The punk band The Clash and youth pastors have one thing in common: they keep asking the same question, “should I stay or should I go?” It doesn’t surprise me anymore when youth pastors tell me they are considering leaving their current church position. I think most youth pastors are consistently thinking about moving on. I am starting to believe it’s because they didn’t ask good questions in the hiring process. They just thought, I need a job so I will take this one. This leads to poor fits and a lack of satisfaction at work.

When considering leaving, ask yourself this question, “would I go to this church if I didn’t work here?” If the answer is yes, then work at staying. Meet with the church leadership and connect with them about what you like about the church and your role . Listen to them and try to understand their heart and how you can change to be more a part of the church. If the answer is no….. you probably know what to do.

I am coming to realize one of the most important actions I can do for my team is bring focus. Through meetings, personal conversations, and intentional interaction I need to keep bringing up to my teammates the focus of our ministry and purpose. We are now three months into this ministry year and the vision casting we did as leaders back in August is long forgotten. We need to be creative on how we continue to bring our teammates back to the focus on our ministries. Here are a few ideas:

1. Focus statement
Have the team come up with a statement that explains the purpose of the ministry today. This statement should include what is happening in the ministry currently and what results are being seen.

2. Short – term goals
Make a real short term goal for your team based on the vision you cast in late summer. For example: here at LT we want to get new people into our database and we have a goal for the year. So I made a goal for this month that is less than the year goal but still a challenge for the team. This brings the team back to the focus of getting people into our database.

3. Give small rewards
When someone on your team lives out the mission, call them up front and give them a small reward like dinner at your place. This will remind people of the mission and it will reinforce their focus on it.

More and more people are telling me not to use the word leadership. People don’t like it; they don’t like the leaders they see in life and they don’t like the responsibility that goes with being a leader. Use words like influencer or change agent or maybe facilitator. These are all good words and important positions but none of them carry the weight of leader.

I am not going to stop using the word leader because I believe what we need in the church is leaders. I am not going to water it down or make it seem like something less. Backing down never works and making people happy just leads to mediocrity. Be a leader in your church but know this: it will cost you more than you want to spend, it will take more time then you have, and it will take you on an adventure that you will never forget. Lead on!

What do you do when…..  A student responds to a Bible study question, but you know there is more for the student to uncover? Do you ask a follow up question or do you just let it go? Often times I find adults don’t want to push students. Maybe they think students won’t like them or they are not sure if the student can answer the question? Whatever the case, we as teachers have to ask ourselves, what is our priority?. Is it for the student to learn or is it for us to feel good about ourselves? Courage and teaching go hand-in-hand. For us to have courage we must first have our priorities straight.  Jesus did, just read the first seven chapters of Mathew. Jesus goes right after the toughest topics of his days. Or how about the women at the well, did Jesus back off there? No, we can’t either. Let’s challenge our students and push them to think in church. Let’s make our first priority their growth.