Why youth workers sometimes need to switch off

/2 Comments/in , , , , /by

I have a cat. At most levels she is a normal, run-of-the-mill cat. White, fluffy, purry – the whole cat-esq shebang. But she harbours a dark secret – and that is she’s a psychotic lunatic freak with macabre pastimes and dangerous hobbies.

Let me explain. Luna (the cat) hunts mice. Normal enough, right? However, Luna can bring home (and eat) seven mice a day… that we know of. If that wasn’t bad enough, she doesn’t eat the whole mouse. She eats everything but the head, which she likes to leave on our doorstep. I assume as a warning to other mice – or just as a talking point for the postman.

Luna also loves to play with string. Again, normal right? But Luna will purposely spin in a circle chasing string over and over and over again, until she becomes so dizzy, that she stumbles around drunk, and then promptly falls over.

Youth workers can be just like my cat!

Through one lens we can look exactly like every other youth worker. We play games, we teach using creative object lessons, we wear ripped jeans, and we grow soul patches. We look like we’re doing this thing ‘normally.’ But under the surface, many youth workers – including at times, myself, are self-destructive, narcissistic, people-pleasing, terrified-of-our-own-shadow nightmares!

We have to be doing stuff – constantly. Stopping and considering or even appreciating is rarely on the cards. If there’s space, we have to fill it: An empty room? Run around throwing loo roll! A quiet space? Yell loudly! A sparse calendar. Fill it entirely!

Is this you? Then you’re running hot – and you’re gonna blow!

Some of this is certainly fear-driven. We get fearful that people aren’t having a good time, or fearful that the pastor isn’t happy with our job performance, etc. Fear is a huge motivator. I think there’s another reason though and that is that we just don’t know any better.

The self-perpetuating model of youth worker burnout

Most youth work in the UK is done by volunteers, and the large majority of paid youth workers have had no formal training. For most of us, we learned youth work from ‘the guy who went before.’ What I mean by this is that many youth workers learned youth work from their youth worker – with some tips picked up from festival and event youth workers along the way.

So, if these youth workers were ‘always on’ then we’re probably just perpetuating the same poor practice. More likely, however, we only ever witnessed them in full-on youth worker mode at projects, and then assumed ‘that’s just what being a youth worker looks like.’

Then there’s a theological reason too. Since the late 1940s we’ve been reading books and attending seminars telling us that as ‘incarnational youth workers’ we’re supposed to always be on. Our door should always be open, our phone always switched on, and young people should feel free to demand our energy whenever they feel like it.

Since this time, however, and especially since the 1980s, it’s been really hard to convince youth workers to stick around for very long. Very rarely will a youth worker work beyond one contract before moving on to something else. All of the youth workers I knew from growing up are not youth workers anymore.

There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I believe there’s more than just a subtle corelation between overexertion in youth work, and time spent in youth work.

So, switching off?

Why do you need to switch off? Because you will burn out if you don’t. We know this, but we don’t really know it.

We don’t really know the importance of regular, consistent days off.

We don’t really know the importance of booking and taking holidays.

We don’t really know the importance of switching off notifications.

We don’t really know the importance of hobbies, friends, and activities away from youth work.

Those who work these things out (and so do know) are those who keep going! But even they still need occasional reminding. There are others who know the importance of these things too though, and that’s those who have already burned out.

I could have phrased it ‘we don’t really know the consequences of not…’ Consequences on our health, our marriage, our kids, our sleep, our friendships, our hairlines, or even our job effectiveness. Exertion in does not mean quality out.

So, let me just end there – using a language we can all get:

Youth workers sometimes need to switch off because they won’t be very good at youthwork if they don’t.

Food for thought.

 

Photo by Isabella and Louisa Fischer on Unsplash

I once accidentally got drunk on communion wine…

/0 Comments/in /by

I once got drunk on communion wine. This was certainly not my finest hour, nor was it intentional.

