If you have been in youth ministry for any length of time you have felt disappointment.
• Disappointment when a teen you have personally mentored and baptized walks away from God;
• Disappointment when a teen you have considered for leadership is arrested;
• Disappointment when a teen you have believed in ends up blaming you and God for his or her parents’ divorce;
• Disappointment when a teen you have discipled with chooses a lifestyle that is morally wrong.
On the days when things such as this happen, many youth pastors may decribe their work as misery instead of ministry.
With enough misery and disappointment on one side and the expectations of our board, parents and ourselves on the other, we wind up feeling as if we are failures. Despite what we tell ourselves, there is nothing we can do about it.
When facing failure, we begin to doubt God’s calling. However, before you throw in the towel, consider God’s direction to the prophet Ezekiel.
“You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language…whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to Me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate…Go now and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.” (
What if our calling has more to do with doing what God tells us to do rather than trying to produce success stories?
If we begin to believe in the calling despite the results, our reactions toward the circumstances will change. We may still feel disappointment, but rather than being thrown off by teens’ bad choices, we begin to expect them. We realize that despite what they do or say, we are meant to walk alongside them.
What happens is that in our willingness to fail and let the teens in our care fail, as well, they begin to see a pratical understanding of God’s grace. He expects us to sin, to chose the wrong path and make mistakes. Jesus never was surprised by the actions of sinners; He was surprised by faith. The transformation didn’t happen in His followers’ lives until after He was gone. Get the picture?
