Myth #3 - The Buck should stop with Youth Pastor

After every big youth event, someone will be upset with you? Have you learned this yet?

This is not a post griping about that... there's actually nothing to gripe about when it comes to this pattern... the quicker you accept this reality as normal the more sane you will be.

This is a post about who is responsible for the actions of the congregation. Is it the youth pastor who is responsible for the mistakes the community makes in regard to youth ministry?

A quick story.
Rob and Jill were the parents of Bobby, a sixth grade boy in the middle school program. Rob and Jill are great folks, and committed and balanced parents of 5 kids. Bobby was the middle child you could alway find him in a crowd by dependable screeching shrilly noise he would make when you asked for a cheer, or enthusiastic response from these early adolescents. Bobby, was a bit nerdy, but the kids really liked him. He would however, sometimes be the brunt of a bit of teasing, often initiated by Bobby's uncomfortable and unhealthy way of connecting with other kiddos.

So when my boss, the executive pastor called me into his office and told me Rob and Jill were upset about the retreat last week. Evidently, Bobby had been picked on by a few older middle school guys and sought out the help of two of our adults, Todd and Pete. Todd and Pete evidently dealt with the issue temporarily, but teasing continued after their discipline. Todd and Pete also failed to let me know any of this was happening, so I learned of the situation when my boss called me to his office.

So far nothing to get to upset about. Average disfunction right? Somewhat correctable.

Everyone was very nice and respectful.
My boss, Rob, Jill and I were in the room. They told me their frustration. I thanked them for letting me know about it and I apologized for the behaviors of the two volunteers (and later talked to both of them about better ways to handle situations like those). I still think this was the right thing to do. However, there were people missing from the conversation. In most churches today, the buck stops with the youth pastor. If something happens that's bad in the youth ministry the youth pastor is ultimately responsible. According to this logic, in this situation, I suppose I could have been more organized, trained my leaders better to communicate with me the exact situations that need my attention and a few other things. All to keep this kind of thing from happening. Ever.

This taps into the "I just need to work harder" mentality I posted of a few weeks ago.

What we don't see, is that handling this situation, in this way, with the expectations limited to the youth pastor creates a big problem.

Here are a few of the problems:
1. It re-enforces the idea that the responsibility for spiritual nurture belongs to the paid staff people.

2. It removes the opportunity for discipleship from the youth workers. Think about how great it would be for the youth workers to engage in this process with the parents and student.

3. It re-enforces destructive behavior in youth pastors who desire to please their pastors and parents and kids.

This kind of scenario goes down in a dozen different ways in a youth ministry. It's rarely exactly the same in my church as it is in yours. But you get the idea. This is part of the systemic behavior and structural problems in a lot of our churches. Certainly there are some churches who would say that the 3 points above aren't really problems. Those are points that re-enforce what they actually value. I certainly appreciate their desire to minister to youth. But I think that they are often harming kids and their long term walks with God.