Jordan Easley serves as student pastor at Second Baptist Church, Houston, where oversees more students than most pastors do people.  I served as a pastor with Jordan’s dad Ernest in a little association west of Fort Worth while in seminary, and as a dad have loved getting to know the younger Jordan and seeing God use him.

Jordan wrote a blog giving the 10 things that will make you a sorry youth pastor. Jordan, a veteran in student ministry who has served small churches as well as Second, says it far better than I could ever put into words.  I will add a little commentary in brackets [] along the way.

10 Things That Will Make You A Sorry Youth Pastor

1. Be a Know-it-All
Everyone loves a know-it-all! (insert sarcasm here) And Youth Pastors are surprisingly known for having all the answers. After all, we’re the most creative. We’re the ones that are out-of-the-box. We’re young… We’re in touch… We know our way around social media and carry smart phones and iPads… Being a know-it-all isn’t a good thing. Some refer to Youth Pastors as being “20-Stupid” because we are so convinced we have all the answers that we become hardened and unshapable. If you want to increase your success, then get into the habit of surrounding yourself with guys older than you; wiser and more experienced and you’ll be surprised at what you will learn.
[The smart student pastor knows what he does NOT know and will seek out wiser, veteran men of God to help him. The most teachable man in the ministry should be the student pastor.]
2. Hide a Lot
Youth Pastors love to hide and not interact with people around them. We hide from other staff members, we hide from parents… some Youth Pastors even hide from certain students. If you want to become ineffective in your ministry,  become someone who hides instead of engages. When you engage in interpersonal relationships with the people you’re surrounded with, your ministry will begin to thrive.
[Avoiding people with whom you do not get along is a great way to teach students by example that Jesus is not big enough to solve their relationship issues.]
3. Dress like a Sloppy Teenager
When did Youth Pastors become exempt from professionalism? I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with Youth Pastors that say, “I just can’t get them to respect me… I can’t get them to trust me… I can’t get them behind me…” and they’re oblivious to the fact that they look like a 28 year old wanna-be-a-Bieber. Someone once told me, “Don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.” Hopefully if God’s called you to be a Youth Pastor, you don’t want another job, but you can raise your effectiveness as a ‘Pastor’ if you will first raise your standards on how you conduct & carry yourself.
[Okay, this one is a big one to me. Folks who know me well are aware that I loathe dress codes and obsession with dressing up. But the opposite extreme of dressing like a bum is even worse.  Our son Josh received an award at SEBTS this week. We went out and bought him a sport coat for the event, because although far more comfortable in jeans and a t shirt, Josh knows that showing up like that for an awards ceremony in a seminary chapel is disrespectful and pretty immature.]
4. Talk a Lot
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 5 that if you talk a lot and don’t listen then you’re a fool. That goes for those of us in the Clergy as well. Youth Pastors have to be careful to use their ears more than their mouths. If you will, it will save you a ton of headaches and heartache in the future.
[Umm busted.]
5. Come to Work Late & Make a Habit of Leaving Early
This goes back to professionalism, and it’s really true in any vocation. If you worked at Starbucks and decided to roll in an hour late and leave and hour before everyone else did… you would be fired. There’s no doubt about it! But many times we use our ‘crazy schedules’ as an excuse to be lazy. If you want to be a sorry Youth Pastor, then be lazy.
[If you have to be supervised 24/7 you need to be in the youth group not leading it. Be responsible.]
6. Fly by the Seat of your Pants
One of the quickest paths to failure is the road of no preparation. I remember my first year in ministry waking up on Wednesday morning and randomly opening my Bible to a passage & then writing my message for that evening out of that text. No purpose behind it. No intentionality. It was a lack of planning and because there was no plan, there was little success.
[I go to student ministries to speak where most of the students do not even bring a Bible. They learn that from student pastors like Jordan describes here.]
7. Ignore the Chain of Command
One of the quickest ways to burn a bridge is to ignore the chain of command. Ministry gets real hard when you don’t have any friends and nobody trusts you. Therefore, if you want to kill any chance of success in ministry, then begin jumping over the head of your boss and running your mouth to the people above him. Be wise and trust the system. Honor the chain of command!
[Amen.]
8. Put other Kids Before Your Own Kids
Here’s what many young guys fail to recognize: if you lose your family, you lose your ministry. God never calls a Pastor to put other people’s kids before his own kids. Your wife is your bride, not your ministry. If you want to lose it all, get that backwards for a while.
[I have seen this happen so many times and it is heartbreaking.  Do not sacrifice your own family on the altar of ministry. I have yet to meet a veteran student pastor who said he spent too much time with his children.]
9. Don’t Submit to Your Pastor’s Vision or Philosophy of Ministry
Why should I submit to my Pastors vision? After all, he’s a little out of touch and the vision he’s casting out there is ridiculous… Then leave. Leave if you can’t submit to his leadership and vision and philosophy for ministry. You’ll never be successful if you’re dodging his leadership and can’t submit to it. If you want to be successful in your ministry, then don’t just submit to his vision, be a champion for his vision. Be outspoken and supportive of whatever your leadership is driving!
[Do not run a parachurch ministry while being funded by a local church. Love the church, its leadership, and its vision.]
10. Depend on Your Creativity or Personality for your Success & not on the Power of God
We need to remember how unqualified we really are. You may be a great communicator or a relational genius. You may have 8 degrees from great schools and seminaries. You may be a visionary smooth talking drop-dead gorgeous man of the cloth, but as long as you rely on and depend on everything YOU are instead of every part of who HE is… your ministry is going to be ineffective and weak. Great leaders lead from their knees. Great men of God are humble at the feet of Christ. …and great ministries are led by great men who understand that.