I was working for a big Anglican church in London as a Youth and Children’s Minister, helping run a Confirmation Service. This involved serving young people their ‘first communion’ and I was giving the wine out of a challis roughly the size of Mexico. When the queue was down to about two or three people, the Bishop filled my challis right up to the top. I bet he thought that was hilarious!

At a formal service with the Bishop in attendance, we followed the ritual of ‘draining the elements’ at the end. This involved the Bishop telling me to ‘down it.’ I remember that he offered to help if I needed it, but he had already awoken the beast and prodded a competitiveness that is primal only to youth workers. I knocked the whole thing back in one.

At this point I should probably let you know that at the time, I didn’t drink. At all. This was more alcohol in three seconds than I have consumed in my entire life. It hit me immediately like a brick to the face. I felt like a deer in headlights.

I cannot remember much of the service after that other than stumbling back to my seat where the assistant minister was quietly chuckling to himself. I also drove home that night! As I have barely touched a drop of alcohol in my life before this, I just didn’t think. I had no plan for this. When I arrived home my wife looked at me, concern all over her face. This is how the conversation went:

‘Are you ok Tim, you look awful?’

‘I… I… I don’t know where I parked the car!’

And sleep.

I’m never going to forget that feeling of stumbling around with only a basic idea of where I was, and no understanding of what my feet were doing. I felt lost, confused and helpless.

I was advised by a friend not to give that story, as it may make some readers lose faith in me as an author. However, this feeling of blind disorientation is far too apt a metaphor to ignore. Our young people go through life desperately needing step by step help as they grow. They search continually for value, identity, clarity, purpose, and very specific advice and help. They are begging for it, and when they see it available they beeline for it like a frenzied moth to a light.

In youth ministry, a listening, open and available youth worker offers a safe place for young people to share problems and get help. This is incredibly valuable and comes with all kinds of new responsibilities. And doesn’t it just make you feel a little powerful too?

Sudden cool guru status is like opium. It makes you a gatekeeper to spiritual and emotional health, an unexpected wise guide for right living, and a healing balm for hurting vulnerable people. It feels so good to help people, and it feels terrible to get it wrong. It can also feel somewhat compelling and impressive to wield that amount of influence over the impressionable. Herein lies the fine line between an experienced, wise youth leader and the heroic yet fool-hardly passions of the green.

What are the actual dangers?

There’s two things you want to look out for when developing a one to one discipleship ministry.

Making yourself essential

One of the key values that all good counsellors have is making sure that they are developing a treatment program that eventually does not include them. They want to eventually write themselves out of the picture. They also have someone themselves to ‘debrief’ to. They have their own supervising therapist so that nothing is held exclusively by just one person, and the emotional baggage keeps moving away from the epicentre.

It’s all too easy, however, to make yourself the fill-up station where your one to one relationship becomes the only thing that helps, and your meetings become the only time a young person feels relief. You become essential to their health, which – as you can guess – is essentially very unhealthy for them and for you. This dependent relationship drains you and creates mixed expectations within your own family life. It also confuses young people, unhelpfully establishing you as a self-perpetuating depersonalised coping mechanism. None of this is healthy.

This can happen easily in two ways: First, by not giving your young people the tools to grow on their own, including teaching them how to operate in a wider church context. Second, it can happen by making yourself constantly available without giving safe and clear boundaries.

Losing sight of clear boundaires

Speaking of clear boundaries, I remember having a young person call me at 2am on my personal line, while I was asleep in bed with my wife, because he was worried his girlfriend was about to split up with him. Fine, this is a big deal to a young person – but it’s not a 2am big deal to me and my wife.

Herein lies the problem with an unchecked incarnational model of youth ministry. It has an inherent mugginess of boundaries that provides a multitude of unsafe situations. You don’t want to argue with a family member at two in the morning, because you’ll both say stuff you don’t mean. Always being on is something parents do for a set number of years and they make a lot of mistakes as we all know. That close family relationship, all-warts exposed, cannot extend to 20-some young people 24 hours a day. It’s a recipe for the happening of terrible things — and also sets a precedent for those young people, allowing themselves into unsafe behaviours and times with other people in their lives who perhaps they shouldn’t trust.

