157 : Angela Amerine "The Best Thing You Can Do In Youth Ministry" #WomenInYM

In episode 157 Chad sits down with youth ministry director Angela Amerine to talk about falling into the calling and restoring the joy in youth ministry. The insight that she shares is timely for a season of ministry so cluttered with opportunities and distractions.


About Angela Amerine:  I have been serving in Student Ministries for 14 years in Inner city and suburban settings, in small and large group contexts.  I currently serves as the Student Ministries Program Coordinator at Kentwood Community Church in the greater Grand Rapids Michigan area.  I met my incredible husband Jared while serving as a youth pastor, and as of this month we have been married for 12 years!   I am the mom to 2 amazing kids who I homeschool in my “free time”.   I did my undergraduate work in Elementary Education at Spring Arbor University, and graduate work in Worship Leadership at Azusa Pacific University.  Leading worship, raising up adult and student leaders, and coming up with creative ways to reach students for Jesus are some of my favorite things about what I get to do on a daily basis! 


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Key Takeaway: The best thing you could ever do is be dependent on the Lord

• Learning to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit has been the biggest lesson for me 
• The greatest success is seeing the ministry that we did impacted his life and his trajectory 
• The best way to get a volunteer is to directly ask them  
• Prompt volunteers to the best fit and not just helping out  
• The best thing you could ever do is be dependent on the Lord 
• Everyday praying to God, I cannot create a cool enough program, or do enough to change somebody’s heart.  
• The moments of utter dependence...[are deeply true youth ministry]
• The best thing any youth pastor can do is care for their own soul  
• Don’t get distracted (even in our youth ministry realm) from the main thing 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey everybody, welcome to episode one, 57 of the youth ministry booster podcast and this is the 11th part and our multipart series in October, celebrating and encouraging women who are serving and leading and youth ministry. It's a near daily dose of an interview or content episode with a woman serving and leading and youth ministry, posing the big questions, sharing their call, insight and journey into youth ministry and today is another one of those good days. It's Angela Mri and talking about what it means to depend and youth ministry. Also some really keen insights about volunteer and recruiting that you're really gonna enjoy and so this interview is great and again, we are so thankful for this month celebration and all of these wonderful women that have shared their stories and we get to celebrate and encourage them. If you know somebody that needs to be celebrating and encouraging that we haven't yet, please email us either Chad or Zach. That's the AAC and youth ministry booster.com. We want to hear from the folks that we need to hear from. If you have women in your life and youth ministry, you can nominate them, uh, and and tell their story by hashtagging and Instagram, twitter or facebook posts with Hashtag women Nyam also that giveaway youth ministry booster.com/giveaway where you could win a year of booster and a year to a subscription box of your choice for the woman and youth ministry that you care about. We are so thankful for you listening. Hope you enjoy this content and if you get a chance, check out youth ministry, your.com for the kinds of network support and masterminds, women and youth ministry. Here is when we say mastermind season is fast upon us and if you aren't signed up for one, you can get signed up at[inaudible] dot com to find the right kinds of encouragement, growth, and challenge in youth ministry. But until the end, this is Zack. And now here is Chad interviewing Angela Amrhein from Kentwood,

Speaker 2: 1:59

Michigan. Hello and welcome to youth ministry booster. My name is Chad Higgins and we are super glad that you're with us today. We are with Angela and I will let you, uh, introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you're from, all of those fun things.

Speaker 3: 2:19

Yeah. I'm laughing because my last name already, but that's all right.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Totally honest with you. This is me transparence. I looked down at it. I wrote it down. I got scared.

Speaker 3: 2:41

We've all met those students. Can you spell your name for me please?

Speaker 2: 2:58

Kids that I've buddy for far

Speaker 3: 3:00

too many, like yeah, it's a little embarrassing, but anyways, my husband and I and our two kids, we live in Kentwood, Michigan, which is a suburb of grand rapids, Michigan, which a place to live. I highly recommended. I currently serve as the student ministry program coordinator at Community Church and it is a part time role and I love that because then I get.

Speaker 2: 3:29

That's awesome.

Speaker 3: 3:33

I have a seven year old and then my daughter is just about to turn five.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Very cool.

Speaker 3: 3:38

I got a boy and a girl, a seven year old and five year olds.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Now what are these personalities like?

