Let’s begin by looking at how to know when it is time to go.

You are asked to leave. Maybe it is failed expectations, new senior leadership, or a moral failure but the people you have ministered with, to, and alongside of have asked you to move on. Any of these may leave you with a feeling of incompletion, failure, anger or countless other emotions. We all would like to leave following the call of God to a new place of service, but not all of us will get the luxury of that every time. Make sure you keep your emotions in check and be careful to leave in a way that is pleasing to God.

You sense you have done what you were called there to do or that new leadership is needed to take the ministry to a new level. This one is tough. Things are going well, events, Bible studies, volunteers are running themselves and you are enjoying things running smoothly but you have that nagging sense in your soul that it’s time to move on, or your spouse senses that it is time to see what God may have in store for you next. Careful time of prayer and discernment must precede any move from while in this state. It is natural for an uneasiness to sit in when things are going well or when you have been serving somewhere for a few years.

You’re approached with a new ministry opportunity. It could be out of the blue or you may have been sending resumes and networking with friends and colleagues about other ministry possibilities, but you now are faced with the possibilities that you have to deal with on your ministry assignment. Care must be taken here to protect the ministry where you are (in case the new one doesn’t work out) and discerning when and how to proceed.

Family issues-could be spouse’s job transfer, spouse indifference to where you are serving, or a need to get closer to extended family. Marriage is a partnership and sometimes the needs of our spouses have to take precedent over our own and that could mean it is time to do something else. We may not be ready or want to move on, but if we are to be true to our first calling to our family then we must pay special attention in this area.

It is time to go-now what?

Leave with dignity. We should leave in such a way (even if we our let go) that we could return to work there and that people will be glad to see us when we come back to visit. This isn’t the time to bash the leadership. Transitions are tough on churches and we need to do all we can to ease the pain of transition.

Decide when, where and how you are going to tell your students. They deserve to hear it from you that you are leaving. They will have tough questions, be emotional and confused and may not understand.

Have a transition plan. Work within the churches structure and policies to develop a short term plan for transition. Who is going to take over the weekly meetings, who is planning retreats, where have you signed up for camp next summer and who will be in charge of all the administrative stuff for that? Have a plan in place and make sure that parents, students, youth volunteers and the pastoral staff know what that plan is.

Leave. It may seem strange to put this here. But when you go your gone. Your job is to refer students who contact you after you leave to the adults in their church and eventually to the new youth leader that comes behind you.

At a recent youth worship they had he asked his students to “write out their prayers. I think writing prayer helps to process what you’re praying for rather than a series of ‘dear Lord’-s. This past time I had them write out their sin they wanted to confess on black paper with a dark pencil and tape it to the cross, after they had read 1 Peter 2:21-25.” He added, then “I read the pieces of paper. This is as old a youth minister trick as the caramel covered onion or the camp roommate assignment list. It provides an immediate and anonymous look into the lives of students, to give a window into what prayer needs are there in our student ministry. It’s beautiful, but it’s heartbreaking.”

He continues. “But that image of Mayberry is not what I read on those slips of paper. Most of them were your standard teenage angst: rude to parents, talking about other people, dating one guy and being interested in another, struggling with siblings, and not focusing on school as much. But there were some that hurt to read:  A girl who cuts and covers it by bullying, Several guys who admitted to pornography, One who admitted to repeated inappropriate text messages to different girls, Still others who admitted to pot, alcohol, and other substance issues, Broken relationships, Sexual promiscuity, Dysfunctional family situations, Same-sex attraction, name it, it’s sitting on my dining room table, the tears and shame visibly evident.”

“The veneer of our community, and even our church and student ministry, is one where everything is ok.” He adds, “But behind that good face is an indescribable hurt; One that is being masked by a fig leaf of religiosity – or worse yet, the false promise of an insecure salvation. None of the self-help, guidance counseling, crisis intervention, or anything like that can solve this pain. Only Jesus can.”

As he finished his post he offered this advice as to what to do.

Pray – Intercede for these students, pray for wisdom for parents, pray for repentance, pray for God to increase grace.

Don’t be naive – We cannot pretend that these kinds of problems belong ‘over there,’ and miss out on reality. These problems aren’t city problems or poor problems or ethnic problems. They’re problems that come from a Deceiver who wants teenagers to believe something else besides Jesus will satisfy them.