There are a few bare necessities that youth workers require: Regular feeding, a comfortable place to sleep, fresh bedding (and underwear) and a frequent change of water (or redbull). There’s something else we need as well, though:

Space.

Space away from young people, church families, young people, school carparks, young people, the senior pastor, young people, church elders, young people, the treasurer, oh and young people. Youth workers need times when they are not ‘on.’

Some supporters of the incarnational model of youth ministry, however, advocate for making every single part of their life open and available for any reason so they don’t miss any potential opportunity to minister. They have an open-door policy for their entire lives, and they make sure that people can contact them in any way, at any time, for any reason. No space and no boundaries.

Often Jesus Himself is pointed to as an example of this by being always available to His disciples. But Jesus often withdrew away from everyone just for space so He could reconnect with His Father and refocus on His purpose (Lk. 5:16; Matt. 14:23).

Being always open to young people is not only a drain on your health and family, robbing you of your effectiveness, but it also creates very vulnerable times and spaces. Being alone on a phone to a young person at private hours, having them come into your house when you’re alone, regularly meeting with them in quiet spaces, and prolonged private message conversations can create levels of dependency and exclusivity that are simply a nightmare waiting to happen. Things are easily misconstrued and misunderstood in private spaces, especially with a young, hurting and vulnerable person.

To be properly effective, a discipleship relationship needs to have a degree of detachment, neutrality and independence from the person being discipled. This increases objectivity, and limits the unhealthy potential for co-dependence – and gives you far more opportunities to point away from you and towards Jesus.

Let’s do that!

 

This was an extract from Chapter 2 of ‘Rebooted: Reclaiming Youth Ministry for the Long Haul – A Biblical Framework.’

 

 

Photo by Geda Žyvatkauskaitė on Unsplash

5 more theologically helpful alternatives to WWJD

/2 Comments/in /by

I’m a 90s kid. That meant Tamagotchi, pogs, the GameBoy colour, and of course, rainbow WWJD wrist bands.

WWJD, for the uninitiated, simply means ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ The idea was that in given morally challenging situation, you would stop and think, ‘hey what would the Big JC… [sorry, 90s kid!] do right now?’ Then you’d proceed to do that thing.

It’s not a bad plan, right? A little tool that makes us stop and think about a godly way to respond is a great idea – especially if we’re prone to shoot from the hip online! There are, however, a couple of issues with this too.

What’s wrong with plain ol’ WWJD?

My instinct is if we already know Jesus well then these problems probably aren’t really problems. But as it’s a concept we’ve used a lot with young people, I’m going to assume that isn’t the case. So, here are four problems:

First, we don’t always know what Jesus would do! He had this bonkers habit of behaving in precisely a way that people couldn’t guess. Religious people also seemed to be the least likely to figure out exactly what that would be. I’m not convinced we’re any better at this today! Popping Jesus out of the 1st Century and dropping Him indiscriminately onto nowadays is always going to be problematic.

Second, it re-crafts Christian living as a moralist set of actions. Don’t get me wrong, living filled with the Holy Spirit means growth and healthy changes in behaviour – but these come as the overflow of a relationship with Jesus. It’s hard to even form this relationship, however, if the only way you know Him is as some kind of ethical litmus test.

Third, it subtly remakes Jesus in our image. By regularly asking WWJD we are growing a mental muscle that sees Jesus through the lens of our lives and experiences rather than His (which is odd when you think of the question itself!) The more we do this the more we shape Him around us – rather than the other way around.

Fourth, it buys into a purity culture that’s always been unhelpful to Christian youth work. I’m all about helping young people make solid relationship choices – and celebrating the sacred place of marriage. Yes! However, chastity rings, abstinence pledges, books like ‘I kissed dating goodbye’, and awful guilt-inducing metaphors have always diluted the nature of grace. Do you remember the ‘sticky tape and the fluff’? What about the wedding altar and all the ex-girlfriends standing around you? This has made Jesus out to be a fearful father figure to appease. There are better ways of teaching holy living without this culture of fear.

