Ministry Coach: Youth Ministry Tips & Resources

Youth Ministry Advice I Wish I Had Known Sooner

• Kristen Lascola • Episode 266

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Start the New Year strong and grow a healthy, thriving youth ministry...if you'd like to work with us, check out GrowYourYouthMinistry.com *** As every year and season of youth ministry goes by, there is always something new that you learn as a youth pastor.  In this episode, we wanted to reflect on a few important pieces of advice that I've gotten along the way that I wish I had known sooner.

If this resonates, share it with a leader who needs encouragement, subscribe for weekly student ministry tips and tactics, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—we’d love to hear what you’re sowing right now.

📚 Books Mentioned in this Episode:

📕 "Imagine Heaven" by John Burke: https://amzn.to/4p093A1

📗 "Imagine the God of Heaven" by John Burke: https://amzn.to/47pC9To

📘 "Accidental Pharisee" by Larry Osborne: https://amzn.to/4qKzn2H

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You may also enjoy these episodes:

(#039) 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Youth Pastor

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SPEAKER_00:

Today we're talking about four pieces of advice that I wish I had known sooner in youth ministry.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Ministry Coach Podcast, where we bring you weekly tips and tactics to help you fast track the growth and health of your youth ministry. My name is Jeff Lascola, and this is Kristen Lascola.

SPEAKER_00:

You sounded different on that intro. Like you were being very intentional with your words.

SPEAKER_01:

Time to enunciate.

SPEAKER_00:

