42 things NOT to say to a youth worker… that have ACTUALLY been said
- When are you going to get into proper ministry?
- When are you going to be a real pastor?
- It must be great to get paid to just play with kids!
- What do you do all week?
- What is your job, job? I mean like, real job, like how do you like you know make money?
- How about taking on the Children’s ministry too?
- God told me some things about you. But I’m not going to tell you what it was
- Why do you need a vacation? You just spent a week at camp with the students!
- Does you wife play the piano?
- I’m too old to help out with the youth group
- Can you fix my son/daughter?
- I have an old [*insert random piece of crap here]… you can have it if you pick it up… and maybe give a ‘token donation’
- We had to write a paper in class about our hero, so I wrote you’re name at the top…..then I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I erased it and wrote a paper about my dad instead
- You’re the youth pastor? I thought you were a student/new youth pastor’s son/married to the youth pastor.
- I know the deadline was last week but can I still go to camp tomorrow ?
- Oh I saw something on tv yesterday…was it Joel Osteen or was it Joyce Meyers…mmm Ill find it and send you a link.
- *End of the Summer,* Pastor says “You really need to work on getting your numbers up! Btw, our kids have ball games so we wont be there this week”
- *Kid gets scholarship to go to camp,* “Sorry, I wont be able to go to camp, we’re going to Disney that week”
- I won’t be at youth on Wednesday, I’m going on a first date to see Deadpool.
- You need to make those kids behave” – after the kids have been yelled at by that adult.
- So, do you play guitar? Can you sing? No? Are you really a youth pastor?
- Your messages are great and stuff, but they want to play more games.
- I’m not going to send my kid to student ministries because (while I’ve never checked your program out) I’m pretty sure all you do is play games and never open the bible!
- So when are you going to get married and have kids of your own?
- “Are you married?” “No..” “Oh, better get on that..”
- Well here’s the thing, the old youth pastor used to…
- The way we used to do things was…
- It worked when I was doing youth ministry (40 years ago).
- A parent concerned about the safety of a game lectures you for a solid 10 minutes saying “I think you need to pray about it” at least 7 times.
- We need you to start focusing more on the ‘core kids’ who’s parents tithe rather than the kids who come to church by themselves.
- The Youth Pastors’ job is the most important job in the church because it’s his job to go out into the community to find teenagers to bring into our church, and then their parents will come, and then they will tithe.
- “I didn’t know anything about that,” (after verbal announcements, social media posts, email, remind app).
- I see you’ve lost your razor.
- Are we doing anything fun tonight?
- Where is everybody?
- Could you recruit some kids to ____________ this weekend? We’re not going to pay them or anything, we just need some extra workers.
- Isn’t that what we hired you for? (Following a request for volunteers)
- Can you get my child saved at camp this weekend?
- (Parent, after child’s baptism), “well, your work is finished.”
- My son is doing this, this, this, this, this, this and that. I want you to talk to him about it but don’t tell him I told you.
- You’re 40? Isn’t it time you move on to something else.
- I thought you lived in the bell tower.
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