Speaker 3: 3:45

My seven year old is a rule follower which cracks me up because I don't think that I am a rule follower. She's got like a little bit of rebellious, but she's still creative and she, you know, she can color in the lines when she needs to, but yeah. Oh very much, very much. And we talk a lot. My husband and I are like, is it nature versus nurture or like what they're born with and how much of it is

Speaker 2: 4:26

what we teach them. All those kinds. So tell me, how did you get into student ministry? What has that journey been like for you?

Speaker 3: 4:40

I graduated, I graduated in 2003 from Spring Arbor University, an education degree in elementary education and I knew that I didn't want to go into education and so I wanted to be a worship pastor and I felt like there'd been a lot of people along the way. And so I started applying for worship pastor position and uh, I got a call from a church up in Midland, Michigan and they said, hey, we'd love to interview you. We did a phone interview and on the phone they said you'd actually be helping out with the youth. Oh, okay. Well I really never done that before, but like I could help. And then when I got there for the interview they said, well, you would be the worship pastor and the youth pastor and John must've hit the floor. I just thought, I have no idea how to do that. I mean I've been in youth group. I helped a little bit. So I always say that like I was tricked into being pastors, but you know, here I am 15 years later and it's just been really funny along the way, each kind of each step that I had, there were youth pastor positions that were open and um,

Speaker 2: 6:05

yeah, it's amazing how many people I've met. That introduction to student ministry has gone down that same road of like, Hey, would you help with our student ministry? And by help we mean completely in charge.

Speaker 3: 6:34

I was reading every book I could read I was going to ever use after conference I could go to. And I honestly, I joke, I'm like, I was, I'm innocent to it and so hungry and so, um, I just felt like I had no clue what I was doing because I didn't. And I learned very quickly.

Speaker 2: 7:02

Yeah. In your time in student ministry, tell me one of your favorite moments.

Speaker 3: 7:11

Oh Gosh. So I was trying to think of, you know, a kid has whipped cream on their face and they're someone else's throwing cheeto them. One of my least favorite moments is when I did a game and I had a pie pan filled with flour, baking flour and a piece of bubble gum in it. And I was like, this is going to be great. I'm sure I found the game online somewhere. And I had the kid come up and they ended up find a piece of bubble come with their mouth. And then they had to blow a bubble first. I didn't think to ask if anybody had an allergy. So girl put her face in the flour and she's like, what is this? I said flower. And she was like that. That would be not a favorite moment. She is okay, by the way, years ago she has forgiven me all is well. The parents were fine. She just realized right away. I was really glad to. There was one of our volunteers is a nurse and so she just took her to the side. They washed it off, you know, she didn't ingest a lot of, it sounds a little embarrassing. Fortunately, no, she went to one of my core students, so I close out with a good thing. Now anytime we do a game with food, I say probably four or five times anybody food allergy that um, but one of favorite. This was a more recent thing that happened. Um, I had just started my job at community church and I was getting to know the students. We were really new to the area so we moved to grand rapids before we volunteered for a little bit. And then the current youth pastor at the time, if I would come on staff and created this position that I have now for me, which was really amazing. And I'm so I'm getting to know the students and I also play in our main worship center playing, um, every now and then bear. And so there were a couple students that were also like in the main worship team, but that I never thought youth. So there's this one kid trends and an amazing musician, you know, plays multiple instruments, but I never saw him and he always seemed to be talking to the kids at church, but I just never knew why he didn't come. So we're about to do a mission trip was just the next week and we're going to eastern rehearsal and our paths cross in the hallway and I just felt like the Holy Spirit said you need to ask him to come to the missions trip. And I was kinda tired. I'm like, I can just ask him another time. You know, it's funny how these thought can go through your head so quickly, right? I'm like, oh, it's too late. He's not gonna have the money. And I was like, no, Angelo, just do it. So I turned around, I was like, Hey Trent, have you gotten on this missions trip? And He, to my surprise, being truly interested and um, I was like, yes, I gave him all the brief detail, you know, the next day I got a call from his mom, he's going to go on this mission trip with you and extra, and long story short, he came on a missions trip and became heavily involved in our app, actually just graduated from, um, from our youth group and was my, one of my most students. I mean, really, he has told me that that was, that trip was life changing for him and um, you know, learning to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and being obedient to that. It's just been a huge, huge lesson for me. Um, you know, I wish may be able to learn data longer ago, but um, how. No, that's in me, that's really one of my favorite ministry moments being a student were like the ministry that we did really impacted him and changed his life and really like the trajectory of where he's going.