Address the heart of the issue – The issue isn’t drugs or alcohol or peer pressure. The issue is the heart, one that is bent against God. Make sure to not lose sight of this and try to fix addiction, self-harm, etc. The first need is Jesus. Then work on everything else in light of that.

Be honest – I plan on sharing that I read the cards, and begin by offering myself and my wife as resources. Knowledge isn’t power, only knowledge that is used has any value. I could choose to overlook these findings, or choose to respond to them. These issues are very real and painful – to ignore them is a shameful act.

Involve parents – Small town ministries may find themselves fighting against a cultural Christianity, rather than an emphasis on the work of Christ. Many times my thought is that parents assume their kids are safe/fine/good. But meet with your parents and begin to bring them on board. Take time to pray for students. Maybe they’re even hiding knowledge of their teen’s problems because of shame. Remove that, and every other barrier that prevents the Spirit from working.

Refocus – Take a minute and assess if you’re teaching accurately about the power of the Gospel. Make every message, teaching time, devotion, etc. about the Gospel. Teach the all-inclusive and all-encompassing power of the Gospel to not only save the soul but provide the answer to the deepest conditions of the human heart.
Pray – Worth repeating.

Seek wisdom – Student ministers, remember: we’re not Superman. Bring in other godly leaders who have likely dealt with similar issues. Get yourself in a network, get in contact with older student ministers. Involve your pastor in the conversation. Whatever you do, do not do it alone!

Clean out your files.  Both those in your desk and those on your computer.  It may be one of the most mind-numbing, feel like I am wasting my time chore that has to be done.  You know it needs to be done and some of those files you haven’t looked at in years and there isn’t a need for that file of clip art you cut out and saved years ago, so toss it.  While you’re at it, consolidate and back-up the files on your computer.  You will thank yourself when your computer crashes or if you finally get a new one.  And you may want to extrapolate all the info you have on the 3 inch disk before the only computer that will actually read one quits working.

Value family time, both your own and the students and their families.  I know the tendency of some of us in youth ministry is to think. “Hey, the students are out of school, let’s do something with them”.  And yes this time of year is a great time for hanging with students and a lot of  ministries are taking advantage of events the week between Christmas and New Years, but let’s not so fill our schedule that we neglect time with our families or our students don’t get any time with theirs.

Make sure you have your summer stuff together.  Most camps and mission trips are going to require deposits early next year.  Have you done the hard work of promoting it, do parents know when camp is, when deposits are due and how much?  Or maybe the first question to ask is, have you made those plans yet?  If not, dig through the stack of brochures on your desk check them out and pick one!

Honor your volunteers.  They work with you throughout the year, love on students, challenge them to grow spiritually and put up with your idiosyncrasies. Do something this time of year to honor them.

Teach missions.  It may seem like an odd thing to throw in here.  But the whole world is focusing on the outcast, downtrodden and those that are doing without.  The Week of Prayer for International Missions, the International Missions Study and the collection of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering gives us a prime opportunity to teach our students how we as a Baptist family are actively seeking to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.  You can order the International Mission Study from WMU.

Take some time to breathe.  The hecticness of this season can knock our normal schedules completely out of whack.  Read that book you’ve been meaning to read, take in a movie, take your spouse on a date, a real date – not a chaperone the youth event date or a deacon and wives Christmas party date, but a real date. Don’t forget to, in the words of my good friend Steve Coleman, to “stay in the Word”.  The adjustment in our regular routine can, if we let it, impose on our quiet time, don’t let it.

One of the most prize possessions a student has is their name.  It is our job as adults in churches to know the names of the students that come through the doors of our churches. So when Johnny wanted to become John and Gregoria asked to be called Goria, Gloria or even GG I did my best to refer to them by the name they preferred at the time.  Each name represents a stage of life they are in or a stage of life they want to leave behind. I drew the line though when Tommy wanted to be referred to as T-Rad.

Both, Chap Clark in his book “Hurt” and Richard Ross in his book “Student Ministry and the Supremacy of Christ” attests to the fact the teenagers need at least 5 adults in their lives that know their names and their hopes and dreams.  These adults are necessary to help students navigate adolescence and grow as disciples.  They need adults whose faces light up when they see that student at church.  I still remember as a child walking into Grandma Ball’s house and it seemed like she was always glad to see me.  I was one of 12 grandkids and each one of us was special to her.  Each one of us I am sure felt like at times we were her favorite. How awesome would it be if each student in our church had an adult in our congregation whose eyes lit up when they saw them and could call them by name and was earnestly and regularly praying for them, someone that had almost become family for them?

