MW- Professional Ministry (what does that even mean?!)

Here’s the thing about Youth Ministry: It’s not a real job. I try and try to make it a real job, and to justify my work to my friends, but I’ve finally resigned to the fact that the energy I expend, and the reason why I get paid, will remain elusive to most of the people I’m close to. This isn’t to say I don’t put in a fair amount of hours, but there are days when it feels like I’m just not doing anything. I try to explain to people what I do with my office hours and usually the first thing is “I blog” and they’re like “so the church pays you to blog?” and this is kind of true, they do, but that’s not in my job description, that’s not really my job.

At the end of the month I’m going to be ordained, and it really got me thinking about what is the role of the “professional youth minister” what does it mean when I receive that title of minister (right now I’m technically a coordinator).  There’s already a great blog post about what it means to be professional so I’ll save you from that ranting (check it http://informalthumbsup.com/2011/youre-a-professional-youth-pastor-so-be-a-professional/), but I do want to talk about that idea of being a professional minister.

it's like normal ministry but with crazy ties!

You know when you come home at night after a hard day’s work and you think to yourself, “well it’s back to the grind in the morning, but for tonight I’ll just chill and watch some crappy reality television.” For some people when they’re sitting there they are calculating things in the back of their mind. There are overworked CFO’s who go through the economics of each show, examining each for it’s quality to cost ratios. There are electricians who see the flicker of the light in the background and can’t help but think of all the man hours that went in to that one thing that no one really noticed.

So as a minister I imagine that I would go home and see all the amazing ways God is working through the show, and I do. I see God working through so much. I see God moving through not just the plot, or the actors, but the economics and the electrical work, it ends up becoming like this weird “A Beautiful Mind” style montage of all these facts and connections flying through my head, and I end up stuck on this one thought: “How can I get others to see what I see, how can I make the world more like what I know God sees it as?”

This task is impossible.

unless you're ok with being a paranoid schizophrenic.

The biggest difference between a pastor and most other jobs is that at the end of the day you won’t have completed much, especially in comparison to the task at hand. There is always more to do, and you don’t have certain things delegated to you that you can cross off a list, at least not in my case. I create my own lists.

At first it starts with something simple like “wake up” and then maybe “eat breakfast” and then this thought comes to mind, the same one that I asked before “How can I get others to see what I see?” What are you supposed to write on a list that helps complete that task? It’s such an abstract goal and as you examine it more you come to simple answers like “my role is just to honor God” but what does that really mean. You start to add things to the list like “read my Bible” or “listen to a sermon online” “read a blog” but there are many Christians who aren’t pastors who do that for fun. So you’ve now turned your Christianity into a delegated work task and if you read enough Youth Ministry blogs you’ll learn that is not the healthiest way to have a relationship with Christ.

Then if you did all of those things you still would be a crappy youth pastor. You can read your bible everyday and still not ever talk to a student about Christ. So you come to this realization that you need to be doing ministry. And the catch phrase for this blog is… but what does that really mean?

"and how is that working out for you?"

Do I just talk to any student about Christ, or do I try to talk to as many students as I can? Do I just talk to students, since after all I am a youth pastors? Most people would say you need to talk to parents and students. So now I just have to avoid people who are out of school and don’t have children, but there are a ton of people like that who are struggle and God is pretty clear that we should be helping the poor, right? So I should probably do that.

And now I’m here with this obligation to help every person everywhere try and understand the glory of Christ. But how does that even work?

What do I do? Am I supposed to sit them down and give the best sermon I possibly can? That’s not going to feed the homeless. So do I just go around feeding people and not telling them about the gospel, well then how am I really a minister? So there’s this healthy balance between the two that I’m supposed to be knowledgeable of and walk carefully.

But here’s the real issue.

that's right, in all it's glory!

I’m not good enough to constantly, with every part of my life, remain knowledgeable of this perfect balance while also trying my best to maintain a personal and public relationship with Christ, which is really weird cause so many people don’t even see him, so you end up doing all of these things that make people really uncomfortable, but your job is to make them feel comfortable and challenged in Christ.

And then you end up in the same place. This task is impossible. There’s no way I can do this.

I’m reminded of this when I talk to my friends who aren’t believers. I find myself reminded of who I was before I really knew Christ and I realize that person is still deep inside of me, searching for approval and acceptance in the world. I’m reminded of how easy it is for me to fall back into sin, and how broken I really am, and I can’t help but think that maybe Christ didn’t do anything spectacular in my life and now I’m trying to convince all of my friends of this lie that he did, and can in them.

See the real job of the minister, the real work they put in day after day, and the hours they log after office hours are done, is to look at how unexplainably small they are and how huge the world is, and how much they’ve already failed at and say “God is bigger, and he will work through me.” That means hunting down every little thing in your life and never being content with stagnancy while still knowing that Christ loves you for exactly who you are, and day after day when you see the friends who may not get it or you think you don’t get it either you get back up because you remind yourself that Christ did it first. Christ faced all of these struggles and worse.

You live with the questions.

You live with the doubt.

You live with the stress and the confusion and the disappointment because you’re reminded that Christ, even as a human, was still so infinitely bigger than the biggest thing that stands against you. My job, and the one I’m accepting on Dec. 23^rd, is to always remember that and always fight against my sin and my laziness.

Now why I get paid for that is a whole other story.

As always, thanks for reading.