I’m a pastor to youth

I have been the full time Youth Pastor at West Gate Baptist Church now for 10 months, and the kids are finally starting to understand what that means.

See in Trenton, IL there has never been a full time youth pastor until 10 months ago when I arrived. There have been numerous volunteer leaders or part time youth pastors at the several churches here, and they have done some great things for the kingdom of Christ. However, shortly after I started I realized one of the downfalls to not having a Full time guy can have on the youth culture – lack of openness.

Now don’t get me wrong, I feel without a doubt that this is not true all the time. I’ve been a Part Time guy for 4.5 of my 5.5 years, and I have seen openness in my own ministry, as well as others. But for these kids, they never had that with any of the previous youth directors.

It boggles my mind but some of these kids still apologize for texting me, because they are probably distracting me from doing my job. Its been a battle I have had to continuously fight to get these kids to understand THEY are my job, and I want them to text me about anything at anytime of the day.

Barriers are finally being broken down more and more. Tonight, I finally had a student come to me with a real concern. Now sure, students have come to me for help with problems in their lives but tonight was the first night I saw the group finally “get it”, that I am here for them and can council them. Its hard to explain it in words to those who may have never experienced this, but to those who have I’m sure you know exactly what moment I’m talking about.