It was an innocent enough question. A stranger on the airplane simply asked, “What do you do for a living?”
For most of the past four decades, the answer was an easy, automatic, “I’m a youth pastor.”
This time, I was frozen. I just wasn’t sure what to say.
I wondered, “How did I get here?”
I hadn’t gotten fired. I hadn’t quit unexpectedly. There was no scandal, no controversy. I hadn’t been caught in the crossfire of church politics. I still loved what I did; and though I chose to leave my position as youth pastor, leaving came with its own unique brand of sadness. I had served at this same church for exactly half my life (28 years). My children had grown up knowing and loving this one church family. Two of them had been married there, and one had been baptized there.
Many of the children who had sat with me on the steps for children’s sermons had asked me to do their weddings and baptize their children. In fact, a good number of kids from my early youth group now were parents of kids in our ministry.
So why did I leave?
I never imagined these words would ever come out of my mouth, but my years of being a youth pastor had ended. I hadn’t lost my heart for youth ministry at all, but I had lost my heart for the job of youth ministry.
I still would bet my life on the fact that there is no more important work in the church than what happens with teenagers. Strangely enough, I have plans to return and serve as a volunteer youth leader at my old church should the young punk who took my place allow me the opportunity (more on him later).
I have a story to tell, an all-too-uncommon story of a delightful transition, a story about the off-ramp from the profession of youth ministry and the marking of the launch of what I assume will be my last lap of vocational ministry.
The Beginning of…the Beginning?
It all started on a hot July morning about five years ago. I had had a nice run and a cup of coffee with my bride. That morning, I started feeling dizzy. I stood on the back porch trying to catch my breath and get my balance; before long, I was sweating through my clothes and throwing up uncontrollably.
A couple days in the hospital revealed a particularly nasty case of vertigo. I remember feeling strangely relieved at the time, actually delighted, that I could say no to a few weekend commitments. “I’m in the hospital” works great, by the way.
Fast forward a couple years. I had run a marathon and was doing a nice, slow, recovery run the next morning. I felt a little something in my chest. Nothing really, just a little pressure, right? The next morning, the same thing—a hint of pain on the left side of my chest. After the third morning of the same sensation, I called the doctor just to make sure my own don’t-worry-about-it-it’s-nothing diagnosis was correct.
He asked me to hold off on running until he could see me later that week. A treadmill test and a few visits to the cardiologist later, I had a couple stents in my heart, resolving significant blockage. I got another commemorative hospital wristband.
One knee surgery later, followed by a paralyzing gout attack, and I decided I was becoming way too familiar with the medical professionals in my life.
Overlay that message-in-a-body with the beginnings of a very deliberate discernment process starting in 2011. I began seeing a counselor. I took a solo week away for discernment. A year later, I was granted a three-month sabbatical, with a focus on discerning the “last lap of ministry” in the once-in-a-lifetime ecosystem of my pastor father in assisted living, my missionary mom in a retirement center, and my kids all seminarians or married to one. Near the end of sabbatical, I participated in a week-long intensive sponsored by my denomination with coaches focused around the spiritual, vocational, physical and financial health of pastors. Amazing.
When I began the three months away, I did not entertain the possibility that I might wind up losing the title of youth pastor, the only job title I really ever had. I was simply asking, “How will being a youth pastor look from ages 55 to 70?As we prayed, listened and dreamed, by the end of the process, we knew we had been led, without a shred of doubt, to the conclusion that my years as a youth pastor were coming to an end.
Can I Leave and Still Stay?
Susan and I had a delightful dinner with our senior pastor and his wife within a month of our return to let them know what was stirring in us. We presented two options:
• I could retire altogether, meaning, in our tradition that we would be required to disengage from the church totally: not to attend church there, no weddings, no funerals.
• Or I could stay around as a volunteer pastor, assisting the church five to 10 hours a week in any way I might be helpful.
Ultimately, our pastor and the leadership of the church chose to have us stay around, and we are currently on our year away.
Protecting the Ministry
Once we realized I would be leaving, we set an end date a little more than a year away and began working a very deliberate process to hand as healthy a ministry as possible to my successor, including:
• Creating a transition identifying which stakeholders in the church needed to be consulted in what order—the Personnel Committee, Youth Committee, Christian Ed Committee, Coordinating Council, youth leaders, parents and the students themselves;
• Figuring out a transition with insurance;
• Searching for and hiring replacement staff;
• Recruiting and ensuring all volunteers were in place for the coming year;
• Ensuring the ministry’s essential infrastructure was in place: the year’s calendar set, the youth ministry database updated, the curriculum for the coming year identified, job descriptions updated, standard processes put into writing, etc.
To complicate matters, two members of our youth staff already were scheduled to leave for seminary; another was moving to a half-time role; and a fourth was very near another job offer, which she ended up taking. If you’re following along in your program, that’s four and one-half youth staff leaving at the same time with only one and one-half remaining for continuity.
