Recovering From Being Fired or as Youth Pastors say "Being Pushed Out"

Maybe like me you have also served in a church that might not of wanted you as much as you thought they wanted you. I've been in those situations on a few occasions. Years ago, I came into the new Church with a lot of excitement and energy for ministry, only to find out a few months later that some of the pastors did not want me there to begin with. On one occasion, I heard later from one of the Deacons at a Church that I served at, that the search committee had made their recommendation of me to the pastor, and the pastor told the committee to keep looking. He thought that I was not God's man for our Church. His only reason, was that I wore earrings, and had an edgier approach to ministry.

These type of experiences can be very humbling difficult for those who experience them. My guess is that you currently feel, or have felt the same way at some point in your ministry career. In the places that I wasn't wanted it was never for a moral reasons. It was only ever about appearance. I came to understand that my position was more about appearance (earrings and Jeans) and style (musical preferences) than about theology and practice (of which I am very Theologically conservative). It is definitely a difficult thing to accept, when you are disliked for your appearance or style of ministry. In the American south it was especially hard to not be judged right away on appearance. I have left churches in my past for some pretty dumb and selfish reasons, but the hardest reasons to leave a church that you actually want to serve at is when you have been "pushed out" or as Donald Trump says "You're Fired."

There are several reasons that Youth Pastors get "pushed out". I will try to address a few of the big ones, and then give some helps for recovery for you.

1. Moral Failure: This is the worst way to leave a Church. When there is something that disqualifies you from ministry that is a very hard thing, and it should all make us very sad. First of all, let's never be in this position. We hear about this more than we should. Maybe a youth pastor runs off with the youth ministry assistant. The youth pastor has an affair with another woman, or the youth pastor did something financially that was not above reproach, and someone reproached. The books were all out of whack, and in fact the youth pastor had been using the Church credit card to buy thousands of dollars of stuff for personal use, including his new entertainment system. No really that happened, not to me thankfully. And on and on we hear about story after story of moral failure until we are sick to our stomachs.

Recovery: This is a hard road from repentance, to healing, to restoration. If you are willing and you have people who love you and want to restore you, then please take this journey with them. The body of Christ can be a beautiful gracious and merciful picture of the kingdom of God when we open ourselves in these situations. Please seek this out if you are in this situation. You will be amazed and blessed on the other side. Galatians 6:1 says it this way, "Brothers and Sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves or you too may be tempted." And I also beg you Church to be a place of reconciliation and healing, not a place of shame and guilt. These awful situations can be an opportunity for the grace and power of Jesus to shine.

2. Community Failure: Maybe the community of Christ has stopped acting like the faithful body of Christ, and is acting more like an organization, business, hierarchy, fraternity, country club, or even God forbid controlling and ungracious, or something else that does not resemble at all the true body of Christ (Ekklesia). Maybe it has even turned into the "Ken and Barbie Show" This is when the church also has the opportunity to repent and change into the loving, gracious, mercy filled body that Jesus has called us to be. It is hard for the Church to recognize sometimes when it has lost the point, but let us be honest and really take hard looks at ourselves in all seriousness to correct what we have done in error or sin.

Recovery: This is also a hard road to recovery. First I would encourage those of you involved in ministry who have experienced Ecclesiastical failure or abuse to hang in there. This can be the hardest road to recovery. I would encourage you to also get with a mentor who can lovingly restore you to a place where you can love the church again. I had a mentor recently ask me if I had been hurt by ministry in the Church. It is hard to answer that when you have been hurt by these man made systems that are probably not biblical in their hierarchy. We have to recover from those power systems that have hurt us, and begin through the renewing of our minds to love Christ's Church again. If we immerse ourselves in the word of God, and healthy Church communities, then we might have a chance at loving Jesus body again.

3. Pastoral Failure: Pastors sometimes get jealous, ambitious, or otherwise do not like how things are going in a youth ministry. I want to call this Pastoral or leadership failure. Maybe it starts with the pastor sharing the pulpit. The pastor starts to think that the youth pastor is a better preacher than he is. He is actually probably right on this point. The youth pastor is usually a better preacher than the senior pastor in my experience, but what sometimes happens is the pastor then gives into is a jealousy, and the thinking that "I have to get rid of this guy or he will overshadow me." This is when the push begins for some youth guys. The pastor goes to the Deacons, the Elders, or other leaders of the Church to start the youth minister witch hunt. For whatever reason, this may have happened to you. I am very familiar with this personally, and too many of my colleagues have also experienced the "pastoral push." There is hope.