[John Owen said it well: what a man is on his knees, that he is, and nothing more.”]

“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense” Winston Churchill

“A man of conviction is often more to be desired than a man of experience.” Curt Siodmak

“Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but in power, and the Holy Spirit, with much conviction, as you saw what manner of life we lived among you.”  Paul, I Thessalonians 1:5

Years a ago a psychologist conducted a study in which three lines were drawn on a chalkboard—a short line, a medium line, and an obviously longer line. The psychologist had ten people sit in the room to observe the lines. She asked the pupils to raise their hand when she pointed at the longest line. She pointed at the shortest with no response. But then she pointed at the line in between the longest and shortest, and nine hands confidently shot upward to identify it as the longest line.  The tenth person looked around the room incredulously at first.

And then he raised his hand.  The study was repeated with several groups from a variety of demographic samples. And 75% of the time the tenth person voted with the other nine, even though he or she knew the line they chose as the longest was not.

The psychologist concluded most people would rather be accepted than have conviction.

We can disagree over secondary issues, and sometimes in the church we make primary what is in fact our preference, leading to distraction from the main task at the least to sectarianism at the worst. But some things in fact do matter.

In the beginning of my Evangelism Handbook I offer some core convictions about sharing the gospel that I believe matter in our time. I do not put these convictions on the level of the deity of Jesus in every case, but I nonetheless think they matter. And, because of my disdain from my earlier years of professors who won’t tell you what they really think, I figured I would put some of my convictions up there early in my book.

I fear that sometimes we who so relentless affirm the gospel in our theological convictions fail to demonstrate those same convictions in how we actually live our lives. These convictions below help me to evaluate how my walk compares to my talk, or how my behavior matches my belief.

Here are some convictions you can stand on with confidence.

1. Men and women are without hope until they receive salvation through Jesus. Therefore, we must evangelize urgently. People apart from Christ are lost (Luke 15), dead in sins (Eph. 2:1), under sin (Rom. 3:9), and under condemnation (John 3:18). Immanuel Kant once declared that David Hume, the skeptic, awoke him from his dogmatic slumber. Surely a skeptical world, living in fear, often without hope, should awaken us from our apathy.