Jeff Lascola. Well, Jeff Lascola, today we are going to talk about four pieces of youth ministry advice I wish I had known sooner.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And now it's too late for me, but it might not be for you. So listen up because this is important. Well, and there are things that I feel like I've learned along the way, uh, especially from Chris Brown. He teaches me so much. He's our senior pastor. And we meet as a student ministries team twice a month. And every time I just am like, where would I be without all this advice? Nowhere. And one thing he reminds us of a lot, and this is my number one, is that don't take youth ministry success, successes, or failures personally. So I think there's he always says, like, when we take our ministry very personally, there's this temptation that when something is a success or goes really well, we can't help but swell with pride. And then now we have this pride issue because we see it as an extension of me. Look at what I did, and it just speaks so highly of me. But on the other side, the reason why that's dangerous is because if something didn't go well and is a failure, that can very easily lead to like this ministry depression where you second guess everything and you're kind of in a mopey mood because you think I'm just not cut out for this or I messed up. And to kind of take it one step further, I think it's like how we define successes and failures in ministry largely seems to, since the dawn of youth ministry time, have to center around numbers. Like, and I think that's like this weird metric we can't seem to shake, like in the youth ministry world. And while we've done episodes on this before, that numbers do tell a story, they just don't tell the whole story. Numbers aren't everything, and so we can think, okay, it was successful because a lot of people came. So, regardless of what happened, I'm working with a youth pastor right now whose ministry has never been bigger and never been more unhealthy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I've been through that as well, as like your numbers skyrocket, and everything comes along with that that you can imagine. Um, right now we're healthy, but I remember maybe three years ago, we just had a class that was dragging us through the mud, and it was just so hard to get a handle on the health. And so numbers don't always equal health. And people say, well, healthy things grow. Well, and then I always come back with, well, so does mold and mildew and gross stuff, you know. People like get really sick from the mold growing in their home under unbeknownst to them. So it is a sign, but what sign is the growth? And so um, we can't take it so personally. Like, here's a better question to be asking, and this comes from Chris Brown. Thank you, Chris. Is was I faithful? So the question is not, did did a hundred kids show up or 200 kids, or am I the biggest youth group in town, or am I bigger than the church that I'm secretly competing with, but I would never admit it, or the youth group in my own church I'm competing with and don't want to admit it. But the question is not, am I the biggest and am I the best? Because at the end of your life, you're not gonna stand in front of your youth group. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to give an answer to them. You're going to give an answer to God. So the question on his mind is simply, were you faithful to what I've given you? And we're going to talk a little bit more, maybe about what that looks like. Like, okay, well, how do I know if I'm faithful or not? That'll come later on in this episode, but I think that is a better question than how many people came. It's like, well, was I faithful to what God called me to do? Because that is ultimately who you answer to. So, number two, I wish I had known this sooner in youth ministry, and there was no way to know this until I was on the other side of the growth mountain. But the Bible says it, and it's true, you reap what you sow. And then, kind of like the subtitle underneath that is and sowing takes a very long time. I think way longer than you expect. And I think that a lot of youth pastors aren't prepared for that, of how long the sewing takes. You are digging, you are planting, you are fertilizing, you are weeding, and you don't see anything of substance and maybe a little sprout here and there, but you keep toiling away, toiling away, toiling away. And eventually the growth comes, but it takes years, not months. And so I think people are like, want to put a little miracle grow on something and be like, okay, where's this growth everyone was talking about? It's like, no, it could take a decade. Like, I mean, it really could, depending on what you're starting with and how you're starting. And, you know, we get a lot of emails from a lot of really small youth groups, which is fine, but a lot of them are the very first youth group their churches ever had. If you're the very first youth group your church has ever had and you're not building upon anything, you're not taking over for someone, I guarantee you, like growth will happen. It just might take a while. And really getting like the culture down of like, what is what is this ministry? Like, what are we known for? Like, what does it mean to be a part of this ministry? And that will take years. So think about the the ministry you want in 10 years, or the ministry you're hoping to be running in 10 years, is the ministry you're building today. It's not gonna just all of a sudden pop up out of nowhere, but it's like the hard work that you're putting in now. So let's go back and answer the question that we posed in the first one. Well, what does faithfulness look like then? It's how you steward a few things or manage the gospel, your people, and your resources. And I'm reading this book right now by I think the author's name is John Burke. And he wrote a book called Imagine Heaven, which is all these near-death experience people that he vetted in a very interesting way. Like they weren't money hungry, they weren't fame hungry, they weren't writing books. He said a lot of them actually had a risk involved with sharing their story, like whether they came from a different religious background or they were part of academia, and that was kind of like okay, weirdo, or uh something like that. So he's writing this second book, or he wrote it, I'm reading it right now, called Imagine the God of Heaven. And there's this very interesting theme that kind of goes through both books, and that the whole anytime anyone has this, and this is not in the Bible, so whatever, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not gonna put my he even says he doesn't plant his theology on any of this, it's just interesting because a lot of the stories are very similar, like crazy similar. So he's like, there's gotta be something to this. Anyways, the question, which is biblical, that God wants to know from a lot of these people that have to give an account of their life is how did you love? And these people said that when they were kind of in this in-between, like in going into the afterlife, they would have this life like flashback, kind of like, you know, when they say my life before my eyes, but they saw their life in totality, and they said a sense they were able to have that they couldn't have here on earth was they could sense how they made the other person feel. And I thought that was so interesting. And like God's question for everyone was, how did you love? Like that was like the main goal for from him to everyone for their life. And some lady said, even when it came to like the animals in her life, like it was kind of this question, how did you treat people? How did you treat things? How did you treat animals that I had put in your care, that I had like crossed paths with you on? Like, how did you love? And kind of to bring that back to what we're talking about with youth ministry is like, how are we stewarding this ministry? Well, that answers the question of faithfulness. How do we treat the students in our ministry? How do we handle the gospel? How do we handle the truth? How do we handle the resources that we've been given? And it's always easy to say, I wish I had more money, I wish I had more stuff, I wish I had a bigger church, I wish we had more students coming, I wish I had more leaders. Okay, well, we don't we all those are obvious, but how are you managing what you have been given? Are you loving it? Are you multiplying it? Are you caring for it? Because the question at the end of our lives will be how did we care for what he's given us? And so thinking about that in youth ministry, instead of always looking for more, more, more, what I wish, what it's just okay, what's right in front of me. And we were on a coaching call the other day, and one of the members of YMGA, our course, she wrote me an email. She's like, I love when you said like steward the heck out of everything you have that inspired me so much. Alyssa, thank you. And I was like, Yeah, and and that's what ministry is is like looking at what is right in front of you and going for it, like stewarding the heck out of it. So, because like that hard work does pay off, you know, eventually, excellence and what we do and how we manage things is rewarded in this life and in the life to come. Like our ministry, our life, it's being noted, it's being recorded. Our like everything we do, it doesn't just amount to nothing. It is even those days where you feel totally unseen, you feel like your work is in vain, you feel like it was just another frustrating night. Like Sunday night, we had an event, and I just found myself here I am again, waiting for this last kid to get picked up. And the parents are over 30 minutes late, and then we're all exhausted, and here we go again, you know. And I just thought, like, man, that was such a missed opportunity. I could have really been like, hey, like, what's like tell me, you know, like got to know that kid on a better level instead just like griping about like here I am and I'm so tired and why are we?