Research has indicated that students that have these significant relationships with adults in the church, outside of the adults within the youth ministry, stick around longer and stay connected better after they graduate youth ministry. Some students may go through 2 or 3 youth ministers in their 6+ years in the youth ministry, but those adults that know there name and genuinely strive to know who they are will make a lasting impression on them.

The impeding holidays gives us ample opportunities to put our students and adults together to begin to learn one another, to become family.

Instead of open seating at these events how about set the fellowship hall up more family style around tables and assigns seating in some fashion that pairs students and adults together.  Then provide each table group a set of questions to ask about favorite holiday memories, or best present they ever got or traditions their families usually do over the holidays. Show up at school Christmas concerts and compliment them afterwards on the good job they did. Plan a couple of work days together, rake the leaves of some senior adults in the church, build a handicap ramp for a family  provide childcare for parents to Christmas shop without their kids or clean out the storage areas of the church, not as youth or adult projects but as means to pair students and adults together.  It is real hard to work alongside someone for an extended period of time and not learn something about them. The potential for doing life together, especially this time of year, is almost endless.

I know that in the next few weeks as we gather as an extended family to celebrate holidays I will be called Jody way to many times to count.  But that’s okay.  The people that call me that have known me the longest, and after all they’re family and being part of a family matters.

My heart hurts for these churches and ministries, and as I have wrestled with an answer to this question I seem to have found at least a modicum of an answer.

Pray. I know that this seems to be the go to answer with any concern we have and at times it may seem passe, but I am convinced now more than ever that this is the place we need to start. Roger Palmer, the director of the Crossings Center for Youth Ministry and a 30+ year veteran of youth ministry emphasized this in a recent conversation he and I had about how to help a church that hasn’t been able to find anyone to minister to their 6-8 students. Palmer advice was to encourage them to “get a prayer team together and to begin to specifically pray:

Matthew 9:37-38 – Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”

He continued, “I love the Amplified Bible for it says God will “force out” which means He does the “pushing” and “prompting”. Our God creates the “passion” and the “burden”:

“37 Then He said to His disciples, the harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 So pray to the Lord of the harvest to force out and thrust laborers into His harvest.”

Palmer added: “We do not take God seriously enough at His Word and we need to teach our people to follow through on what our Lord told us to do. I’m not saying he (the pastor) has not prayed, but has he called the body together to pray with him, to see that as serious as God sees it and to challenge his people to do the same”?

Look Around: Who in your congregation/community are the students all ready in a relationship with? Who do they talk to, go to for advice? Who is the Kool-aid mom in your congregation? What adult do they seek out? It may better serve your need to pour into the life of and disciple a volunteer or a group of volunteers to be the leaders you need than to spend a lot of time trying to find just the right fit.

In this culture of teens I have become more and more convinced that we need to pay attention to the “who” they all ready have built relationships with. I tell adults all the time if for some reason a student has decided that you are important to them and want to spend time with you, value your opinion and talk to you on a regular basis that that truly is a gift from God and they are you assignment from God. Teens today a fickle at best with who they trust and confide in. Why not take advantage of those relationships.

One of the caveats of this is that these adults- along with any adult we put in front of our students- need to be adults that are growing in the faith and modeling the lifestyle we want our students to emulate. Students have enough people in their lives that want to be their buddy, we need adults who want to be adults and help disciple students into fully devoted followers of God.

ASK: other youth ministries in your area to “borrow” some of their volunteers or volunteer to be a training ground for some of their students that have been called to ministry. You get the advantage of volunteers with a solid base and a built in mentor. It also helps students and churches see that we are all in this together and that youth ministry is best done within the context of a healthy network of youth ministers.

That afternoon I had the opportunity to work with other members of our church and the BSU at UK to help move freshmen into the dorms. Surprisingly to me the same emotional response from parents was played out in the parking lots all across campus as mom and dad dropped their students off at the dorm and watched their little boy or girl begin their next step into adulthood.
Thirteen quick years later, I understood the emotions of the parents as we drove away and left Karen on campus at the University of the Cumberlands. I always knew that God had a sense of humor, but it was evident that day. We were somewhere between Williamsburg and Corbin on I-75 when Tim McGraw’s “they goes my life” came on the radio. I had to pull over.

