After extensive research, I have discovered that about half of all humans are dudes and the other half are ladies. In a lot of communities that ratio has not held true among Christian youth workers. In our north Texas ‘burb, for instance, there are more than 40 professional church and parachurch youth workers and only five of them are female.
Some of us have begun to wonder how this “side-hugging” fleet of well-intentioned men possibly can be successfully serving the diverse needs of adolescent girls within their sphere of influence while maintaining appropriate boundaries.
Good Fences Make Good Youth Workers
Gender boundaries are an absolute necessity in today’s youth ministry. We’ve all seen what kind of tragedy comes from not keeping these boundaries firm. What do we do if the ministry to our girls starts to suffer because of these barriers we have erected?
I know a lot of youth pastors are frustrated because talking to a girl in crisis means making her cry in public at the local Starbucks. We’re saddened to think our girls can’t find a healthy version of the attention they need in a biblical community. Our girls need more than “side-hugs” and “high-fives” can offer. Men in youth ministry have to be asking themselves, “What if our girls need more than I and our volunteers are able to give?”
Men don’t know the dynamics of being a mother or a daughter. We typically aren’t called sluts, nor have struggled with bulimia nor anorexia, gotten pregnant, had an abortion, and haven’t been raped. Many male professional youth workers, myself included, are severely ill-equipped to handle female issues, let alone empathize with them–even if we know what’s going on in their world. Many of us never would have the chance to try helping in the first place because our communication with female students is stunted by mandatory barriers.
Youth Ministry Staffing
When our church wanted to make an addition to the student ministry staff, it is issues like these that led us to create a director of girls’ ministry position.
When a typical youth ministry staff goes from one to two paid positions, the default hiring process usually involves dividing the ministry responsibilities by grade or school. For example, a church with a sole youth worker moves its savvy veteran into a focus on senior high and hires a new guy to handle the banana-juggling junior high ministry. A parachurch organization will hire a person assigned to one school and the next staff member makes the cross-town rival his or her mission.
Perhaps the needs of our members and communities would be served better if we started including gender-specific ministry in the staffing conversation. How many of our girls’ issues go unheard because of a male-dominated student ministry leadership, or vice versa? As a single guy in his 20s, working in student ministry, I never have been more blessed than I am right now working on a multi-gendered team that has great clarity in our ministry focus.
Within the first month of having a director of girls’ ministry, more issues were brought to light in the lives of our girls than I had seen in years, and we had a trained professional available to express authentic compassion and wisdom.
Girls in our community are being finally reared and addressed as godly women and leaders in ways that were unimaginable for us in the not-so-distant past.