I think each of these issues shapes a growing relationship with Jesus in really unhelpful ways. And this is probably a good illustration of exactly why healthy theology is important in developing healthy practice. Let’s have crack at some alternatives then.

5 Alternatives to WWJD

WDJD

What did Jesus do? Or even WHJD (What has Jesus done?).

Jesus came to Earth to empathise, be with, and save us. He lived a perfect life, died on a cross in our place, rose again defeating death, and ascended into heaven to take a seat on the throne and prepare a place for us. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what our relationship with Him – and our daily life – is based on. Knowing this helps us know His heart, His power, His faithfulness, and it helps us grow with Him so we will then become more like Him.

HDJL

How did Jesus live?

This is similar to the above but focuses on the tangible stories of Jesus’ life that we have in the Bible. This needs us to know His story better and makes being like Him a whole-lifestyle thing, rather than an arbitrary single-moment action thing.

WWJD

What will Jesus do?

Jesus will come back one day and collect us to be with us in Heaven for eternity. In those morally challenging moments, I find it really helpful to think about the long game and the big picture. He is coming back; He will take me to heaven. Everything will – eventually – be ok.

WWJL

Who would Jesus love?

Jesus loved the world. He sat with beggars, tax collectors, outcasts, and prostitutes. He walked with the wounded, the broken, and those in poverty. He even spoke lovingly with conspiracy theorists, lunatics, and young children. Who did He love, who would He love, who does He love, are all great questions for us to navigate a world of the unlovely.

AJ

A bit simple, but just ask Jesus.

I sometimes ask my young people ‘what did God say when you asked Him?’ when they ask me questions. It assumes a growing and important relationship with God. When we try to guess how Jesus would act, it leaves us to decide – so why not just ask Him instead?

Lead like you’re about to leave

/0 Comments/in /by

There is something magical about that transition time between an outgoing youth worker leaving, and a new one being hired. The church begins to suddenly become aware of what’s been happening in the youth work projects and then, with the possibility of said projects folding, they become invested in them! Brand new volunteers step forward to pick up the slack left in the gap, and current volunteers get off the bench and start taking a more active lead.

When a youth worker leaves, at some level it’s like a new – and dare I say healthier – model for youth work suddenly emerges. It’s almost like the church was ‘standing ready’, just waiting for their opportunity to care. Now that there’s not someone in place to do something with the young people – they need to do it!

It’s in these transition times, therefore, that we truly discover that there really were more potential volunteers than we thought, that people really do care, and that our teams really are ready for more responsibility sooner.

So why wait until we’re leaving to discover this? Why wait for chance at a healthy model of wider church involvement with our young people?

What’s the answer? Lead like we’re about to leave!

You can’t instil exactly the same imperative feeling of leaving a gap in the church that you would if you were actually leaving, but I think you’ll find a subtle shift in your attitude would change more than you think.

  • If you act like you might not be around in a month, you start to delegate more efficiently and proactively.
  • If you plan like you’re leaving, you give more responsibility, and more useful specific training to your team.
  • If you think like you’re moving on, you start to give people the sense that the youth work truly needs them when you ask for help.
  • If you disciple like you’re resigning, then you start to place other people in the lives of young people, so their faith doesn’t become dependent on you.
  • If you lead like you’re leading, your focus shifts dramatically to something that will outlast you and your particular skillset.

So, quick tip. If you have trouble getting your church to care, recruiting new volunteers, or getting your current volunteers to step up, maybe – just maybe – some of the problem lies in your own attitude?

It’s a harsh truth, but it’s so easy as youth workers for us to believe our own hype and have such subversive ideas of superhero-ism, that others around us simply don’t feel needed or valued.

If we take ourselves out of the equation, however, what changes would we try to bring about?

Lead like you’re about to leave – and see what happens.

All the best!

 

Photo by Romain V on Unsplash