What does a youth pastor do all week?

That's a great question. I always wondered how my friends who worked at the church actually spent their time. When I was a banker - I did banking, helping customers 40 hours a week. When I managed the Coldstone - I made and served ice cream full time. But what do the hours during the week look like for a youth pastor, other than holding a youth service? I'll break it down for you...

1) Meeting with staff.

Right now that involves primarily Pastor Steve. But we have other all staff meetings and leaders meetings to get on the same page and head in the same direction. I'm loving these times so much. Sometimes we go over how best to help a certain family in our church, sometimes it's what computer we should buy next, sometimes it's what we really believe about prophecy. You never know what you're going to learn. I'm so blessed to be able to learn so much from our pastor every day I go to work.

2) Doing the little things

Someone has to figure out what prizes we want to give away at our youth events. Or do the research on exactly what video camera we should purchase. Deciding on graphics and event titles, sending lots of emails, getting your announcements in for the bulletin on time, etc. This is the stuff that seems to grab at your time and fill up your week. And it's all so random week to week. It's the stuff that causes you to look back on your week and ask yourself, "What did I get done this week?"



3) Hearing from the Lord

My favorite part of ministry is the hearing from God part. I try to give my mornings to hearing from God and taking down what I'm learning. Lots of that involves preparing messages to speak - I spoke to our youth, our youth pastoral staff and our worship team this week. When I was an intern I was so jealous that there were people who were paid to study the Bible...God has fulfilled the desire of my heart!! This part also involves big vision stuff - we just finished putting together a document that lays out our vision and values for our youth and worship ministries. Now we just need to put that plan into action.

4) Relationships with people

This is what pastoring is all about, eh? We spend time with our leaders, we spend time with students, we spend time with parents, etc. At this stage in the game this involves meeting new people every week and trying to build trust and respect with people that really don't know us. We're feeling out these people and being evaluated by them. It's really an intimidating process and not for the insecure. Thank goodness for the love of God and the call of God. It pushes us past awkwardness and fear and leads us to the most rewarding part of ministry - people's lives being touched and changed by God!

This leads us to our question of the week (we're diving deeper). I had a great little conversation with Corey this week about this and thought I'd throw it out to everyone...

In your opinion, what is the best thing a leader can do to gain trust and respect from the people he/she is leading?