Interim Pastor Andy No More

Tonight was my last night preaching to the youth. It's been four months that I've been an interim youth pastor, and I have to say honestly that the experience has been excruciating. Numerous confirmations led me to the solid conclusion that God was calling me to lead my old youth group for a season, but nonetheless this has been the hardest four months of my life. I had the following against me from the start:

(a) I already have a full time job and people to minister to at Indiana Wesleyan University
(b) I knew my online classes would start very quickly, removing at least another 8 hours from my week
(c) My fitness schedule also cannot be tampered with because I support someone financially with the wellness pay I get for working out
(d) I'm not the "typical" youth pastor type (I'm not loud)
(e) I'm not even the "traditional" pastor type (I don't like listening to myself talk)
(f) The youth group has been through a lot and was by no means "booming" at the time

Thanks to Mark Batterson and his inspiring book "In a Pit, with a Lion, on a Snowy Day" I saw the above as challenges to my faith...challenges that must be met with the insane act of accepting the position. So I looked my lion in the face, and I can now say that I have conquered him. And in the process I have learned a few things about myself:

(1) I love preaching through entire books. God set up my preaching schedule perfectly so my last night speaking to the kids would be the last sermon in the second sermon series we completed. We started in the New Testament with Colossians and then moved to the Old Testament with Jonah. I like it because instead of preaching my own spin on every sermon I've already heard before, I was forced to learn new stuff and teach it to the kids. Colossians taught me to stay Christ-centered, and Jonah taught me about God's character.

(2) I hate ministry without relationship. Doing an interim pastorate means you will lose one way or another. Either you are resented for not interacting with the kids enough or selfish for making the next guy's job harder by building relationships that will leave the kids disillusioned when you have to leave. I chose to do all I could to create opportunities for the youth sponsors to relate to the kids instead of me. Needless to say, it is very hard to keep a teenagers attention when they don't think you care about them. I had to love them by developing a fun service with a hard hitting message at the end. I like how most of the services turned out, but if I could have built close relationships first, I wouldn't have been so drained at the end of each service.

(3) I can be resourceful when I want to be. We turned a service that was boring the kids to death into something that was both fun and convicting.
-I utilized my Firefox video downloader to acquire new viral videos every week to break the ice
-Found a fun and exciting games for the kids from websites
-Developed fresh, themed sermons with a graphic every week
-Founded the five dolla holla, a weekly game segment to start each service off
None of these are really that amazing, but when you consider I didn't have much time every week, it kind of all came together miraculously.

(4) I suck at church discipline, but at least I do it. Talking to one of the kids I confronted about a serious sin problem, I heard something that really saddened me: "none of the other youth groups I go to thought it was a problem." How are we loving the people we minister to if we refuse to correct them in love? To Jesus, "filling the seats" was secondary to producing REAL disciples. This meant getting in their face when they said something that was inspired by satan. I don't like confronting people about sin, its awkward because I have no tact and deep down I know there a few (hundred) things I need to work on. Nevertheless, looking the other way is committing the sin of knowing what we ought to do and not doing it.

(5) I have a lot more faith building to do. You don't realize how dependent upon God you really are until you are deep in a pit with a lion. There was no hiding my inadequacies in the position I have been in. I've never been in less control of my emotions. I felt powerless every day. The good news is that I lived through it all, and I still love Jesus.

It's through suffering that we are able to have fellowship with Jesus, because he suffered. If I had turned the position down, God would have found some other way to humble me. I have no reason to fear the future, but I know that this won't be the last time I have a tough time for Jesus. (I just hope the next step is a little easier because I feel like taking a permanent vacation to Jamaica right now.)