I am reminded of the events of these days at this time every year. The facebook post of students moving in, the emotional post of parents that are excited and sad all at the same time. We raise our kids to be successful as adults, but this step comes way to quick. I almost started a support group while at Edgewood for mom’s that had just sent their child, especially the oldest one off to college or boot camp.

A lot is said and written about how to help your college age child make the transition, but not much is being done to help the parents deal with the empty room or the empty nest. So this month I offer a few pointers as we minister to parents who have just sent the heart off to college.

Pray for them. The rollercoaster of emotions that are flooding through them can be crippling. The difference in the nightly routine of making sure everyone is in bed, and locking doors for the night bring a constant reminder that part of the family is missing.
Ask about their student. It reassures them that you realize their student is gone and that you miss them as well. If possible make plans for you or some other adult from your congregation to go and see their student at college.

Encourage them to give their student space. The technology of today, cell phones, texting, skype and the like, makes communication possible 24/7. But their student needs their space. Encourage them to set a specific time each week to contact their student to catch up on the week. Sunday afternoon or evening usually work best for their students.

Help prepare them for the change that will take place in the relationship they have with their child. They will come home with different eating and sleeping habits. They actually may want to spend more time with the friends when they come home than they do with their parents. This can be disheartening to parents that aren’t prepared for this. Discourage them from making plans for their student without checking first with their students. Also things like curfews and presences at meal time may have to be renegotiated.

Pay extra attention to the other children in the house. The family dynamic has changed for them as well. The older sibling is no longer there and the family balance is off kilter for them as well.

A couple of thoughts flood my mind as I think about youth ministries moving from the hecticness of the summer to the normalcy of the fall.

One of the things we can do to help build on the decisions made at camp is to continue to find time for the adults in our church to spend time with our students.  To me this is one of the greatest parts of the summer.  Our students get to build lasting relationships with adults and see what the Christian life looks like after youth group.  Our students probably aren’t cognitively aware that is happening, but for us to take one of the best aspects of camp and incorporate it into our ministry can only be beneficial to our students.  Those relationships, the fun things that are done are a trip, those idiosyncrasies that every adult volunteer brings to youth group adds richness to your ministry that can’t be duplicated anywhere else.

Help parents be the spiritual advisor they need to be with the students.  Each family dynamic is different and each family will be different in how we help parents be the spiritual mentors they need to be with their students.  Plan a night, an afternoon, a post worship dessert fellowship where students can begin to unpack the camp experience and how they saw God work around them.  You may have to prompt the discussions with leading questions and activities, but anytime we can get students and parents talking about how God is working in their lives we are making eternal significance.

Embrace the memories-I still remember counting “JB Hunt” trucks while traveling across the country with the students at Edgewood.  It was one of the things that our bus driver Gary Shaw did to pass the time.  It wasn’t long until about every student on our bus was looking for JB Hunt trucks.  We’d be driving along and you would hear someone shout out JB! , and you knew another one had been spotted. It’s been eight summers since I traveled anywhere with Edgewood, but I still find myself wanting to scream out JB!, when I spot one on the road.

I still remember being a student at Little Flock church in the late 1970’s and the summers we spent at Camp Joy in Brownsville.  From the water fight that took three feet of water out of the pool, to almost being sent home for openly defying the dress code (I’m sure some girl put me up to that), to sitting in “heaven’s keyhole” around the campfire were several of us made long term life changing decision, to a morning Time Alone with God when I heard God call me to ministry.

One of the things I notices at Crossings was at the end of every week the youth leader was handed a huge framed picture of his/her group.  I had seen them hanging in the hallways of several churches, but it hit me while watching it happen on the last day of camp, how that picture could always serve as a reminder of what happened at camp.  If your camp or missions trip leadership didn’t provide you with one, create one yourself.  Hang it proudly in the youth area of your building to remind yourself and your students of what God did at that time in that place.

While some of those memories are about fun times other are Ebenezer moments that we need to help our student to embrace.  It is those Ebenezer moments that we need to help our students return to when life happens around them.

These phrases may also be some of the most common phrases in a teenager’s vocabulary today.