On one level, it would be a gift for the new person to build his or her own team, but I also knew it would be cruel and unusual punishment to expect that person to hire three and one-half new staff just a month before the launch of the fall program.
Setting up a Successor
So we got to work. We began shoring up our basic infrastructure before we knew who my successor would be.
I’ve heard people suggest that in a transition strategic ministry work should wait until the arrival of a new person. On one level, of course, I absolutely agree. A new youth pastor needs to have the freedom to change programs, innovate, experiment.
On the other hand, I’m thoroughly convinced my successor’s best shot at success would be to hand him or her a ship in tip-top working order. The new captain would determine the direction of the ministry, but it was my job to make sure the ship was in good condition.
To use the argument that a church-in-transition should wait on its new hire to get fundamental infrastructure in place is like saying a church in a pastoral transition shouldn’t get their toilets or their HVAC system fixed until the new pastor arrives!
I have to chuckle when I hear resistance to implementing what has come to be known as the Ministry Architects Model. Let me summarize that model:
1. Recruited and trained volunteers in place;
2. An accurate, easily sortable list of students;
3. A functioning website with updated and accurate information;
4. A turnkey system for communication and promotion;
5. A calendar of major events for the coming year;
6. A curriculum plan with resources selected;
7. A preventative maintenance calendar to prompt the team about what key items need to be done when; and
8. Accurate and updated job descriptions.
Of course, this is not a model of ministry at all. It is simply a starter list of the foundational components every healthy ministry needs to have in place.
Protecting My Soul
Most of us have seen a pastor or two who quit their jobs long before they actually ended their employment. We also have witnessed the disaster of pastors, who after retiring stayed involved just enough to wreak havoc on the ministries they presumably had vacated. I didn’t want to fall into either category.
We made the very clear decision to be totally absent from the church for at least one year after leaving: no weddings, funerals, guest teaching, hospital visits. We reasoned this approach would give my successor the best chance at success and clearly communicate (not least of all to me!) this was no longer (and never again would be) my ministry. (On one level, of course, it never was.)
However, my plans for a clean one-year detachment into holy apathy were thwarted by the church’s choice of a successor.
Did I mention the punk who took my place happened to be my son?
I had no beef with the church’s choice. The truth is Adam is absolutely amazing at what he does. Sure, I’m biased, but my bias is shared by a good number of folks a lot smarter than me. He’s a much better father than I had been to him, a much more creative youth pastor, and a man with such a rich and humble heart for God that I can’t help but look up to him.
The biggest challenge to detachment was that Adam always has been eager and open to my input about his various ministries. As we talk these days, it is often impossible to separate my father role from my predecessor role. We’ve done this dance now for six months or so, and though a little messy, we’re stumbling into a rhythm that seems to be life-giving for both of us.
From Here to Where?
It would be easy to assume that my leaving the role of youth pastor was a call away from something, but I never would have left my near-perfect position if I hadn’t felt a profound call to something else.
Through a very deliberate process of discernment (including a Quaker Clearness Committee, meetings with a life planner, seeing a counselor regularly) I realized I was being drawn to a vocation I love more than being a youth pastor.
In the application materials for the Lilly Endowment’s Clergy Renewal Grant, the provoking, overarching question was, “What will make your heart sing?”
For three months, I leaned heavily into that question, asking almost daily, “What kind of ministry has God made me to do in this last chapter from 55 to 70?” There was nothing linear about this process, but it eventually became crystal clear that vocationally there are two callings that do make my heart sing: writing and launching missional enterprises.
The prophet Joel said one sign of the Spirit’s coming is that “your old men will dream dreams” (Joel 2:28). I may have less energy and less time left, but dreams? I’ve got ‘em by the truckload.Thanks to my favorite Young Adult Ministry expert, Scott Pontier, a dear friend and writing partner, I have grown increasingly engaged by a little passage tucked way in Numbers 8, instructions to the Levites assigned to work in the tent of meeting:”…at the age of fifty, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer. They may assist their brothers in performing their duties at the tent of meeting, but they themselves must not do the work” (Num. 8:25-26).I wonder, “Could this text have implications for those of us serving in God’s tent of meeting today?”
Could this text hold a missing ingredient for the church’s ministry to millennials, an approach more profound than simply creating better programs for them? What if God’s design is that after 50 we no longer do the work of ministry but simply help a younger generation do it? What if we embrace the possibility that at 50 we no longer own responsibility for ministry but for getting off the playing field and assisting the rookies?
Maybe this plan is how youth ministry looks from 50 to 70.
Mark DeVries is founder and president of Ministry Architects and has coached a wide variety of volunteers and professionals in ministry across the United States and around the world. Mark is the author of several books, including Family-Based Youth Ministry and Sustainable Youth Ministry, and is a sought-after speaker. He and his wife, Susan, live in Nashville, Tenn., and have three grown children.
