It came to me today that many of you have probably felt that this web site was remiss in offering practical encouragement to those who are laboring in the work of ministry. Here I am, 33+ years into this business, and I haven’t really shared much of the wisdom of my own experiences. I intend to correct that with today’s post.
In the following paragraphs, I am going to rescue those of you in ministry from the feeling you have that no one could ever be as bone-headed as you. From the annals of my own life and ministry, I share with you now the following true stories meant to encourage you to start tomorrow with a smile, saying “I may be an idiot, but I’m still way ahead of Spencer.”
As a bit o’ background, I was a youth minister- mostly- from 1976-1988. Then I pastored four years, but also did a lot of youth ministry in that church after the youth minister quit. NONE of the incidents recounted below happened where I’ve served since 1992.
BTW- in order to protect the innocent, I will change a few facts here and there, but I assure you that what you are reading is not fiction. 100% true.
1. I love hayrides. Ours got rained out, so smart guy here gets the church bus (used for senior adult trips), fills it with bales of hay and drives the kids around for a couple of hours. I’m not sure that bus ever was clean again. I got yelled at, deservedly.
2. I showed a movie to a large mixed group of families that had a flash of a woman’s breast. Everyone gasped. Of course I didn’t preview it.
3. I took my youth group to see the movie “Darkman.” I just didn’t realize that it was rated “R.” No sex or language, just a lot of intense violence, much like the average meeting of our junior high ministry. This one did not go unnoticed by a parent, so she arranged for a called deacon’s meeting and read the schedule of every movie ever played at that theater for the last couple of years. It was the closest I ever came to being fired and I totally deserved it.
4. Two of my deacons made a big deal about me taking the a.m. service ten minutes too long two weeks in a row, and they humiliated me in front of the rest of the deacons over it. No affirmation of my preaching at all. Just p.o.-ed that I had gotten them to the restaurants a bit late. I was angry; really angry. The next week I preached for 12 minutes total and dismissed the service at 15 minutes till noon. The reaction was predictable. I actually consider that one of my finer moments. If your view of preaching is “How soon do I get to dinner?” you deserve to be accommodated.
5. I scheduled a concert on a Friday night after football season was over. Well sort of over. It was the Saturday of the state championship game for our division, and our town’s team had been 0-11 the previous year. So what were the chances? Turns out pretty good. They made it all the way to the state championship. I had to cancel the concert and eat the deposit personally. (To soothe the pain, my kids took all the posters and plastered them on the walls, ceiling, floor, desk, etc of my office. Then stuffed the room with crumpled up posters that fell out when I opened my office door. Never say kids don’t care.)
6. We played soccer in the sanctuary. I think. I blanked this out. No one ever knew. I think a dog was in there, too.
7. A few of my students apparently used mission trips as an opportunity to get to know each other in the Biblical sense. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but several have told me about it since they’ve become adults. While I thought we were doing backyard Bible clubs, some of these little church angels were fellowshiping like bunnies at the first opportunity. I wasn’t totally unaware of this though. During a Christmas play rehearsal one year, I took some kids to a room to practice and walked in on two kids (not working with me) practicing something unrelated to Christmas in a Sunday School room.
8. I rented and showed “Bambi vs. Godzilla” at a mid-week Bible study. This was back on reel to reel. I have no idea what I was thinking.
9. I used Van Halen music as a wake-up call for a Baptist youth camp. Quite a few complaints, but I thought “Dancing in the Streets” was a good choice.
10. When I was in my first regular preaching gig at age 18, I tried to preach on the prophecy of Daniel’s 70 weeks. An old man stood up about half way through and said, “We have no idea what you are talking about, son.” Thanks to that man, I abandoned dispensationalism.
11. I had Jesus try to quit a Passion play I was directing. He said it was just too intense for him. (Totally true.)
12. One of the Oak Ridge Boys- I am not lying — crashed a revival I was preaching and demanded to be able to sing in the service. I said no and the guy said, “Do you know who I am?” and left cussing me. He had great hair and a hot wife.
