Welcome to the back pew

Welcome to the back pew!

Having spent the last 12 years of my life in Student Ministry I've learned a few things.

1. In most small churches "Youth Minister" is synonymous with Janitor.

2. If it can go wrong, it will, and it will be blamed on the youth.

3. Never ask a rhetorical question in a youth worship service, unless you want a Junior High girl , who never speaks otherwise, to answer it.

4. If you serve red Kool-Aid it will be spilled

5. Every mission trip has at least one issue which will rear its head when least expected.

6. Every church has within it one person whose job it is to hate the youth minister, youth ministry, and everything involving students, regardless how nice and helpful you are to them.

7. No matter how many students you have in your ministry it will never be enough to satisfy the church elders, unless you reach that mystical number they have always had floating around above their shoulders. Then you will have too many students and the elders will become leery of those "fringe" students your ministries are attracting.

8. No matter how active your students are in the life of the church, they will not be "visible" enough to satisfy everybody.

9. Church policies and guidelines are unwavering, written in stone, until you have finally discovered them all and figured them out.

10. I wouldn't trade my calling and ministries for anything or everything in the world.

I was 17 years old when God called me to minister with students. I acknowledged the calling on my life right away, and immediately spent the next 6 years of my life running like mad. I kept trying to reason with God, trying to convince Him that my talents and energies could be put to better use in fields which would actually afford me the opportunity to both own a house someday and feed myself. His answer? To not only call me to Student ministry, but student ministry in small churches in flux. Small paychecks, and growing pains. Through it all I have been immeasurably blessed. Sure there have been days when I questioned what I had done to God to make Him hate me so, when I have been convinced that my sanity was fleeting, but always in the end He has amazed and enlightened me.

I'm naming this blog "Notes from the back pew" because that is closer to where true ministry begins than is the front pew. The back pew has the privilege of being the closest pew to the back door, and through that door, the outside world. That is where ministry is or at least where it should be, not shut up inside stuffy old church buildings where we are literally preaching to the choir. So stay tuned. I can't promise that this blog will always be funny or enlightening but I can promise that it will always be straight from the heart. If you read within these musings something that warms your heart, makes you think, or inspires you, give the credit to Him who inspires me, after all I am just a lowly Yute Preacher, here to serve His world, one student, one soul, one heart at a time...

Until next time.

-Roman