Recovery: The first step is to forgive your pastor. In your prayer life ask God to give you forgiveness in your heart for him. Some steps to help you on your journey if you are involved in the same ministry are, asking for his help. Say something like, "I feel like your wisdom and leadership could really be helpful in the Youth Ministry. Could you help me with ______?" "Could you come and give me another set of eyes for what we need in the youth ministry?" "Could you come and share your sermon from a few weeks ago with the youth?" It is hard for him to be your enemy if he is helping you. It is also hard for you to be at odds if you are meeting regularly and praying together over the ministry and Church. If you have been untimely "pushed out" write the pastor an email of forgiveness telling him thank you. Include your gratefulness for your time at the church, and what things you learned from him as a result of your time at the church. It is also hard to hold a grudge or not forgive someone who you express gratitude toward. So do those things and find yourself on the way toward forgiveness, healing, and recovery.

4. Stylistic Failure: The Deacon board meets one month and a few of the Deacons/Elders/Board Members are not happy with how loud the youth group is on Wednesdays. They are also not happy about the music that blares from the youth room. The first problem is that they are talking about the youth pastor without him there. If he is a pastor in your church he should also be an Elder/Deacon, etc. If he is spiritually qualified to be a pastor then he is spiritually qualified to be an Elder/Deacon. So make him one. If he is not qualified to be an Elder/Deacon then don't hire him!!! The second failure is that you are talking about him without him there. The third problem is that no style is more Holy than another. No style of worship is more holy over against another. First PresbyBaptiMethodist worship is just as sanctified as the "Coffee Shop Church" that meets in the underground coffee house in town. Because "Where two or more are gathered in my name there I am in their midst." so Jesus said, He makes our gatherings holy, not with hymns, or choruses, or loud rocking music, but because he is there in our midst and His presence is enough! If this stylistic failure is part of your experience then you also probably have the calling to go and plant a church. Go! and do what God has called you to do. Unfortunately we are divided into so many subcultures and they are usually delineated by musical lines, and so you may be called to a specific subculture set. Don't pass it off. Really think about going into that subculture planting a missional work there that the gospel seeds will eventually turn into a church. No matter how big it becomes you have done what God has called you to.

Recovery: The way in this type of recovery is also forgiveness. The person or persons who are responsible for making the style of Church a idol may need to be forgiven by you. If that is the case I recommend going through every single scripture on forgiveness, bitterness, and repentance to be able to work that out. If you need to approach that person, and let them know, then do that. I do not recommend it most of the time though, because it can compound the problem. Also in my experience those people are immovable, inflexible, and are usually not wrong in their own eyes.

This process of being "Pushed Out" is most often the last straw for guys in ministry and they end up leaving ministry. I hope and pray that is not the case with you. My goal at Youth Pastor Recovery is to help you 1) keep walking with Christ and 2) stay in ministry. If any of these things have happened to you in ministry I want to say, I am sorry, and hang in there don't give up on Christ, and don't give up on His Church. He is there watching after us, and there is an expression of Church out there that will be like a healing balm to your soul. God bless you on your journey to recovery. I hope and pray that Christ can become your obsession again. Here is some worship to help you begin that journey.

Recovering from Pornography, Masturbation, and Sexual Sins

Ok, yep we gotta deal with this one...Let's just get it over with...

Pornography
Mastubation
Sexual Sin
Adultery
Lust
Fornication
Homosexuality
Bi-Sexuality

There I said it. The cat is out of the bag. Everyone was thinking it up to this point, and wasn't saying anything. I just had the guts to say it out loud, or at least type it out loud. Pornography, Masturbation and sexual sins are a problem for youth pastors, not just pastors. I had a ministry colleague who was put in charge of the entire youth ministry program of about 400 children and teenagers over the course of a weekend, because it was found out that the lead youth pastor had run off with one of the girl interns. He had been having an affair with her for about a year. The youth pastor had three kids, and ran off with the youth intern! Sadly I was not as shocked as I should have been when I heard this, because I have heard of these type of things so often with pastors and youth pastors. Unfortunately these stories are more common than they should. I maybe a little jaded, that is why it did not surprise me. I am not sure why, but I kind of expect youth pastors and pastors to mess up in this area. That Is why I write this to empower you to come out of the shadows and live in freedom and victory. I want men of God to act like men, and stop this madness. About five years ago I found out about a Bible college friend that was exposed as he was a youth pastor at a large church for having tons of Pornography on his Church computer. He had a computer technician check it out for viruses, and the computer tech told Him, "I know why you have a lot of viruses on your computer, it's because

you look at a lot of Porn." In Bible college several of my hall-mates and I met together every week for accountability in the area of Masturbation, and pornography. At that time the internet was in its infancy stages, and yet we all had trouble with this issue. Years ago I was on a men's retreat and of course this was the theme of the weekend. The speaker asked all the ment to go around and tell the group when they were first exposed to pornography. I thought first of all that is a bold question! Shocking, and personal. I thought,"How could he imagine that every guy has looked at Porn?" We went around the room and every guy from about 80 men shared that they had been exposed to Porn, and the guy who was exposed to Porn latest in life was 18 years old. The average age of first exposure to Porn was around 11 or 12. Not one guy had never been exposed to Pornography, and most had regular contact.

