recently i filled out my self-evaluation for my job performance as director of youth ministries at hfumc. in this evaluation as in every other prior evaluation i have a statement that seems to find its way  in there that "i struggle with a constant tension between the relationship and administration of my ministry." what that means, and my staff parish understands this about me, is that i am a relationship minister at the core. i get rejuvinated from being around folks in conversation, helping them through tough times, praying for them, teaching something as a mentor to them. however, i find that most of my work is held up in the administration of my job. this isn’t to say that i do not appreciate that aspect of my job. in fact, if i ignored it, i would not be in my job now (is there a parallel that youth ministers avg shelf life is 12-18 months?). what this "tension" for me is that administration is not my gift and it takes extra energy, time, and planning to do it well. it just is not my natural person.

now, i don’t know, but this may just be methodist church culture phenom, but it might not. the methodist church seems to always roll with a solo youth pastor. they are a one person show. all communication, information, paper pieces, new ideas, training, finances, implementation, planning, etc comes out of that one body. if one is lucky, as i am, you have staff that serves the whole church, which is able to help you out. my church staff happens to be wonderful and they cover my butt constantly, but their help is, in ways, limited to their specific tasks (ie. finance person holds my books and covers all our cash flow needs, but they do not send my mail). it is strange this one person show and i started to wonder, why do we do this one person show. then i ran some numbers.

for my context

227 : youth on our roll currently (we added a few last night though)
454 : potential number for parents (not all youth have 2 parents, that is a max number)
25 : youth leaders that are not already parents
706 : total number of people in the HFUMC Youth Parrish

now, if i were a methodist pastor, appointed to a church with a roll attendance of 706 people what might my staff make up look like? it would not be a solo pastor. you would certainly have an associate, and probably would have one to two administrative people.

what are your numbers like?

my buddy mark devries has a bit of research they use at youth ministry architects that says that you need one staff person for every 50 youth and that adults can only keep around 5 deep relationships with youth at one time. so with a number like that in mind, is it any wonder that our real numbers of participation reflect about 28% of that population highlighted above?

no wonder i am tired all the time. i have to put on a mask of skills that is not my primary. in the last week we sent out a mass email, group text messages, a paper letter mailing to parents, a graphically enhanced postcard to all youth, and a number of phone calls. we had checks cut for future events, buying groceries and kitchen items to serve food with, driving youth to meetings, planning calendar, making copies, making more copies, cleaning our space, trashing my own office, cleaning a kitchen.. and the list goes on.

why does the church, as a general, see the youth ministry as some side piece of the church? they are a part of the church, and it is harmful to go off and create a separate church of youth, but administratively it seems logical to look at how you are staffing your church and give some equal value to youth, children, and other focus of the church community.

i am currently living in chaos. i am glad it is happening, there were times the chaos was in doubt. the chaos being some major overhaul to our youth space.

three years ago our group asked if we could paint the walls. i said "sure" (something i didn’t have proper authority to say in methodist church committee-land) so that got into, "can we…?" add on and do more and more stuff to the space. so i wrote a letter to our trustees asking for permission to discern and explore better use of our designated space. we spent the better part of the year, sitting & praying in our various rooms asking questions like "what do we hope to learn here?" "what is the mission of this room?" we then went on visits to other churches. then we came together and talked about what we felt was the mission of our space, how it could better function, and how it could sustain for future years of youth communities.

what we came out with was this idea for a "industrial cathedral" look. we are putting together a feature piece which is a media center and small group gathering bar. it will also serve for our food service. we created eating booths out of old church pews we got from a camp, that i just happened to know they are stored away in a basement. we’ve painted colors on the walls, we have photographs and original art pieces to add the space. our stage we lowered down and will finish off with some wood flooring to give a more intimate feel. our obnoxious pre-school chairs are going.. somewhere.. and we will get new chairs, new flooring a recycled carpet that is pretty cool. it’s been a major project.

the two years to get to this point have been plugged up in that wonderful methodist system. i like the system as it has its checks and balances. but when you have folks that can’t capture the vision of stimulating a creative mind and only see trash wrappers or a broken chair, then one is set for a long ride. our team though, because of our invested time in hearing God in our midst and asking the hard questions, knew this was more than just a whim and have kept at it. soon we will be close to done. we are actually finishing phase three. like any good methodist building project, there are ‘phases’ assigned to it. anyways, i’ve posted some pictures of the space as it is today. it will look different tomorrow as a crew of us will clean up the construction bits and pieces for sunday gatherings.

it is chaos right now, but we are hopeful that this will stimulate the creativity and passion in our youth community to move deeper into that relationship with God. it is a lot to ask of a room, but just as a sanctuary can move someone we feel this is our expression..