13. I was hired to be a summer youth director only to discover there was a lay couple there, loved by the kids, busy doing great ministry for the past ten years. The pastor neglected to tell me he didn’t like these people. (He turned out to be a jerk no one could work with.) So I did nothing for two months but hang around while kids kept asking “Who is that guy?”
14. I brought in a band to do a concert, and the lead singer told such incredible, explicit drug use stories that the pastor pulled the plug on the show and sent everyone home.
15. I have attempted to work with a host of people- I mean several in various churches- who were all determined to fire me and I knew it. After working with one for weeks on summer recreation leagues, he brought me into the pastor’s office and promised to personally build and fund a new youth facility if the pastor would fire me immediately. He didn’t. I asked the guy for Reds tickets the next month. (I have a strange attraction to my enemies. It’s bizarre.)
16. I once hired a guy as an intern who spent the next three months trying to consolidate support to take my job. I kept asking him what he was doing and he’d say nothing. I finally got the nerve to fire him and he left the church and the faith. He married one of our youth group girls in a few weeks. He eventually became a lawyer, so he was in league with the devil.
17. I let some kids watch a movie on HBO (long ago) in my office. Listen folks. Don’t ever do that. I had more angry parents than I could count, even though the movie was harmless. I don’t know how I made it through that one. (I have problems with movies. Have you noticed?)
18. I once took our kids on a mission trip that we’d planned for months. Our contact was a local director of missions, not the pastor we would work with. All seemed fine. (Can you see this coming?) When we arrived, the pastor had no idea who we were, had no housing, no places for us to work and DIDN’T WANT US THERE. So we negotiated with him and he agreed to let us sleep in the church basement, feed ourselves and find our own places for Backyard Bible Club. He wanted nothing to do with us. The next morning was pouring rain, and there we were, on the streets, door to door, asking for homes to do Bible clubs for the area kids. This was not an area that liked Baptists, by the way. By noon, we had four places, none connected to the church. We had a great week, though the pastor treated us like a disease. When we were leaving, three of our boys were mooning him in the bus windows. I was almost angry at them. Almost. Lesson: ALWAYS make an advance trip yourself.
19. My first mission trip (1980) was worse, but it makes me look like such an idiot that I can’t tell you the whole story. It’s amazing my kids didn’t starve. I’ll just say that the two other youth leaders I worked with took me aside and had a talk with me at the end of the week. I got the message, and eventually became very good at mission trips to the inner city and Appalachia. And much better at planning.
20. Yes, I drove off and left a kid at a rest area once. Are you happy now?
21. Oh yeah. I was the lowest paid guy on a church staff where I worked, and the parents thought I did a good job, so they commandeered a business meeting, amended the budget and gave me a big raise. This was back in the day when $16k + benefits was normal for a new, full time, youth guy. I won’t tell all of this story, but I was counseled, for the good of the staff, the process, etc., to turn it down. And guess what? I did. I went before TWO morning services and declined the raise. I look back on that now and I hang my head in shame. Mama and Daddy did not bring up a boy to be that dumb, I promise. But that’s what church work will do for you. I think God has kept me poor ever since because “Well, OK…if you don’t want it…”
This. is. amazing.
Hey, what you directly witnessed aside, over time, many many many stories of having sex on mission trips are generated, with the truth to fantasy ratio heavily weighted to “you wish.”
Yeah, hard to prove a negative, but as one wearing many parallel scars to the ones you so candidly describe here, my various angles on ministry over the years tell me that there is a real cachet to claiming sexual activity on mission trips and at camp, but the actual success rate of getting to first base is down there with the Mets. World Series round the bases activity like the Cubbies.
But when there are people who want you fired, or defamed after you’re gone, it’s a real entree serving let alone a garnish for any other meal of gossip to claim you let *that* happen on your watch.
Anyhow, i’d be skeptical — but great post! I once threatened to leave a kid at a rest stop, well enough that the other kids said later it was a great bluff. Problem was: in the moment, it was no bluff. I was thatclose to doing it.
