Are you called to Youth Ministry?

Let’s Start at the Top

            Someone has to be in charge.  There has to be a head, a visionary, and a leader through whom God can breathe the work of ministry.  Any animal with more than one head is a freak.  This assignment is not a coveted position to be pursued or held onto as in a matter of possession.  Rather this role will hold on to you.  This is something you would just as soon run from as run to.  It is not what you are voted into but something that has seemingly by fate selected you.  You think about impacting the youth all of the time.  Casual everyday experiences remind you of new ideas to try with the youth.  If ever you are exposed to the ministry of an effective speaker or Christian band, your immediate thought will be, “How do I get the youth at our church to experience this ministry?”  You find that things that typically make you most angry are problems you would like to “fix” and it generally concerns the youth.  It is in your DNA.  You enter a room and move towards the youth before heading to socialize with the other adults nearby.  Connecting with the youth…it’s your thing, it’s in you, and it’s your assignment, youth leadership.  So lead!  From time to time inexplicable strong emotions overtake you at the hint of youth injustice.  Others do not respond the way you do and don’t understand why certain issues effect you how they do, particularly when it comes to the students.   You possess an innate youth advocacy disposition.  Don’t fight it…it’s you.  The angst you feel is most likely the result of your encounter with a youth-related injustice you were born to address.

            Our tendency though is to first look at our inadequacies.  After a quick inventory of all that we lack we are quick to disqualify ourselves from the task at hand.  We are more apt to pass the baton of leadership to someone we deem “more qualified” rather than launching out into the deep ourselves.  This kind of timid acquiescence sets us up for revolving struggle and frustration.  God would have never breathed into you this passion, at this time, and set you on this road without first providing for you adequate shoes to make the journey. His storehouse of resources is freely available for you to access in order to fulfill your God-given assignment.    Place the demand upon Him, and His ability to provide appropriate gifts and a winning skill set in you and around you.  This is not about you and your mission to do and accomplish, instead it’s about a Holy God wanting to display His Holiness through you by reaching the youth in a real, relevant, and effective way.  The result being, a motivated and empowered youth advocate, humble enough to allow the God of the miraculous to produce an effective ministry of life-change among the students, yet bold enough to take the mantle of leadership and forge confidently ahead.  God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the ones that He calls!  It’s man that looks on the outside, it’s God that is looking at the heart.  While you waste precious time in hesitation, intimidated by your ideal of another who is “more suited to lead” God continues to admonish as He did through Samuel to Jesse who brought his favorite son before the man of God to be king:  “I have rejected him, bring me David, he is the one.”

You may not identify with this characterization of your call.  If that is the case, perhaps you need to re-examine your assignment.  If however your heart has said, “Amen!” you are in the right place.  You are the one, so take off your coat and make dust in the world.  When the door opens walk faithfully through it.  And if you are certain that this us who you are but the challenge of leadership threatens your confidence and muffles your courage, take heart.  We should never doubt in the darkness what God has spoken to us in the light.  Numbers 23:19 assures us that if God has said it…praise God, He will do it!

(Adapted from the ebook, "Bringing The H.E.A.T." by Steve Fitzhugh)

---