perfect cheer, the

Group, Jul/Aug 2006 by Roberts, Chris

How to transform your senior pastor from a critic to your ministry's biggest supporter

Pinch Tom Parker; he might be dreaming.

He and his senior pastor actually hang out on weeknights-they legitimately enjoy each other and have built a deep mutual trust. And Parker's pastor is always looking for ways to support him, including going to bat for the youth ministry at budget time. Best of all, Parker's pastor has worked and sacrificed to build relationships with his youth group kids. "A couple of Sundays ago he brought one of my [high school] seniors up on stage and introduced him to the congregation as 'the only teen who can call me Big Dog.'" Parker says.

"When I interviewed for the job," says Parker, "he took me down to the basement where the youth group meets and started sharing his dream. He offered me a $35,000 budget to take the walls out and build a whole new facility, and he wanted to do it in six months. 'We need this,' he told me. 'We need this for the youth.' "

Well Parker's not dreaming, but maybe you are right now.

Why can't we all find senior ministers like his? Reality for many of us means we swim in a sea of teenagers alone-we rarely get support, let alone a cheer, from our senior ministers.

Well the hard truth is that your senior pastor probably had lots of training in the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures but got next to no management training. If you want to transform him into your ministry's biggest cheerleader, you'll have to learn to be his biggest cheerleader first.

Okay, so how?

We asked Mark DeVries that question. He's group's "Youth Ministry Consultant" columnist (page 42), a 20-year youth ministry veteran, and founder of Youth Ministry Architects1-a coaching team dedicated to building "deep-impact, sustainable youth ministries." I asked him to open his playbook and offer us his best ideas for transforming senior pastors into youth ministry cheerleaders.

play #1: serve the vision

If you want your senior minister to be your biggest cheerleader, remember you're playing on his team, not the other way around. DeVries says a lot of the youth leaders he consults with are working hard to convince their senior pastors to "get with their vision"-that's because it doesn't quite mesh with their pastor's vision. The only way we can avoid that tug-of-war is by serving our pastor's vision first-we make our own ministry work within his overarching vision.

"Sometimes we have unrealistic expectations of what we want from our senior pastors," says DeVries. "Typically that involves 'don't ever criticize me,' or 'don't ever tell me I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing.' That's not a very helpful stance. One of the best ways to manage our senior pastors is to give them a forum to coach us-to go to them and say, 'What is one thing you would love to see me do differently?' We have this expectation of the perfect senior pastor, when what we should say is, 'I'm going to work for a guy who's a sinner in need of grace, just like I am.' "

According to DeVries, the criticisms we level at pastors are often unwarranted. Most ministers, he says, are eager to support the church's youth ministry.

"He's the lead minister for a reason," says Joe Smith, a youth pastor in Wentzville, Missouri. "God put him there to lead where the church is going to. He has more life experience than you and he's probably more mature than you. Look at him that way and use him as a sounding board. God put him in your life for you to change."

play #2: market your ministry

Sometimes we unwittingly expect our senior pastors to shoulder the load when it comes to communicating to our congregations about the stuff going on in our ministries. Ever said this before-"Just ask me; I'll tell you anything you want to know"? It sounds innocent, but it's a passiveaggressive shifting of our responsibility. It's our job to do the internal marketing for our youth ministry. And it's our job to communicate the important stuff-if we don't it's our problem, not theirs.2 DeVries offers three ministry marketing practices we can all do.

1. Bang the drum for what God is doing in your ministry.

Give your senior pastor a "cheat sheet" of stones he can tell about your youth ministry. When he's at a gathering and somebody asks, "How's the youth ministry going?" he needs to have stories to tell, and you can make sure he has them. This simple idea will prepare him to be a champion for your kids and your ministry, and it communicates to your congregation that its young people are amazing. "You want the senior minister to buy into the youth ministry to the point where it oozes out of him," says Chris Reed, a youth pastor in Bellflower, California. "That way when he talks about the kids, people begin to say, 'Wow! Our senior minister really cares.' "

Tony Allmoslecher, a senior minister in southwest Missouri, says youth ministry stories are invaluable. "I'm a mouthpiece to the congregation," he says, "and I know how powerful it can be if the senior minister is behind the youth ministry. Highlighting people in a sermon when it lends itself to that is a good way to show that support, but I can only do that if I have the stories to tell."