Oh, and once i offered to personally re-immerse the senior pastor for saying “is that kid really worth filling the baptistry for?” I guess they’d call it waterboarding today; my wife had just finished her degree, and so we left a few months after that.
Oh Michael, that was awesome. I loved it…did so many of those things myself. Once had a guy on a missions trip drop a power saw on one of our hosts heads from 10 feet while building a building.
Thanks for the laugh and the encouragement.
John
Jeff, I appreciate what you are saying and after 30 years with teenagers I am well aware of the lie-to-actual fact ratio. But I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t have first hand info from these students 15-20 years later. Many of those “kids” are now my adult friends.
peace
ms
Wow. You’re an amazing person. I say that not because of what you went through, but because of what you’re willing to publicly admit.
Geee. What did I admit? I was young and had a lot of experiences in this business as I grew up.
See I told you this would make everyone feel better.
On a youth group retreat I had my way with a pastors daughter. I was young and dumb. I never thought about what kind of bad position I would have put the youth leaders in, if this had come to light. I know of other kids in the church had similar experiences with said PK. This all happened a long time ago. So I know from experience that it does indeed occur.
I really enjoyed those. A nice ending to a great NW day.
We’d love to have you and your church join us in Michigan. We apparently have a much better process for our mission teams than you experienced (see Recruiting & Training Mission Teams – http://tinyurl.com/d5mhbx). It would be a great time.
Dear Beloved Rev.,
Greetings to you in his most trusted name of our lord and savior Jesus Christ!
I am pleased to introduce to you as Pastor. B. Sanjeeva Rao, serving the lord for the last 21 years in coastal area of Andhra Pradesh state (S. India) in Kotipalli and its surrounding villages and I have been ministering in 10 churches with 10 co-pastors who are young, anointed and dedicated to the service of God.
God made a miracle in my life when I came to see your website, I was light hearted to note the activities of your ministry that touched my heart greatly.
Ours is an independent ministry serving the lord with utmost faith only and there is no help and support from within abroad.
You are well aware the dreadful tsunami that hit coastal belt in 2004 during which time some of our church members reached the heavenly abode leaving their children Orphans. Keeping in view of the misery, we have taken in adoption 20 tsunami Orphan children according to James 1:27 and providing food, clothing, education and all accommodation at free of cost.
Part of our work we visit villages, knock door-to-door, distribute pamphlets, tracts and bible material, pray for the sick and needy and conduct rural village Gospel meetings, win their souls and leading them to the kingdom of God.
I was encouraged after having gone through your Id, website and decided to work with your ministry and in your fellowship.
On my behalf, on behalf of our co-pastors, church elders, Orphan children, widows and saints, I inviting you to visit India in the year 2009 to minister with us as we are much interested to see you in person, to have you in our midst and conduct crusade meetings, pastors’ seminar and village Outreach ministry and to win many a perishing souls to add to his kingdom and request you to join in prayer with us.
We were all praying for you daily in our personal, family and church prayers and request you to continue to pray for us, for our ministry and for our invitation to you to visit India to minister with us in 2009.
I look forward to hearing from you very soon,
Yours in Christ Jesus,
Pastor B Sanjeeva Rao.
I think you’ve got the makings of a book here — “Youth Gone Wild: A battle-scarred youth pastor exposes the dark underworld of youth ministry.” Write it, and I’ll buy a copy, I promise.
Wow. Greatest post EVER! I feel so much better for my numerous blunders. I’ve knocked a few off that list myself in only three years. Soccer in the sanctuary? Try ultimate frisbee. The sanctuary was brand spankin new.
But you are definitely a trooper. I’ve had enough scream-in-your-face board meetings already to know that I’d have found a different job after about half of what your list describes.
Thanks Monk for these really encouraging stories. God is faithful in spite of everything we do! In my first job I took the youth on a Ski Retreat. For all those reading please, never ever take the youth on a Ski Retreat unless the Church just wont let you out of it. It is expensive and almost nothing spiritual ever results- well that is not quite true, I gained a lot of humility.
