Why your youth worker never takes a holiday…

When I worked for my first church, I discovered a rock-and-hard-place fact about vacation time: I couldn’t take any!

Throughout school term time, there was a strong feeling across the congregation that I needed to be around for all the projects in case the teenagers ‘needed’ me.

During the Summer holidays, the regular volunteers had historically taken a break, so I needed to flash-mob together an ad hoc temporary team for the many youth and children’s groups the church insisted we still had to run.

During Easter and Christmas, I was expected to put on seasonal events, be involved in all the main church frivolities, and again be around for the young people that might ‘need’ me.

The result: 4 years, with just 28 days of holiday taken all together. I quit, after taking doctor’s advice at the time.

Most of these holidays were last minute and stressful. They weren’t booked in advance, as my line manager held out on letting me go until he was 100% sure I’d covered everything, so they cost an arm and a leg.

It’s worth saying that this was – at least at the time – a very unhealthy church. I once plucked up the courage to tentatively tell my line manager that I was working 70hr weeks, only to have him respond, “well, we all do that. That’s ministry!” They didn’t put a premium on time off. In fact, my vicar called me on my days off to give him rides to various places, even if that meant returning from whatever day-trip my wife and I were attempting.

However, although this is a particularly unhealthy example, it’s not all that extreme. No one pulling the reins were aware that they were making it hard for me to take holidays, it was just a lot of misplaced assumptions about my position that unfortunately conspired to that end.

Today I read this facebook post on a youth worker group:

Just had our head deacon talk to me… they hesitantly approved my vacation time request that goes over Christmas. He said some think I need to be here for college students, etc and a pastor should be here for Christmas and so I shouldn’t expect such approval in the future. I told him I have a big problem with that… this is one of two times out of the year I can truly take time off.

The responses to this varied wildly. One said, “You’re a staff member who won’t be working on Christmas Eve? Tread carefully friend.” Another, “No church that I have ever worked at allowed me to miss Christmas Eve. That’s one of those days you just don’t miss.”

One person, glibly, but I think rightly responded, “If they can’t do it without you, they shouldn’t be doing it.”

It seems the issue is still alive after all!

With that in mind, here’s a few things to think about:

1. If your youth worker isn’t taking time off, they won’t be your youth worker for very long.

2. If your youth worker isn’t taking time off, they won’t be a very good youth worker for long either.

3. If you expect your youth leader to always book their holidays last minute, you better pay them enough to be able to do that.

4. If you expect your youth leader to always book their holidays last minute, you better hope they can work without looking forward to things.

5. If you think your young people should ‘need’ your youth worker over their own health, then you might want to rethink your approach to youth work.

6. If you think your young people should ‘need’ your youth worker over their own health, then you might want to rethink your approach to church.

7. If you’re going to insist that your youth leader is always around during term-time, then you better not have any expectations on them for Summer, Easter, or Christmas.

8. If you insist on having your youth worker around for Summer, Easter, and Christmas, you better get used to them taking off chunks of term-time.

9. Expecting your youth leader to be around for every seasonal event every year is just stupid, selfish, stupid, and greedy. A little bit of HR wisdom goes a long way.

10. If your youth leader has a family, you need to help them prioritise their family time.

11. If your youth leader doesn’t have a family, you need to allow them to room to choose to have one.

12. You shouldn’t do any ministry beyond what you can resource – that’s good stewardship. Knowing a youth worker is required to have healthy recuperation time should be factored into those resources choices. 40hrs a week to fulfil a job description is not the whole story – have a look at the annual leave section too!

13. Empowering your youth leader to develop a team that works without them is good practice and good theology.

14. Taking a project off or cancelling an event won’t kill anyone!

Food for thought

Photo by Ethan Robertson on Unsplash