What I want to accomplish in this post is to expose the "secret" sin that we don't talk about and have kept in the dark shadows for far too long. I want to let you know that you are not alone and this is not an issue that we can keep on ignoring and keep quiet anymore. Lets get it out into the open and talk about it! If we keep it in the secret dark corners then that is where it will stay.

I also want in this post to let you know that you can live in victory! I have also like every other guy been exposed to Porn at a very young age, and from that time on until about a year before I got married struggled with addiction in the area of pornography and masturbation. I want you to know that there is VICTORY! I have, by the grace of God, for the last 12 years lived in victory over Pornography, and only on a handful of occasions have I let myself be exposed to it in those last 12 years. IT IS POSSIBLE TO OVERCOME! Looking at pornography and the guilt associated with it do not disqualify you from ministry. If Porn would be a disqualification, then every man would be disqualified. But that does not give us an excuse or license to do it. That would be what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls "Cheap Grace". We can't just throw our hands up in the air and say, "Oh well, I can't control it, I can't live in victory." That is not true! I am a living witness and testimony that it is possible. Also our scriptures are pretty clear that we can and shoud live in consistent victory over sin (Romans 8).

These are by no means an exhaustive list of help for these sexual sins, but I wanted to lay out several ways that we can overcome these pitfalls in the area of sexual temptation. First of all...

1. Talk about it: Talk about it first of all with your wife. For me it was before we were married. I told My future wife that this was a problem for me, but that I had lived in victory over it for about a year. I told her that if she decided to marry me that she would have to be my main accountability.  For me that meant that she had EVERY password and account number that we/I had. Bank accounts, Internet accounts, facebook, twitter, etc. and that all our computers were always set up in a public places, and that I reminded my wife periodically that she needed to check up on what had been viewed on all our computers. This may be a very embarrassing conversation, but it has to happen. Freedom will not happen without honesty, and dialogue with your spouse or a good friend, mentor, discipler, accountability partner, etc. If holiness is such a big issue as God makes it, then do whatever it takes. Drastic sins deserve drastic measures ("If your right eye causes you to sin gauge it out").

2. Be honest with your sexuality: This applies to you and communication with your spouse, but you also have to have someone in your life that you can talk about this with. If you do not then you are only on a destructive pattern. It is a lie to say that we are not sexual beings and that we do not or should not have sex drives. God made sex for our pleasure, and for us to reflect Christ's love for the Church. Please be honest about this and talk with your partner about it. My wife and I recently are talking more and more about what we appreciate and do not appreciate in our sexual lives. We are being honest with each other, and we are growing in great ways in this area. Because of it we are growing to love each other more deeply. You also need to be able to talk honestly with outside people. There are things that guys can share that are just not appropriate in the marriage relationship. Sometimes you need to gripe, sometimes you just need to dump what is in your heart, and sometimes the dark stuff in a man's heart might be too much for your wife. I know that it is sometimes too much for my wife, so I encourage that mentor, discipler, friend, accountability partner, or someone who pushes you on to holiness. Please do just that with each other...Push each other on to holiness...If God does then we should too.

3. Pray and worship often: If you do not have a deep and emotionally connected personal prayer and worship life you will never change in this area. Guys have a problem with emotions. We deny, stuff, or otherwise ignore our emotions. That is a dangerous and problematic cycle that we get ourselves into. If we are not developing and growing a loving, humble, needy, celebratory, affectionate, meditative, worshipful, loving, and tender, communion with Christ then you might struggle in this area. If you can say that you do not have this type of multi-faceted relationship with Christ, and you say its because, "I am not an emotional person" you are wrong...if you believe you are genuinely not an emotional person in your personality, your personality needs to change! You need to pray for The Lord to make you a tender, emotionally connected person, like Jesus was! It is obvious that He was emotionally engaged. It is hard to read the passages where it says that Jesus was, "moved with compassion" without thinking that he was an emotionally engaged saviour. So open your heart and let God work on your compassion quotient. 

If we want to change in this area we have to work hard at it. For me it was not an easy process, but a most awesome, humbling, and holy process,  and I am so excited to be able to say to you today that by the power and grace of God I live in consistent victory over Pornography and sexual sins!!! You can do it! Lean on Christ and the ministry of the Spirit and His Church to give you freedom and victory. 