How well I remember those days. I guess the worst we ever did was to try to scare the kids from all over the state who came to work at the State Fair church exhibit for our fellowship. Two other young preachers and I decided it would be funny to sneak up on the roof next to the fire-escape doors and wear monster masks and scream to jolt the guys awake at about 1:00 am. It worked great at first (you had to see this coming) as we all made it up to the roof by climbing on a window ledge and hoisting ourselves over the eaves. With masks on we crept closer to the door left open for ventilation on that August evening. There were guys all over the floor in their sleeping bags. When we yelled, several of them practically levitated. Laughing hysterically, we retreated down the side of the building. I went first and was down easily in no time. the next fellow came down easily, too. It was the third of us that sealed the deal by putting his foot through one of the windows into the sanctuary! (Did I forget to say this was on a Saturday night? Planning is everything!)
Not too many window stores are open at 2:00 am on a Sunday morning, so the hole was right there in all its glory when we assembled for services. We almost all got fired that weekend, but eventually cooler heads prevailed and we forked over about $100 each to replace the window.
That was the worst…or at least the worst i can share here. Don’t know how many of those folks have computers now.
absolutely hilarious. Not least the horny teenagers. I’m a pastor’s kid and I’ve never had the chance to do it in the Church.
Great post. LOL. Sounds like another website you need to manage!!!! Dumb things I have done. Thanks for the laughs.
I liked #6 the best: “We played soccer in the sanctuary. I think. I blanked this out. No one ever knew. I think a dog was in there, too.” I also liked the part in #6 where the old guy said, “We have no idea what you are talking about, son.†Honesty can be very funny sometimes! (But it may have not seemed funny to you at the time.)
Oops, typo in my last comment. The second thing I referred to was in #10. (I wish there was a Edit thing here for our comments.)
The list is humorous, but I like Pastor Sanjeev’s post the best. Where do I send my money?
Frank: Lol.
Bobby: Mercifully, I now have students to evangelize and disciple, but not a youth group. I did have many good years of outstanding mission trips in Chicago and Boston esp.
ms
I found a couple of youth sleeping in the same sleeping bag at my first “lock in” I put on. I also got permission from a probation officer to take a young man on a Busch Gardens trip. I did not bother to ask what this kid had done. When I got back home there was a message on my answering machine saying to keep him completely separated from young girls. Parents had a few questions about his ankle monitoring device.
Most of my battle scars come from my own refusal to do certain things as the youth/worship pastor Example: Every 4th of July we would have to take a Sunday to worship America instead of Jesus, a process I would have no part of. Typically I would take vacation every year around that time, but the new church I worked for liked to to this on memorial day, labor day, Flag Day, and there was one other for a total of 5 TIMES A YEAR. I don’t know why I ever took that job. Young and stupid and in need of employment.
Anyway, one of the last years there (just two years ago), the deacons told me they wanted me to do a patriotic special music, specifically the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Well there was no way in hell I was going to sing that song, pretty much at any time including in the shower or to save a puppy’s life. I suggested another song I knew, called “In God We Trust”, by Derek Webb. Sounds Great! But if you know the song, we can say that did not go over too well when I actually performed it.
I second Strider on the ski trips, unless you are, yourself, looking for a fast humility upgrade.
That’s it. I always suspected this.
My 6th grade son just ‘graduated’ to youth group.
We’re going back to home church now, baby … and home school and home movies and home grown food ….
Hefe,
A bit off subject, but man I’m with you. I though I was the only one that skipped services to avoid this stuff.
I always, always, previewed movies when I was in youth ministry- except once. We were having a movie night and one of my volunteers- a mid-30′s, single woman, who would never even think of watching something bad, chose a movie I did not have time to preview. We put it in the VCR and just a few minutes into the movie, her face got red, “No, no, turn it off I forgot…” Too late. Gratuitous nudity. We turned it off and played games. The next night I watched the movie. It was a great movie, with no other inappropriate scenes.
