don’t have a job. Students decide when they want me to be there for them—not the other way around. And my wife would really like some help cleaning up the house before her Tupperware party. So I blaze ahead. Sure, I can create sanctuary experiences for other people (and I often have), but those experiences are not mine.

Then I see Jesus getting exasperated at the Samaritan woman. She begs him for help. He reluctantly gives in to her request and doesn’t just squeak out a miracle but calls on his every resource to accomplish God’s good purpose for this woman. And I look at myself and can’t help noticing how selfish I’ve been to expect that I should be entitled to this idea of sanctuary.

“Can you be okay with possibly never having sanctuary?" I ask myself. And I have to admit that it makes me angry. This is too much; this is too far; it’s not fair; it doesn’t have to be like that. Or does it? Christ had nowhere to lay his head. I realize that I’ve been keeping track of all of my work, thinking that I was somehow entitled to some “me" time. My life’s not my own. The sooner I deal with that, the sooner this silly selfish game of mine can stop. And there’s a glimmer of hope as I vaguely remember reading somewhere about God’s power being made perfect in weakness. So I pick up my cross—it really is heavy.

Identity

This is that sense of who you are—an individual, distinct and self realized, something more than what everybody else expects you to be. I catch myself time and again trying hard to carve out distinct character traits. Somehow I need to be distinct—eccentric, different. It’s how desperate I am that bothers me. I’ve become almost psychotic, multiplying my personalities to accommodate my need for a distinct personal boundary or to fit the occasion in which I find myself.

Inside I’m tired and worn out, but outside I’m giving my objective opinion on the new building project. I walk out of the lingerie store in the mall and run into three dear single ladies from our church. Like I said, multiple personalities suddenly appear. And in the process it seems I’m losing a clear sense of who I am.

“All things to all people," Paul writes. But I’ve felt more than guilty showing up at a care group Bible study—engaging my pastoral mode and giving perspective and input when I really didn’t want to be there in the first place. A non-churched family asks me to do their son’s funeral—I do it even though it’s the first funeral I’ve ever done, and it’s a suicide. Am I faking it? Maybe, but then again, could it be more of what I really signed up for in this ministry? They thank me for my sermon/talk—thinking that this will make me feel good—but they never tell me how it changed them. I smile and let them think they’ve made me happy. These are the head games that make me spin.

I’m a dad who needs to work on being more sensitive, but my youth think I really care about their difficulties. I’m a husband who just needs to be there more often, especially if I want to have a sex life. As a youth pastor, I’m on call 24/7. I’m overweight and know that I need to be disciplined in my exercise—and I just finished a series of senior high talks on the spiritual disciplines.

I’m enough of a thinker to start writing this article, but I’m so out of practice that I forget how to say things right. I’m more than just a gross-food-game-idea-mill! (I’m screaming now, can you tell?) If I like beer, is that okay? And here is where the image of the angry toddler surfaces. I’m stamping my feet. I’m digging in to get my own way. I can’t be who I really want to be. Just yesterday I caught myself saying, “Are the rest of you in the men’s choir going to be wearing a suit jacket?" What was I thinking? If I had my druthers I would show up everywhere in a lumberjack shirt and ratty jeans!

Then I see Jesus at the wedding at Canaan and I’m humbled. “No, it’s not my time," he says. But somebody got wind that he could do tricks, and he’s not going to get off that easy. I can just see Jesus thinking, “What am I, some kind of wonder toy that you just wind up and out pops a miracle?" Do one miracle, and they always want another one.

Volunteer to videotape a wedding for a couple in a pinch, and they want you to video the next 72 weddings in the church. I don’t even own a video camera. I show them how handy those handheld intercoms can be at the youth drama production, and the next thing you know the secretary buys a set for her and me to share (I don’t even have a cell phone—I don’t want to be reached that easily). I like anything by Compay Segundo, so why are there so many cheesy worship CDs in my collection? I hate any kind of music that has the word “core" in it, so why do I book those bands for my outreach stuff? I’m annoyed at pat answers and Christian cheese, but Richard Foster doesn’t produce a nice neat lesson plan. I favor discipleship over the instant Christian concept, but my advisory council wants to know how many conversions I’ve had this year. I would love to drive anything but a mini-van if I could only justify less room for transportation for a youth event. Some guy at the gas station tells me what a great “f-ing" deal he got on his new motorbike and then asks me what I do for a living.

I usually wave at every car that passes me in town, because if I don’t, someone is going to think that I’m stuck up—even though I usually can’t tell who’s in the car. I call it “creative movement," not dancing. I tell my own children stories of “ministry" exploits like getting some junior highers to eat copious amounts of sardines; then my kid asks me if I ever had a real job like his friends’ dads. I can’t scream at the kid who puked all over my car.

Am I a fake? Or worse, am I shallow? No, I’m coming to terms with the fact that my character is completely bound up in my vocation. I am a youth worker. The cross seems rougher than it did at first. Can I accept this distorted identity that is mine to carry? Can I accept losing my identity entirely? Can I stop being that selfish?

It’s no wonder that Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?" and “Who do you say that I am?" But even in those questions I see Jesus selflessly handing over his identity to what God could reveal through his peers. Those who lose their lives will find them. At the very core I have to give up being selfish and give in to the new identity that Christ wants to reveal in and through me, and I need to face that prospect with joy.

I’ve been in this racket for 10+ years. There’s a lot to complain about. There’s a ton of injustice. The Dangerous Wonder column by Mike Yaconelli always rang true for me…but I’ve never photocopied one of those articles and placed it on my senior pastor’s desk. Does the mere recognition of those injustices reveal my own pride and selfishness? In some ways it does. I’ve elevated my own status beyond the need to suffer. I’ve forgotten that as a child of heaven, I inherit God’s glory, but I also share in God’s suffering. I’m still called to be a youth worker—armed with idealism, passion, compassion, and God-given grace for these next generations. I don’t have to walk away from that. But I have to learn to accept the pain that goes with the territory—I’m sure it’ll never be easy to suffer or sacrifice. But I want to stop thinking that I’m too good to have to sacrifice the really important things. So I take up my cross—maybe for the first time.

Dale Friesen is the Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry at Coaldale Mennonite Brethren Church in Alberta, Canada. He’s a 13-year youth ministry veteran who describes himself as “just a plain overweight youth guy with an unusual propensity for changing my hairstyle and drinking copious amounts of coffee. I can play the guitar and sometimes dream about being an actor. Little gives me more pleasure than when the light goes on for one of my kids."