This article below is about sexual sins and missions, but youth ministry and missions are the same thing. So here is a link to a great article about why people don't enter missions and or ministry because they feel disqualified. Thanks for reading. God bless you as you tackle this difficult and very important area of purity. 

Missions and Masturbation Article

Lord deliver us!!!

"You Got to Preach and Talk about God, Now I've Got to Go Poopie"

I asked my daughter what the best thing about being a youth pastor was and this is what she said..."You got to preach and talk about God, and now I've got to go poopie." This is absolutely true. As Youth pastors that is actually our greatest task, and should be our greatest joy. Unfortunately many times the other demands crowd out our true desire to preach the word and talk about God. It is so simple and so complicated. The 'professionalization' of ministry has often clouded the issue and point of ministry. I believe for this reason many ministers leave or "poop out" just like my daughter said, they start out wanting to preach and share God's word, and then suddenly we are "pooped out". I wanted to highlight three of the trouble areas that Youth pastors often neglect. They often lead to burnout, leaving ministry, even being fired, or having to leave ministry because they are totally burnt out. 

1. The first pitfall that most youth guys neglect is Family. Most youth ministers get their start in college or right after. In my experience they start out before they are married or have a family. So they don't know how to manage their lives when they finally get married and have children along with being a youth pastor. The thing that they had before they got married stays in its role as the more important thing. For instance in my own life I was in youth ministry long time before I met my wife had a family. Once the family entered into the picture I didn't know how to manage building, and spending time with family, and also being passionate and giving 100% for ministry. The hard part for me was before my family came, youth ministry was a big priority. But now that my family had started to grow it was difficult for me to step back from some of my responsibilities in ministry and to readjust my passions towards my family. 

Several things that helped me were to create clear boundaries. One of the main things that helped me was a parent who told me that wherever I was I needed to be there 100%. If I was home be there 100%. If I was at church be there 100%. If I was counseling someone be there 100%. This can be a challenge also in our highly mobile technology filled world. As a youth pastor we really have to turn the phone off when we are at home.

Another thing that really helped me was to make sure you take your family vacations every year. At the very minimum one week preferably two weeks out of the year. I recommend taking the two weeks altogether, and to prepare to not have any Church responsibilities in that time. Also take family retreats. Take your family with you to camp, also on mission trips or any other youth trips when it's possible.

2. Personal Devotion: I have seen over the years so many guys burnout because they neglected their personal devotion to Christ. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that if you miss your quiet time once or twice a week that you're going to burn out. What I am saying is that you have to commit within your busyness of life to daily cultivate your passion for Jesus through worship, word, and prayer. When I was a young man in ministry right out of Bible college I went to be a youth pastor of a small church plant. In those two years I became a very good professional minister. I somehow had the false impression that I could cultivate my personal devotion through ministry. What a false and terrible assumption that was. I found out over those two years that I slowly faded away from my passion for the Lord, and into a deep cycle of sin, because I did not continue in my personal devotion daily through worship, word, and prayer. A question that always helps me calibrate my devotion is, "Do you have a living, humble, needy, celebratory, affectionate, meditative, worshipful, loving, and tender, communion with Christ?" If you can say no to any of these things, and you say its because, I don't have time, then make time, or you might be punching your ticket out of Youth ministry very soon.

3. Preaching the Word: another pitfall I see in youth ministry is that the youth pastor thinks he has to get too cute. Our ministry is the ministry of the word just like the church for thousands of years before us we don't need to get to cute and try to do slick programs and try to do anything else besides focusing on the ministry of the word. Guys who burnout in my opinion many times are burning out because they have to maintain this incredibly slick attractional model of ministry. If you are in maintenance mode over a very big large attractional youth ministry you could be headed for burnout. That is what happened to me and that is what has happened to so many of my colleagues over the years. I urge you right now reshape your ministry around the ministry of prayer, mission, and the word. 

My encouragement to you is if you find yourself on the verge of burnout, tell someone, and preferably not your wife. Don't dump this heavy burden on her only and always, that is not fair. Try to find someone with outside eyes with lots of wisdom, and talk to them. Ask them to help you. ask them to mentor you. These were so helpful for me when I needed to recover while in ministry. We all need healing, and recovery! We all need course corrections. And that is why we need "iron sharpening iron." 

Lydia, my 4 year old at the time. was at youth group with me a couple years ago. I had to go to another group to make a presentation. When I came back Lydia was crying and she said that she thought I had left her and was afraid. She said, "but I prayed to Jesus", when I heard this I started crying too. I asked her what she prayed and she said she asked Jesus to help her. And I asked, "did he help you", she said "yes He did I wasn't afraid anymore." Then she said she even thought about walking home. Maybe you also feel like leaving youth group and going home because you are close to burnout. We can, just like my daughter did, ask Jesus to help us, and he will!