I heard it from Jordan half way through his sophomore year at North Bullitt High School when his mid-year grades came out and they were nowhere close to where they needed to be. I wasn’t really sure he did have it covered, and the more he tried to reassure me that he did, the less believable his argument became. All I could see was the grades on the paper and I could not see any way on earth that he had “it taken care of”. Turns out that he did, he didn’t make the honor roll that year by any means-but he did manage to turn his grades around and pass all those classes. Turns out that mid-year report card was a wakeup call for him and his grades improved every semester after that. Sometimes it takes a strong dose of reality staring us in the face to serve as a wakeup call for us for us to get serious about things.

With the recent reorganization at the KBC and the realization that what I was doing was no longer going to be an option for me, it was a time that I would have had every right to be panicked about what the future would hold. After all I have a mortgage, a son in college and am very fond of eating. But throughout the process of wondering what was next, I had this overwhelming sense of peace. In fact, I had a sense from the Holy Spirit of “it’s okay, I got this”. It made no sense to me, why I would have that assurance. Everything in me said that I should be panicked, worried, anxious and a thousand other adjectives. But I wasn’t. Every time one of those feeling would begin to creep in, that still small voice would speak and I would hear “it’s Okay, I got this”.

What does all this have to do with student ministry? I am convinced that this generation of students needs to see in us adults that work with them this attitude that it is going to be okay and that God has everything under control. We do a good job of telling them that and teaching on that but do we live that out in front of them? When life gets tough and things don’t go as planned do we live before them this truth?

Do our students know by the way we live our lives that we know that no matter what happens in life that we are convinced that God has it under control? That he has it covered? That it will be okay? If I had to judge only by observations and conversations I have with adults I think the answer to that would be a resounding NO. Most of us as adults are on the verge of panic when things don’t go as we planned, or major life changes are forced upon us. Meanwhile our students are watching to see if we live out what we say to be truth.

Honestly it is not only in this area that our students are watching but in everything that we say and do. It has always been said of teenagers that they have a built in hypocrite meter. I think this may be truer than ever of this generation of teens. May we always live I life that is consistent with our teaching.

Some ways we may be able to do this:

Camp/mission trip chaperones-It wasn’t long after Karen came into the youth group and I began to see the Lord work in her life while we at camp and on mission that I became burdened to figure out how to let other parents get the privilege of seeing firsthand the movement of God in their child’s life.  It was my privilege to be able to see God work in the lives of both of my kids and it challenged me to grow in my walk with God.  I think sometimes as youth workers we take for granted the blessing it is to see God move in the life of our students.  Having parents see that firsthand can only make them better parents and better followers of Christ.

Day trip adults- A day trip to Holiday World, the closest mall and putt-putt place or to a nursing home for an afternoon of bingo and fingernail painting is a good way to incorporate parents into the mix.  Most of those places you really can’t have too many adults in the mix and they can be excellent ways to add a parent or two to the trip.  You may get some resistance from students and or their parents and some lame excuses about “cramping my/their style” but the chance to see your student around their friends or that your mom or dad can be around and not totally embarrass you is priceless.

Host homes- It has been 30+ years since I graduated high school but I still remember some of the times we had as a youth group at Little Flock hanging out together after church on Sunday nights.  Sometimes for a formal thing planned by our youth leaders other times it was just a group of us wanting just to be together.  Those host families became surrogate parents for all of us.  The Cravens, the Montgomery’s, the Hornbecks’, The Raymer’s, the Byrd’s and the Ball’s would sometimes on a moments notice open their house and yards up to a bunch of teens that just wanted to be together.  The same thing happened at Edgewood. We would have families that would open their homes, pools and lives so students could just hang out together.  These adults spoke not only into the lives of their own children but into the lives of countless other students as well.  The fact that students just want to be together with other students may be one of the few things that are the same from when I was a teen.

Intentional activities- This will take a little more planning than some of the others, but what events like our church picnic or homecoming celebrations are great places for us to plan events that students and parents have to do things together, maybe a three-legged-race or balloon toss, something that is fun and should cause smiles and laughter to ensue.  We may have to find surrogate parents or surrogate kids for some in our group but with some advanced conversations that should be fairly simple to do.

Parent youth devotions- Be it “30 Days: Turning the hearts of parents & teens toward each other” by Richard Ross & Gus Reyes or another Bible study like that, summer is a great time for parents and students to spend time learning Spiritual Truths from one another.  With a short term commitment involved it may give some parents and or students the willingness to give it a try.