2. Many people are ready to respond to the gospel. Therefore, we must evangelize regularly. Paul told Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season—or when we feel like it and when we don’t! In 1995, I had the privilege of joining the faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Prior to that I taught at Houston Baptist University. Before leaving the university, I made an appointment with several students, including some whom I felt needed to hear the gospel. One was a young lady named Audra. I shared Christ with her. This was new to her, although she had gone to church services a few times. I gave her a gospel booklet, asking her to read it again.The first week after beginning my work at Southeastern, I got a letter from Audra. She wrote, “On August 9, I opened my heart to Christ. . . . A big thanks goes to you.” She even photo­copied the tract to give it to another person who needed Christ. This point is that Audra needed someone to tell her how to be saved. The reason many people aren’t Christians is that no one has take the time to tell them how to be saved.

3. Believers are commanded by the Bible to evangelize. Therefore, we must evangelize obediently. Billy Graham has said the number one reason we should witness is because God says we should. There are certainly other motives for our witness, but we should not ignore this simple truth. Obedience matters to God. In this day of “consumer Christianity” which focuses on meeting our needs, obedience has become low on the priority list of many believers. If missional for you means something other than being intentional, check your definition. The Great Commission is not the Great Suggestion.

4. Most believers want to witness but do not. Therefore, we must evangelize purposefully. I have been in hundreds of churches over the past decade. I am amazed at the number of believers who want to witness, who want to make a difference, who long for their lives to matter. They want to live out and share the gospel for the glory of God. They are afraid, or do not know how, or have been too busy doing good things to participate in the best thing—winning people to Christ.         We who lead must give our people both the command the evangelize and the practical methodology to do so. By the way, www.viewthestory.com is a great tool for this.

5. The gospel is the greatest message we could ever tell. Therefore, we must evangelize confidently. As a student in a Baptist university, I was discipled by a Presbyterian. One day he asked me a simple question that changed my life.

“Alvin,” he said, “what is the best thing that ever happened to you?”

“The day I was saved,” I heartily replied, with my Sunday school smile.

“Then, Alvin,” he continued, “what is the best thing you can do for someone else?”

The answer was obvious. Yet I was immediately embarrassed at it because I knew my life did not reflect the joy of introducing others to the Jesus whom I knew so well.

6. We must rethink the way we understand and practice evangelism. Therefore we must evangelize missionally. A shift from only an attractional-based evangelism to include missional-incarnational approaches is a theme in my evangelism handbook because I believe it must be a theme in our churches, our homes, and our own lives.

7. We must understand the spirit of the times. Therefore, we must evangelize holistically. Evangelism is less a technique and more a lifestyle, less a method and more a movement. The Western Church has been in decline for longer than we would like to admit. The notion that we should simply do what we have been doing, only better or with more passion, must be rejected. The idea that the key to the future is a new method that meets the times also misses the point. Separating evangelism from the life of the believer in a compartmentalizing manner must not happen. Einstein was right when he said insanity is doing the same thing over and over only to expect different results. We must take the timeless message and communicate it in a timely manner.  Do you really believe the greatest thing you can tell another person is the good news about Jesus? Then tell someone!

You already have convictions about the gospel, sharing it with others, and your role in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. May our convictions be biblical, and may our lives demonstrate the reality of those convictions.

Have you ever had an area in your life where you thought you had no ability, but then took a risk and tried your hand at it only to discover you could in fact do what you thought you could not?  That would be me with writing. I thought most of my young adult life that of all the things I did for the glory of God, writing would not be one. Speaking, sure. Even singing, back in the day. Sharing the gospel, of course. But writing? Nope. Not this guy.

Then one day a professor graded a paper in an elective class in seminary. He wrote on the back page, “You should keep writing, because you are a great writer.”  No one had ever told me that.

