Typical youth pastor conversation.
YP1: So where are you a youth pastor at?
YP2: Jo Mamma Community Church.
YP1: Cool... So whatcha runnin'?
Typical youth pastor conversation #2.
Random Person: So what do you do for a living?
YP: I'm a Youth Pastor.
RP: Oh cool... So how big's your youth group?
Thus is the life of a typical youth pastor. There is no place to go to escape the numbers game. But there are so many problems with it.
1. The amount of students you have has no reflection on the health of the youth group.
2. It makes some youth pastors feel wrongly inferior and some to feel wrongly superior.
3. Every youth pastor lies when answering this question.
Let me make some honest proclamations here. I normally answer the toxic question with a snide remark, "3,000" or "Just me." But when I do answer I say, "I have had as many as 104." You see, this helps me to look good without lying or being misleading.
So where did this start? Blame Senior Pastors. (Why not?) Most churches look at youth groups with a bottom line mentality. The senior pastor only knows 2 things, 1. The amount of students on your attendance report and 2. Do your kids behave on Sunday mornings? This creates an atmosphere where you do whatever you can to bring a boatload of kids to your Wednesday night service, but you don't work as hard to bring the non-churched kids to Sunday morning worship. Thus creating a system where fun and games become the most important thing on Wednesday nights and the bridge never gets built to the general church population, and when your students graduate from high school they leave because they have made no connections outside of the fun and games number generator.
Do you see why the numbers game is so poisonous?
Here is what you do.
1. Have a legitimate conversation with your senior pastor about this topic and his expectations. This doesn't let you off the hook with trying to reach students, it's just the methods and the pressure you are under that are in question.
2. If someone asks you how many youth you have, judge their intentions. If they are trying to play the numbers game with you, don't take the bait. A family isn't healthy because they have a lot of people in it, they are healthy because they love each other.
3. Pray earnestly and ask God this question, "Are my methods producing fully functioning Christian adults or just people for a head count to make me look good." And then pray for a plan.
The numbers game is deadly and it is more dangerous than water polo... don't play it.
Check out my sermons at www.youth-sermons.com and my book at www.baptizedinfruitpunch.com
I would disagree with the statement, "The amount of students you have has no reflection on the health of the youth group." It is not the only, or most important indicator/reflection of health, but it is an indicator. A healthy student ministry will have students that are sharing their faith and inviting their friends, causing the student ministry to grow numerically.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many factors to consider in the health of a youth group that it is impossible to meet a random yp and determine the health of his youth group simply by the amount of students he has.
DeleteFor instance, what is the size of the town, what is the size of the church, how long have you been there, what is the demographics of the town, how much support does the Pastor give you, etc.
I will give you an example, I lived in South Carolina and had a youth group that consistently had 75 students in attendance on Wednesday nights. But there were only 3 legit youth groups in our city and going to church was a part of the fabric of the community.
I then moved close to Orlando and there were a plethora of churches and youth groups and almost everybody living there was transplanted from somewhere else, and so not only was going to church not a part of the fabric of the community, there was no real community. So I was pleased with 40 students in attendance at that church.
I understand your point however, and I agree with it. But we are both reading the same sentence in a different context.