Speaker 2: 11:53

They're waiting for the ask, right? And not like, not like, we're like, well, unless they asked me, I'm not going, but you know what I mean, like, oh totally. So often we just have to kind of get over ourself in some ways. Right. And like make that ask and really reach out and for many kids continuing to reach out right over and over and like, I don't know how many kids I've gotten to like minister to the like morning of like, you know what I'm talking about. Like we can either be frustrated about that or go, I'm going to take this opportunity. Right and utilize it and trying to pour in as a student

Speaker 3: 12:42

he was hungry and I don't even know if he knew what he really needed. He needed God to invade his life and this was going to be the avenue that was going to do it for him. And I think the same thing with volunteered the absolute best way a volunteer is to ask somebody that they've never heard. But if you can go up to them and say, hey, let's go out and talk. I feel like maybe this would be the right partnership, the right time, and let me tell you why. Student ministry credible, just some incredible people that I don't know if they ever would've just walked up to us. You know,

Speaker 2: 13:37

I to the degree. Along with that, I've found like when you ask leaders, like ask them to the vision not to the task, like if you walk up to somebody and you're like, Hey, will you lead a seventh grade boys small group? They're like, oh my God, that sounds horrible. Right? You're like, but if you're like, hey, we're trying to reach every student in this community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Are you interested in joining us in that? Like that's different than we used to sit in this stinky room for an hour a week. Right?

Speaker 3: 14:25

As that goes, gone from asking people to do a task, really sitting down with them and say what the task is. When I initially would you just sit down and can we just talk about what this could look like? Once they catch the vision, they may have a different idea of what they could do than what I do. That's beyond what I saw in, so I don't want to limit them by prompting them with something that maybe isn't the right fit,

Speaker 2: 15:02

that you have their cell phone number and they can't get away from you. Right. Final question. I want you to think back. This is first year in ministry for you. We have a time machine. You get to buy yourself a cup of coffee and give yourself one piece of wisdom or advice. What would you tell yourself?

Speaker 3: 15:44

Best decision I've ever made. I would tell myself that the best thing that could ever do, it'd be dependent on the Lord and by that I don't just mean like, hey, let's all pray together. Five minutes before service. I mean like every day on my knees admitting to myself and to God that cannot create a cool enough program or great enough thing to change somebody's heart and I feel like, you know, along the way, there's definitely been definitely season where I was more dependent and for me personally as a person, those were some incredible season because typically it was maybe a drier time in ministry. It was maybe a time when things were really difficult. It was a time when the leadership over me wasn't pouring in or with lacking and I was picking up all these pieces and doing all these tasks and those moments of just utter dependence every single day. Those have made me into the person that I am. And I think the best thing that any youth pastor can do is care for their soul, their own soul and their connection to the father. And um, I would encourage myself, don't get distracted like everything, everything this world has to offer even in our Christian, around even in our youth ministry realm. All the different things you could possibly do. Don't get distracted from. The main thing I'd tell myself.

Speaker 2: 17:38

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for listening to the youth ministry booster. We, we hope that the story has encouraged

Speaker 1: 17:50

hope that Angela is wisdom here is something that we not only take to our heart, but something that we live by. Thanks for joining us today. We'll look forward to seeing. Yeah, absolutely. We'll see you tomorrow. Are. There you go. That's our interview with Angela and all the way from Kentwood. Uh, thank you so much for sharing insightfully truthfully and with a keen reminder that it is dependence, a, the diligence and the dependence of youth ministry and not our capacity to create a that makes us faithful to the call. If you like what you heard today, a checkout euthanasia booster on wherever you're getting your podcast, we'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and review. That always means a lot to us and again, check out youth ministry booster.com. If you're interested in the kind of mastermind group that will encourage you and stay with you and challenge you and youth ministry. That is the network and the community to learn and grow together. If you're serving in youth ministry, thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode and our women and Youth Ministry celebration this year.