BTW, because my volunteer picked the movie and everyone in the congregation knew her, I did not get in trouble.
This does have the makings of a book, but it’d really be great to have a collaborative effort of many former youthies. Every one of us have stories like these, because we sure do some boneheaded things. Though I envy you, Michael; my first youth pastorate, fresh out of seminary (and a couple years, apparently, after your first gig), netted me only $FIFTEEN K a year, with the PROMISE of health insurance. The Colorado air aided our fertility, and within 10 days, our first was on his way. Oh, did I mention that the health insurance was only promised? The pastor, who’d failed in this, encouraged me to “do whatever it took” to make sure my previous insurance covered the baby. I wouldn’t. Guess who paid for the baby? And guess how long we lasted at that church (hint: they never met the baby)?
Of course, I had no one to blame but myself. When on our candidating trip, we were riding with the pastor when someone cut him off in traffic. He followed the guy into a parking lot, jumped out of the car, and challenged the guy to duke it out right there.
And we still took the job…
Michael,
I’m curious what you mean when you say they reacted “as you might expect” when you preached the 12 minute sermon. Were they livid, or happy to get to the restaurant early?
John
4. Two of my deacons made a big deal about me taking the a.m. service ten minutes too long two weeks in a row, and they humiliated me in front of the rest of the deacons over it. No affirmation of my preaching at all. Just p.o.-ed that I had gotten them to the restaurants a bit late.
So they could stiff the waitress with a tract instead of a tip? (Especially those tracts that look like a dollar bill until you unfold them…)
8. I rented and showed Bambi Vs. Godzilla at a mid-week Bible study. This was back on reel to reel. I have no idea what I was thinking.
9. I used Van Halen music as a wake-up call for a Baptist youth camp. Quite a few complaints, but I thought Dancing in the Streets was a good choice.
Both of these sound like my kind of crazy.
11. I had Jesus try to quit a Passion play I was directing. He said it was just too intense for him. (Totally true.)
Isn’t that the whole point of The Passion?
12. One of the Oak Ridge Boys- I am not lying- crashed a revival I was preaching and demanded to be able to sing in the service. I said no and the guy said, “Do you know who I am?†and left cussing me. He had great hair and a hot wife.
“Because I’m a CELEBRITY!!!!!!!!!!!”
14. I brought in a band to do a concert, and the lead singer told such incredible, explicit drug use stories that the pastor pulled the plug on the show and sent everyone home.
Probably got a LOT of interest from the teenage boys (“JUICY! JUICY! JUICY!”) before the pastor pulled the plug. (I thought Spectacular/Juicy Testimonies were part of the culture out there, but maybe that’s for Revivals and not Concerts.)
If the TV networks had any brains, this whole Youth Pastor meets Murphy’s Law could make a great High Concept for either a sitcom or reality show…
Well of course there were complaints about the Van Halen song…”Jump” would have been a much better choice.
This was a riot! As a youth ministry man myself, I read with much interest and finally broke out into audible laughter when I came to #18. I read a lot of blogs—like 150 or so. This is one of my favorites for 2009 so far. Thanks a ton.
imonk,
#10 made me laugh so hard that my coffee started projecting through my nostrils!
Thanks for a great Monday morning laugh!!!
chadwick
I’m not sure which to thank you for more — the early-morning laffs or the reminder of why I’ve never volunteered, EVER, to help with youth ministry. If it’s not your calling, stay the heck away, I say!
Totally with Ed and Hefe on the “God and country, but not in that order” issue …
Great. Now I’m going to have to clean up the coffee I just spewed on my computer.
Thanks for the laugh!
Very funny, you have a gift for the humorous phrase too “fellowshipping like bunnies” is both clever and amusing
Michael, your list is just not complete without an incident involving beer and underage youth-group kids AND underage youth [lay] ministers/volunteers.
