The conference talk.
The newest book.
The church down the street with the budget/staff/facilities you envy.
Pay attention to them at your own risk. You should ignore them completely.
It was the summer before my freshman year and I got called up to the varsity summer league baseball team for a weekend tournament. Mostly because it was the end of the summer and half the team was on family vacations, but I had arrived. At least that’s what I thought as my mom drove me to the field.
When I stepped on the diamond though I realized I was way out of my league. These older guys might as well been professionals because the best I could do was not make a fool of myself. I left that day pretty discouraged. I couldn’t see myself ever competing at this level, even though in a year or so I would be.
But in the moment when we compare ourselves to what we consider to be the finished product we always leave discouraged.
So stop doing it.
I’ve heard about people saddling up along pastors of churches slightly larger than yours. The heart of it makes sense but I don’t like the way it elevates church size over everything else.
What I think would be more helpful is to identify one specific element or challenge you want to conquer. Focus always helps, and whenever you are trying to improve your leadership (organizationally or personally) you can easily be overwhelmed by the bigness of something.
So maybe its a big change like moving to a missional model or navigating a preexisting conflict or a capitol campaign, whatever find someone who has done it recently and learn from them. And particularly learn from someone who has done it for the first time.
You can learn from someone who has done it several times, but someone who just lived through it for the first time is going to have a fuller and fresher memory and more importantly will be much more candid than the veteran.
Always trust the details from rookies over veterans.
And always ignore the finished product.
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Hey Josh, I understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t say I agree. I’ve been a “Rookie” youth pastor and it was in those early years when I made every mistake in the book. I’m glad to say that I was able to learn from those mistakes and I am a better youth leader today for it. More than that I surrounded myself with far more experienced, far more successful youth workers and other ministers to gain wisdom from. Through them I was able to avoid some of the common challenges in ministry, and implement things that really boosted my ministry. It has always been frustrating to see someone write off a church that is flourishing as “focused on the wrong things” rather than spending time with the leaders of that church to learn from their ministry models. (Even if it turns out they aren’t focused on the right thing, they seem to have an understanding of growth models, leadership, etc… that is very valuable to learn from, but I’ve come to learn that many of those larger, more successful churches/youth ministries, are actually pretty solid.) Long story short, it makes sense to have rookie friends, but veteran teachers will lead you down the path of wisdom. -One Man’s Opinion
Thanks for commenting.
Completely support learning from everyone and allowing those veterans to help us see the big picture. The problem I have encountered is that the big picture can be overwhelming and I see a lot of Rookies lose heart at the enormity of the challenge.
To those I say ignore the end result and focus on where you are and get around those who have just gone through something similar. Nostalgia has a way of clouding out the rough edges.
So yes learn from all but to those starting out focus on the next step not the destination.
Josh,
I couldn’t agree with you more. It is so easy to get discouraged when you aren’t in someone else’s shoes, even if they are further down the road than you. When I was a teacher I saw it (and was victim to it), wanting to have the same music program as the school down the road, whose director had built it from nothing over 20 years. Young adults expect to have their parent’s quality of life right out of college. In ministry, so many of my fellow students want to be the next Matt Chandler or Andy Stanley.
There’s no harm in learning from these people, so long as you are learning timeless principles and applying them uniquely to your own situation, rather than trying to imitate what they did because, hey, it worked for them.
well said, those one to one conversions are usually disastrous and always frustrating.
thanks for commenting and welcome