SPEAKER_01:

Try to call them again?

SPEAKER_00:

Like, are they on their way? How close are they? You know? And I I don't think I stewarded that moment great, because I was so like over it, like, why every time? And then, you know, like you think, oh, maybe you'll get out of the car and say, like, so sorry, thanks for waiting, but you know, no. And so in those moments, like, are we looking at okay, how do I steward even the irritations really well? Is this an opportunity? I got 30 extra minutes with this kid. Maybe God wants to do something here. 30 long minutes on a Sunday night at 8:30 when I'm exhausted. So yeah, not my not my finest moment because you know, I was not seeing the big picture. Yeah, but uh hopefully next time. Uh something to look forward to. Because there will be a next time. Totally. Totally. Hey friend, I just wanted to interrupt this episode for a second to let you know about an awesome opportunity for you and your youth ministry. So last year we launched our course and coaching program called Youth Ministry Growth Accelerator, and the response has been amazing. So we've helped tons of youth pastors grow the size and health of their youth ministry, and we want to invite you to be a part of that as well because maybe you're just sort of feeling stuck in a rut, maybe you don't know what to do next, maybe you just have a vague plan in your mind of what you're doing, and you want some real help to get you from where you are to where you want to go. So if that sounds like something you've been looking for, go to growyouryoutministry.com and check it out for more details. All right, let's get back to the episode. All right, so number three is who you are is much more important than what you do. And so this is like the importance of character in ministry. Um, not always just chasing that success, that number, that goal, and not losing yourself in the process. Because I mean, we've talked about this before. We've heard tons of stories about pastors who were wildly quote successful, yet they lost everything. They lost themselves. Like, I mean, maybe some of them lost their soul. I a lot of them repent and are just broken and come back. But, you know, the success and identity are at like odds with each other, you know? And so who you are in ministry is much more important than what you can accomplish. So never losing yourself. We always go to John 15 with this. What does he say? Like 15 times, Chris Brown. Remain. Yeah, remain. Remain, remain, remain, remain, remain. My friend just got a tattoo of that. Remain. And it's remaining in Jesus ourselves, not just being people who point others to the gospel, and we're not experiencing the transformative power of the gospel ourselves. But that is like one of the quickest ways to just be dry in ministry. Chris Brown always says, like, you're doing the work of ministry without the power of the Holy Spirit. And he's like, and that's a really dry place to be, you know, if you start to lose yourself, um, lose your character. So, like another thing he says, uh, we should just have him on this episode because all I'm doing is quoting him. But he says, When I end my ministry career, he's like, I really don't want to end with an asterisk next to my name. Yeah. Did I say that right? Is it asterisk?