IM, I think it’s great that you are willing to be authentic and vulnerable with your readers. If (as Bob suggests), you lose some (and I really doubt it), then they either weren’t very compassionate or didn’t have a sense of humor anyway. People make mistakes, and it’s nice of you to share yours so that others can learn (and laugh).
Twelve years of straight youth ministry would take some true grit.
Hey, if it weren’t for mission trips and Christian youth camps, I don’t know where I would have smoked my first cigarette, kissed my first boy, or mooned my first (and only) unsuspecting motorist.
Those poor youth leaders. Maybe they weren’t doing the greatest job they could, but we youth certainly didn’t help them out any.
So we’ve all left the occasional person after a trip, but my favourite (it didn’t happen to me rather a ‘friend’)…
Upon returning from a trip away the youth leader did a head count off the bus to find they had a EXTRA child!
It all worked out ok, kidnapping charges were not set in motion. The extra was one of the church young people who was at the same place as the trip with their parents… they forgot the parents were there.
Congratulations, Michael! I’m really glad (and faintly astonished) that you survived youth ministry. . .and that you still teach kids.
For some reason our youth group decided to perform this play. After performing it at the home church, they decided to take it on the road. I was the driver of the van. On the way home, one of the girls just wouldn’t sit in her seat, put on her seatbelt, stay out of the boy’s laps, etc. Right after going through the turnpike toll booth, I pulled over, had her step outside, and closed the door. I escorted her to the car behind us with the three female leaders and turned her over to them for the rest of the ride home.
I got back in the driver’s side, and drove back to the church. Boy, was it quiet in there all the way back. What I found out later was that in the dark, and the tinting on the van’s rear window prevented the kids from seeing the other car. They thought that I left her on the side of the road!
I later found out that this young lady’s mom was doing the “bunny” thing with her best friend’s father and the best friend was in the van with us also. That was my last trip in the van.
Yup, I think anybody who’s ever been involved in youth ministry has probably done had the “wow- shoulda previewed that movie” self-flagellation. In our case, one of the youth brought “Teen Wolf” to a lock-in (this was circa 1986). We didn’t want to show it, but caved, and were immediately sorry. Then to top it off, we had to endure a stand-up chewing-out with zero hours sleep from the youth pastor! Not a good night. But at least I learned something about listening to my instincts…
Loved the list. Sent it to our youth pastor. Funniest thing I’ve read in ages.
Thanks Michael,
My 18yr old son is about leave to pastor a youth camp this week. Your experiences plus other “encouragers” have helped shaped my prayers for him! :0
At our church, no one complains when the service goes over a bit — they just get up and walk out at the stroke of noon.
Thanks, Michael; you have only risen in my estimation for being willing to share this.
Michael, these are hilarious! You have a gift for humor. Thanks for sharing, you brightened my day!
My 14 year old daughter is going on a mission trip later this summer. After reading this I’m very glad that her dad is going along as a chaperon! BTW, imonk, I have found that your blog has really given me a lot to think about. I wish I could be in an actual room with all your readers to have the kind of discussions we used to have in school. (I was an Inter-Varsity kid too.)
I think the hayride in the church bus one is fantastic. I bet the kids are still talking about it. And the bus got cleaned eventually, right.
The guy in # 10 is my hero.
I don’t know about that pastor Sanjeeva guy. Or about Bob.
I went on a missions trip and everyone was asleep except me and the bus driver. I could see him beginning to nod, but I felt it would be rude of me to say something. A few minutes later he nodded out completely and we crashed into the highway median. No other cars were involved, and the bus was intact so we kept going with the same guy driving.
Bob,
The only reason that we Catholics aren’t joining in is because we generally don’t have youth ministry like the Baptists do.
I only worked with that age group for about 1 year, and I wasn’t involved with the confirmation retreats, so I don’t have any tales. (I’d share if I did.)
About Pastor Rao, I’ve run across his type at other locations on the internet, including on the old MSN Catholic site. No idea about his truthfulness, just know he’s an oportunist.