I do not think I am a “great” writer. But that little encouragement gave me just enough momentum to try my hand at writing for publication. I signed up for a little writer’s conference after that where I learned a few practical tips on getting published. Then I wrote.

And strangely enough, I got published. I started writing articles, book reviews, anything I could. I wrote for a senior adult magazine, a family magazine, sent sermon illustrations to a preaching magazine, anything and everything I could.

Over the years from then until now I have had the honor of writing a lot of things in a lot of venues: books, ebooks, journal articles, blogs, reviews, etc. I recently began something I have never done: a regular news column in our weekly newspaper The Wake Weekly. I actually write an article every other week.

If you are a student and are sick and tired of all the writing your depraved professors require of you, remember this: one day you may have an opportunity to touch your local community through writing. So write well. Learn as you write. No, the academic research paper you write does not reflect the same style that will do for a local weekly, but some things overlap, like using strong verbs, decent grammar, etc.

Further, many of you will in fact write regularly for something at your church—a newsletter article, a blog at your website, etc. Please learn some elementary grammatical rules so as not to embarrass yourself (or your alma mater, your spouse, etc) when you write.  Have someone proofread your materials. But do not be afraid of failure on the one hand or the illusion of perfection on the other keep you from risking to write. And if you still hesitate to write, check out this to encourage you.

Above all else, write. Look for opportunities. Seek to use the power of the pen for the glory of God. Someone is going to be writing the articles, filling the space, captivating the attention of others. Why not you, and why not for the sake of the gospel? One of the things I hope of my students is that they will write well in communities here and abroad as they have opportunity.

The little column I write allows me the opportunity to speak about Christ. I am a professor at a local seminary and on staff at a local church, so it would be a little weird if I did not. At the same time, I seek in writing this to be as wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove, writing in a way that hopefully interests the general readership while also bringing glory to King Jesus. It can be a bit delicate, but is really not that hard if you spend time in the community with the people to whom you write. Knowing your audience matters whether you preach, teach a class, engage in a personal conversation, or write a column.

I encourage you to seek opportunities online, in local papers, through any outlet you can find to speak up and speak out for Christ. It will shape you, and will push you to grow.

Yesterday my Christian Growth and Discipleship class spent class time at the home of my co-teacher and friend Mark Liederbach for a time of spiritual reflection. Mark owns a 16 acre tract of land with horses, woods, and the beauty of God’s creation all around.

I sat in my lawn chair deep in the woods. Since my teen years I have always been encouraged by forests; listening to the sounds, watching the bugs and the birds, enjoying the fresh air.  We need to unplug ourselves regularly from assignments, worries, and simply rest in the shalom of our God.

As I sat there praying, journaling, and reflecting, I noticed a little green inchworm near my foot. It stood out clearly in the brown leaves it traversed. I marveled at its peculiar form of movement. The little boy in me thought, “When it gets a little closer I will put it on my chair arm and watch it for a bit.”  No, it doesn’t take much to entertain me.

Then I noticed something peculiar. It kept inching its way, but never seemed to make any progress. Sort of how my life has seemed the last few weeks, actually. I looked closer and noticed something ominous, at least for the little caterpillar.

On the back end of the little inchworm a wolf spider had its fangs firmly entrenched in its body. Try as it would, the inchworm was going nowhere. Except to its death.  I could not see the spider at first because unlike the inchworm it blended in perfectly with the leaves.

The wolf spider illustrates the perfect predator. Camouflaged, fast, with powerful legs and formidable fangs, the poor inchworm did not have a chance.

And then I thought about us, about how any times people are like that inchworm, moving forward, trying to make a difference, standing out in a crowd, when someone comes out of nowhere to slam them. Not with a spider’s venom, but with the poison of critical words.

I have met so many people who were in church but no longer are because of the venom of church people who spend their lives it seems finding fault in others rather than edifying. Our “got you” culture relishes catching people in character flaws and publishing their findings for all to see. Television networks survive by reporting the “news” of “celebrities” who did something stupid (I do not watch TMZ).  “What happens here, stays on Youtube,” Eric Qualman has noted.

