“So Kyle, are you ever going to be a lead pastor?”
Good question. I am 29, married, have two kids and an undergrad degree, and have worked as a youth pastor for almost eight years. I am also lucky enough to have been a part of two wonderful congregations that let me use my gifts in areas other than youth ministry. I love being a part of churches that try their best to be followers of Jesus as they try to love God and love their neighbours.
But as I approach the age of 30, I seem to be at a bit of a crossroads. Is youth ministry my lifelong calling? Or is God inviting me to consider using my gifts for a wider audience? Or, more specifically, am I ever going to accept a call to be a lead pastor?
To answer that question, let’s start with another: “Why do I love youth ministry?”
Working with youth means that I get to participate in all sorts of life-giving ministry. We pray, we laugh, we share, we eat and we encounter God on a weekly basis.
One of my friends serving as a youth pastor told me why he loved youth ministry: “We can create, develop and drive a team and multi-person group to success. We can worship, teach, create, imagine, serve, connect in community, and have fun all in the same night. We can change things spur of the moment. We have the freedom to be as creative as we want, and our expectations are to simply have transformational encounters with kids.”
Who wouldn’t love that kind of ministry?
Which leads me to another question: “Could I say the above if I was a lead pastor?”
I’m sceptical. Not because of the job description of a lead pastor, but rather because of the expectations many churches have of their lead pastor.
We expect them to be gifted speakers 40 times a year. We expect them to work in congregational systems set up when churches were full. We expect them to be leaders and vision-setters with creativity, yet we are often quick to tell them how things have always been done and how to maintain the system. We expect them to visit each member personally, attend every church function and speak at our anniversaries, and will remember if they don’t. We expect them to be the end of the line for church conflicts, with most of those conflicts being life-draining and petty.
“Surely, being a lead pastor can’t be all bad, can it?”
I am sure there are many life-giving aspects of being a lead pastor. They get to preach. They get to participate in impor-tant rites of passages, such as weddings, baptisms and child dedications. They get to help grieving families at funerals. They get to set direction for congregations. They get to walk with people when life is easy and when life is hard. They get to explore the meaning of life and are allowed access to some pretty deep parts of people’s lives. Some of them even get to go on cool trips. And if it’s your thing (which for some people it is), they get to sit on boards and committees that are hopefully engaged in life-changing work.
But I think that’s the crux of the matter. I’m not sure if all the highlights of being a lead pastor are better than the highlights of being a youth pastor. And I am quite certain that the life-draining parts of youth ministry are better than the life-draining parts of being a lead pastor.
We put a remarkable amount of expectation on lead pastors, but have a hard time giving them the freedom, tools, systems, grace, commitment, resources or the trust to lead us. Whereas, we put far fewer expectations on youth pastors and give them far more freedom, tools, systems, grace, commitment, resources and trust to create space for youth to encounter God.
It all seems a bit mixed up, doesn’t it? So mixed up that I can’t answer the original question with a simple yes or no. My answer starts with the words, “It depends.”
“So Kyle, are you ever going to be a lead pastor?”
It depends. If I find a church that is looking for a lead pastor with reasonable expectations of him or her, and is able to give its staff the trust, freedom and resources to create space for everyone to encounter God—then, yes, I will consider being their lead pastor. If not, then youth ministry is just fine by me.
Kyle Penner is associate pastor of youth at Grace Mennonite Church, Steinbach, Man.
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