Dealing With Our Disappointments Without Destroying Others
“How honest should I be with my students?”. This is the question I asked myself in my inner debate over whether I should share my disappointment with them concerning their lack of motivation in bringing guests to our youth meeting. My concern was that my words would deflate them and make me look weak; like…
Spiritual Self Defense For Youth Pastors
I was a big comic book reader. In many of the comics I read I would see an ad for Tony Atlas body building, like this. In my view, the guy/girl usually getting sand kicked in their face, in the church, is the youth pastor. The “bully” could be anyone, the pastor, a board member,…
Dealing With Pre-Youth Group Anxiety
There are weeks where I struggled with pre-youth group anxiety. I was anxious with questions like would the service go well? was I prepared? was the sermon good enough? would the students like the game? These questions were all part of my need to make sure things were perfect. Why? Why did I need to…
The 7 Expectations Every Youth Pastor Has To Meet
I am going to guess that you have not reached point where you do not care about expectation. You do not have the clout or the cash to say, “I don’t care what you think”. Which means you’re middle management. You care about what the people above you think, what the people below you think…
A Youth Pastor’s Guide To Self Care During Social Distancing
One of your main jobs is building community, which is tough to do in this season. Social Media was the extra stuff you did to connect, now it’s the only thing you use to connect. If you’re an IRL people person, all these video screens may have you stressing and I want to encourage you…
Taming The Monster Of Depression
I put together a newsletter every few weeks for my subscribers called The Youth Ministry Round Up. I fill this youth ministry newsletter with articles, videos, quotes, etc. and in the last Youth Ministry Round Up I featured a video called The New Great Depression by Moth and The Flame. The video, featured below, is…
What Does Happiness Look Like?
I attended the TRIBE conference a few months ago and one of the speakers, Alli Worthington I believe, spoke about happiness and defining what happiness looks like to us. I would say that I’m, generally, a happy person, but traditionally unhappy when thinking about where I am in life. This is a running theme though…
Protected: What Christians Should Know About The Devil And Mental Health
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Healthy Ministers Part 2: Dealing With Emotional Attachments To Our Hurts
Yesterday I shared some thoughts on staying emotionally healthy in ministry and today I want to share where most of my emotional upheaval comes from in one word: Expectations Ministry and the church, unlike a corporation, comes with some non-negotiable values built into it that you expect people to embrace. Corporations do not ask you…
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