I’m Okay With Being Discontent
The last two weeks have been very hard for me at work. With our Children’s Minister on maternity leave, I’m stepping in to make sure that things go...
Why We Wear Many Hats
Christopher Wesley
Feb 20, 2011
I’m done with kids…well not really, but as of Tuesday I’m done being the interim Director of Children’s Ministry with Lisa coming back from maternity leave. Not that I didn’t like it, but it’ll be glad to get another thing off my plate. Lately, there seems to be a lot on my plate, but that’s okay. It’s okay because I recognize that there are going to be times as a youth minister where I need to:
Wear Different Hats
Yeah your job title might say, Youth Pastor, Youth Minister, Director of Student Ministry, etc. but we all know or learn quickly that there is so much more to that. Because of being short staffed or very talented (I lean towards the latter), we could find ourselves asked to perform duties that wouldn’t be typical of a youth ministers. We could be interim or part time:
- I.T. Director
- Maintenance
- Web Designer
- Children’s Minister
- Event Planner
And as hard as that might make our jobs at times, it can be necessary. However, don’t take that as an invitation to do everything in your church. After all we all have limits. So to avoid ministry stomachache is we need to know when all is said and done what it is we really need to do. In order to accomplish that:
- Write a Job Description – Present this to your leadership, get their feedback and keep it on file.
- Construct a Vision – If you don’t have this you’ll find yourself acquiring other tasks for purpose.
- Write Out Values – This will help you say no to those things that wear you down instead of lead you forward.
Again, there will be be times when you need to step out of your youth ministry realm. I wasn’t going to let our children’s programming suffer while Lisa was out. And, in the end I learned a lot about a ministry that our youth ministry relies so heavily upon. But make sure you have structure…don’t get tied to it, but the reason we sometimes where so many hats is because we really haven’t thought about the one we should be wearing.
Please share your comments.
What are the different hats you find yourself wearing?