SPEAKER_01:

Asterisk. Oh man, I don't know. I always just say asterisk at the end, so it should be asterisk.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, he says, I don't want to finish with an asterisk next to my name. Good enough. And he's like, he's a dad, he has three kids, you know, they're grown now, but he says, I always wanted my kids to look at the way I did ministry and be able to love the God that I serve and love the church that I work at, and not think, well, they took my dad away, or if it hadn't been for ministry, you know. But doing it in such a way that you finish well someday and not that, like, oh, remember that guy, oh yeah, he was really good, but remember that, like, you know, some scandal or some failure or some, you know, thing that like kind of it's like, yeah, but you know, kind of thing. So keeping your soul intact, you know, when Jesus says, What good is it if you gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul or lose your soul? And so I think sometimes, especially this is like the double-edged sword of ministry success, is because when you start to see success or growth, or you can kind of start to your character comes under a test even more because it can start to make you think you're really something, you know, or that you don't have to play by the rules anymore, or you're somehow an exception, but keeping that humility of being able to see growth, but also remain humble. And that's totally a work of the Holy Spirit, which goes back to the thing we were talking about from John 15. Remain, remain, remain, remain, remain in Jesus, you know, for the entirety of your ministry. You answer to him first. Yes, he's going to ask you how you stewarded his gift of ministry, but first and foremost, you're gonna have to answer to him for yourself, for your life. You, you know, you are more than just a junior high or high school or college ministry. Like you are a follower of Jesus first. So you cannot neglect or lose that, or else what do you have? Like at the end of the day, like, who cares if you could lead a ministry if you were completely disconnected from the one the ministry was for? But it's crazy how that can just slowly creep into um, you know, we've brought up the book Accidental Pharisee before by Larry Osborne, who's another one of our pastors, but that's one of the best books I ever read because nobody sets out like Pharisee, yeah. I like that title. Right. It's like you just kind of end up there by accident and you think you're doing the right thing. You think you're really making God proud by the way that you're living and doing, and see, I'm taking care of business, you know, but all the while, like where he says, your lips honor me, but your heart is far from me. Terrifying, you know. I think every Christian needs to read that book. It's it's one of those things that it's not like for those people, you know, it hits very close to home, especially for those of us that work in vocational ministry. We can very easily become pharasidical.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So um a lot of people have argued that, you know, when it comes to like extreme, I don't know if you can necessarily use this youth ministry as a microcosm of this, but maybe. But when you you have extreme wealth or extreme fame, how it's like, I don't know if humans were meant to have that because I don't know if you can, for exactly what you're saying, it will slowly creep in. You know, let's just take money, for example. If you all of a sudden won the lottery and you had, you know, 500 million dollars in the bank, you might start thinking things like, This waiter's taking too long. I, you know, I don't have to wait for this. You know, like these minor little things that might become like irritations, like I could buy this restaurant, you know, like I shouldn't have to wait for anything. And that might be a horrible example, but like those little things that makes a lot of changes how you view other people and how you look at yourself and what you deserve, or things like that. And the same would be true of fame, like kind of this do you know who I am? Right, you know, like someone cuts in front of you, it's like, Do you have any idea who I am? Right. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like well, and when other people treat you like that too, sometimes it can't like builds you up, and you think this is how I'm supposed to be treated. Like, I still sweep the floor, and you know, sometimes people will grab the broom from me, like, what are you doing? And I'm like, What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm cleaning up.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe you're doing it wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

Maybe that's it. They're like, What are you doing? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_01:

That's not how you sweep.

