This is one camp where the youth ministers really get to work together. Each school has at least 3 and sometimes 4 youth ministers that work together to pull off Super Summer. I had such a great time fellowshipping with my fellow ministers. Youth ministers are great fun to be around. One thing that has really bothered me however was the large number of ministers who were facing extreme hardship in their churches. It seems that churches all over are eating their ministers. 

If you talk to a farmer he'll tell you that in order to sustain significant yields of crops you have to let your land rest every so often. As a matter of fact this is a biblical concept that goes back thousands of years to the old testament. Churches all over seem to be trying to harvest from their ministers year after year without granting any rest. I'm not talking about just over working them. Although, that is a serious problem considering that the average minister works over 60 hours a week. Church people all to often are quick to criticize and slooowwwww to commend. 

Most people have one or two people at their job who watch what the do and criticize or commend when they feel necessary. While this can be a pain to find a job where this is done properly, imagine having a couple hundred people who watch what you do and feel totally free to criticize (mostly behind your back) at will. Unfortunately people only see from their prospective. A senior adult only sees that the youth minister seems to always be breaking things or staining the carpet. What they don't see is the phone call at 2:00 am that wakes up that same youth ministers family because some student has a life crisis. Another person only sees that the pastors sermon was hard to understand or to long or to short or didn't "touch him." What he didn't see was the hospital visit that kept that same pastor out till all hours last night. The average church member has no idea that each staff member puts in around 60 hours a week, most of them not sitting in an office. All they know is when they called, their minister wasn't there. People don't understand that ministers don't leave their work on their desks when they go home. It follows us home and most of the time goes to bed with us. In a regular job your boss can see all the good you do and it offsets the things you could do better. All to often in church work  the ones who scream the loudest are the ones who have an ax to grind. 

I'm not saying that ministers are perfect in any way. I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever have a complaint about the ministers in your church. Please do pay attention and if you have a concern GO TO THEM. Don't see what everyone else thinks. Don't whine about it at Sunday lunch. First get on your face and pray for him then make an appointment and talk to him. As a minister I appreciate someone who cares enough about me to come and tell me what they think, good and bad. However, if you go to complain you need to be just as willing and ready to go to commend. Whenever someone comes to you to have a good whine about a minister simply say "hey I bet he doesn't even know that you feel that way, let's go tell him so he can have a chance to change it."

One of my heroes in ministry told me this week that he had resigned at his church and he didn't have another church to go to. This man has been in ministry some 23 years. I don't know his reason for leaving other than he's been burned. This guy is the best youth minister I know. I owe a lot of who I am and most of what I know about youth ministry to him. He also told me that in his 23 years in ministry it's worse now than it's ever been as far as churches treating their ministers poorly. Ministers aren't just moving on to other churches either. many of them are leaving the ministry altogether. The really scary thing is in my experience it's the good ones that are leaving.  

Church people of the world hear me now. If you don't stop acting like this your children aren't going to have spiritual leaders. There really isn't going to be anyone in your church office. The pastor really isn't going to visit you in the hospital.