How to Increase Your Confidence as a Youth Pastor & Overcome Imposter Syndrome

Have you ever felt like a deer caught in the headlights when leading a youth ministry? Today's podcast is here to guide anyone feeling the weight of imposter syndrome through the wilderness of youth ministry.  We'll unpack the layers of student ministry and show you how to evaluate and enhance your confidence with some step by step actions.  In this excerpt from an "Ask Me Anything" episode, we answer a question from Flowerful29 in regards to gaining confidence as a youth pastor.

📕 RECOMMENDED YOUTH MINISTRY BOOKS: 📕
1) Purpose Driven Youth Ministry: 9 Essential Foundations for Healthy Growth by Doug Fields
 https://amzn.to/336T1O4
 Audible Version: https://amzn.to/39Eq7WT

2) Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry by Kurt Johnston
https://amzn.to/3f6zpvD

3) Jesus Centered Youth Ministry: Moving from Jesus-Plus to Jesus-Only by Rick Lawrence
https://amzn.to/30aZwxf

4) Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry: A Personal & Practical Guide to Starting Right by Doug Fields
https://amzn.to/4bYCb54

5) Creating a Lead Small Culture: Make Your Church a Place Where Kids Belong by Reggie Joiner
https://amzn.to/3SZXqdO

=======

We love hearing from you all and we do our best to provide powerful and insightful youth ministry content on a weekly basis to be that coach and mentor you may not have, but desperately need.
If you have an episode idea, please E-Mail us at MinistryCoachPodcast@gmail.com!


If you have it on your heart to support this ministry, please consider going to our Patreon page at: www.patreon.com/ministrycoach

=======

You may also enjoy this episode:
(#116) 5 Ways to Increase Confidence When Speaking in Youth Ministry

=======

🔄 CONNECT WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA 📱:
Ministry Coach Podcast:
Website: http://www.kristenlascola.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MinistryCoach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ministrycoachpodcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ministrycoachpodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ministrycoachpodcast

Kristen Lascola:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/klascola/

Jeffrey Lascola:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grandmasterbengal/

=======

Audio Equipment:

Microphones
https://amzn.to/3eWUWrk

Digital Recorder
https://amzn.to/3eXmvkj


*This episode is not sponsored. Some of the links are affiliate links which simply means, if you buy something, we will receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) Thank you!*

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:44

How can you increase your confidence as a youth pastor? That's what we're talking about today on the ministry coach podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:03

This is from Flowerful29, also from YouTube, who says help. It is it's year two of being a youth leader and I am lacking confidence in everything pertaining to ministry. Any ideas?

Speaker 1: 1:15

That's a hard one, like to just feel not confident in your job for that long Flowerful. It has definitely got a wear on you and so I'm sorry to hear that, because you know, I think we all as youth pastors try to put on a face like I got this. But yeah, maybe deep down we kind of are like that, uh, I hope I'm like that imposter, imposter syndrome of just like I'm not equipped for this and I felt that way for a really long time. So I get it. So here's what I would say to you. I would say, see if you can identify I know you just said in ministry in general. Okay, well, let's break it down because there's lots of different parts of ministry. There's planning events, there's teaching, there's discipling, there's writing curriculum, there's all kinds of stuff. So identify the different parts of it and scale it on one to 10. How confident do I feel in teaching? How confident do I feel in leading my volunteer team? How confident do I feel in being up front and on stage? How confident do I think I could plan a camp, whatever it is, and then look at the areas that you scored the lowest on your self assessment and then just like, hit the books. Learn, learn, learn. And obviously you're following our YouTube channel and I hope that you've found a lot of it to be helpful in this, like in building your confidence in certain areas. But you've got to just keep learning, learning, learning. So, if you are not confident in your teaching, find someone who is a good teacher. Have them, listen to your messages and debrief it with you, maybe help ask them to give you their best tips on how did you go from being an okay speaker to a good speaker, a good speaker to an excellent speaker? What was that journey like? Sit down with someone, have them, like I said, analyze your messages.

Speaker 1: 3:02

Read every book you can on youth ministry. Like that's what I did. I'm just like go online. What are all the youth ministry books? I'm going to start reading them. So there's a lot out there and every single one of them has influenced and shaped my ministry in a different way, whether it was Doug Fields or Kurt Johnson or Rick Lawrence, reggie Joyner, like. There's so many incredible authors on the subject of youth ministry and I never left empty handed. So you've got to put in the work of reading, reading, reading and gathering those ideas. Go to conferences. Conferences will light a fire under you and you get to meet all these youth pastors and see what they're doing and hear like different workshops and what's working for people and where to focus, and whenever you go to conferences there's tons of resources to there's companies you never knew existed that could help you with a particular issue.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So, just like, try to just cast your net wide of all of the knowledge and then start putting it into practice and see if you can move those numbers up one or two points. Hey, I was about a three, like getting up in front of people on stage and doing stuff. But the more I practiced or learned from people who are really good at it or got communication tips or I don't know, go on YouTube, maybe there's a whole workshop on it, I don't know and then you can move that from a three to a five, that would be a total win and continue to take that long view. But here's what I do know is that proficiency usually breeds confidence, and learning results in proficiency most of the time. So if you could become proficient in certain areas of your job and just feel like I got this, I own this, I was made to do this, this, I can do this in my sleep, when you start to get proficient, you start to get confident.

Speaker 1: 4:49

So even if you don't feel proficient and you keep failing, failing, failing okay, dissect the failures. What did I learn? What will I never, ever do again? Failure is the best teacher, because you never want to feel that again and so you need to go back and say what can I do to avoid this same outcome.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Because, I hate this feeling, right.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Right.

Speaker 1: 5:10

All right.

Speaker 2: 5:12

well, thank you, flowerful29. If your confidence lacking is, in sermons, we do have an episode on how to gain more confidence in speaking, so make sure you guys check that out.