SPEAKER_00:

Lizard, but it's like, I'm not special, you know. One of my leaders, you know, he's always like, No, like I'll do that. You can't, and it's like, yes, I can. I can do the dirty work, I can serve, I can, you know, I can't always lift really heavy things. I always pull a muscle, but I can definitely clean and sweep and you know, do all that stuff right along with everybody else. Like, there's no, like, guys, we're all on we're all serving together. Nobody is special, especially in ministry. Like, that's the very definition. It's serving, you know. And as soon as we think we're too good for it, like we might be creeping into the Pharisee camp, you know, and in terms of our heart posture, anyways, and being really careful about that. That's a good point. So, uh, number four, and lastly, have the right audience. And we talked, we touched on this, you know, in one of the other ones. But Larry Osborne, this is just a Larry and Chris show. Um, one of the best things he ever said about leadership is he said, you have nothing to prove and no one to impress. And that is like so jarring, especially for like a young youth pastor, because we feel like we have everything to prove and everyone to impress. And it's very like you're like gritting your teeth and white knuckling both of those things because you want to be impressive, you want to prove yourself, you want to show that you can do it. But again, it goes to who is our audience? Like, you're not gonna stand before your boss someday, you're not gonna stand in front of your youth group or their parents someday. The question will be, how did you love? How are you faithful? How did you steward manage and take care of what I had given you? Did you do that faithfully? I don't think Jesus is gonna ask, like, what percentage did you grow? I mean, the parable of the talents does show that we he wants us to multiply, but I would tend to think that would be like the gospel, like, you know, like not keeping it to ourselves. So preaching the gospel, they who have ears, let them hear and like let the gospel do the work. And then that growth happens. So if it happens for the right reasons, then I think we are making him really proud. You know, if we're just able to get more bodies in the room, I don't know that that's really what he's looking for. But if people are growing and coming to know Jesus and that's how our numbers are growing, like, then that is fulfilling what he's asked us to do. And Chris always says, you know, we work for the applause of nail-scarred hands to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. You know, and I think when we start to look at our ministry through that lens of like, I'm going to give an account for it someday. I remember years ago, some kids getting mad at me because they were up to all kinds of illegal shenanigans. And I told them, hey, your parents have gotta know this, or else I'm going to tell them. And they like couldn't believe it. They thought I had betrayed them. They were so mad at me. And I was a young pastor.

SPEAKER_01:

Never taking accountability for what they did.

SPEAKER_00:

No, never. And I said, and I was a young youth pastor, and I remember we were at winter camp and they were being so mean to me because they were mad at me uh for calling them to account. And I remember telling the ringleader of the group, I said, you know, I said, you can be mad at me if you want. I said, I don't answer to you. I answer to God on this, and I know this is the right move. So if you want to be mad, be mad, but I don't answer to you. And they never came back. But I was really proud of myself for just like not caving to the pressure of a 12-year-old being mad at me about something that I'm like, hey, and it wasn't like I'm kicking you out of church. It was just like, hey, we can't pretend this isn't happening. We need to get help here and accountability. So yeah, I don't know where they are today. Hopefully, they're following the Lord, but it's hard to make people upset with you and remember, no, I'm working for the applause of nail scarred hands, not French tip hands, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

I like uh Chris's quote on that a little bit better than yours. Yours may still be a work in progress.

SPEAKER_00:

It's okay, whatever. Um, it makes sense to me, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

And in a situation, that very specific situation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So there is more stuff that I probably wish I had known sooner in in ministry, but those are the four for today.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And if you want to go deeper, we actually have an episode that we did a long time ago that I believe was five things I wish I knew before come becoming a youth pastor. So make sure you check out that episode.

SPEAKER_00:

I wonder what I said.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, there's only one way to find out.

SPEAKER_00:

So click on the link below. All right, I'm following.

SPEAKER_01:

This is the community comment of the day. This comes from Christy Johnson who says, I love this episode. So many awesome ideas, the leader cards, the boxes, the deep end table. Thanks for sharing all the details. This came from the youth group night or the full tour of our youth group, obviously.

SPEAKER_00:

So thank you, Christy, for that.

SPEAKER_01:

And we appreciate you guys watching and listening. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00:

And today we're gonna talk about uh four things. Oh, four things. Uh, you know, four. Uh that um okay, number three. You are much more important. Or sorry.

SPEAKER_01:

Nope, you're not important. Nope.