Certainly there is a place in the church to point out obvious character flaws and to hold one another accountable. And, ministers of the gospels have a calling to point out the idols of our time—the obvious ones of legalism, antinomianism, consumerism, materialism, and a host of less obvious –isms—and confront them with the gospel.

But that is not the same thing as living with a “got you” posture, one that constantly notes the flaws in others. It seems some believers are not happy unless they are criticizing one another.

It takes very little ability or insight to spend your time noting the failures of others.

Stop and ask yourself, in the last year, what has been my influence on the unbelieving friends in my life?  If there is a tendency for them to be less interested in Christ because of your relationships with them, it could be because you have boldly proclaimed the gospel and they reject it. But it could also be because your incessant criticism of other believers has caused them not to want to have anything to do with Christianity.

I have talked with more than one unchurched friend in recent days whose attitude toward our faith is not positive because of the attitude of some Christians toward others. We have earned the stereotype as morality police; oh that we would earn a label like one spoken by an unbeliever in the early church: “my how they love one another.”

We are not perfect. We sin. We have flaws. We need God’s grace daily. But we would serve the church and our Lord well if we focused a little more on noting the progress in the gospel being made by fellow believers and a little less on their shortcomings. Paul had the uncanny ability to point out the areas of needed change in the churches he wrote. But read his letters: again and again he began the letters with great encouragement in the gospel. And, even when he had to correct, like in the case of the Corinthians, he continued to point out encouraging signs in their lives.

We could learn a lot today from Paul.

Our culture so easily lapses into fault-finding, character assassination, while too many believers spend more time confessing the sins of others than our own.  Perhaps today, and for just a few days, we could focus on what we see that is good and godly in those around us, and speak words of encouragement to the face of those we call brothers and sisters instead and sneaking up to find fault.

Find someone today and encourage them. Note something that reflects Christ. It is there, and may in fact be more obvious than the flaws we tend to see first.

Climbing the ladder has become a phrase used to refer to advancing in life, particularly in business or career.  This analogy makes sense when applied to a materialistic worldview focused on this life exclusively. After all, what more can you do in life than get better at what you are doing, achieve more, accomplish greater things, and receive commendation and compensation for it?

But for those of us who have an eternal perspective such a philosophy of life seems lacking.

The gospel does not call us to achieve more, but to abandon all. This does not give us a license to be lazy, unmotivated, or underachievers; on the contrary, the gospel should push us to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, as Paul put it in one place, or to press toward the mark with all that is within us as he said in another. But the gospel does not allow us the self-serving, worldly approach to life of simply climbing the ladder of some consumer-driven, this-world kind of “success.”

Jesus did not build a ladder to climb. He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross. He did not aim for the penthouse, for no place in this life can compare to the riches of glory. He submitted himself to death on a cross, a cross in which he did not climb but had to be lifted up by his tormenters.  He refused to be the military or political deliverer sought by many who followed him. He did not use His ability to draw large crowds as a means to create a bigger event the next week.

We have too often traded a cross for a ladder. We turn men of God into celebrities, and when we do so we actually diminish them. We dream of getting to the place of becoming the next Criswell or Rogers, Driscoll or Chandler, Platt or Hunt.  Without great care we will see our heroes less as men of God who walk in faith and more as a role model to get to the next level.  As a result we can create a culture where younger men of God seek opportunities more than humility, leading to exaggerated testimonies and at times ridiculous antics on a stage where the Word of God should be delivered with unction. The power of the gospel is easily lost in human spectacle, and the cross of Christ becomes the ladder to climb to some level of “Christian” success. Pragmatism overcomes truth in a ladder form of the faith.  We must take great care to show humility as a core value rather than a necessary commodity for ministry.

How much better it would be if we would learn to know Christ and his call on our lives, and rest in the life he offers us to be used for his glory in the gospel!  Over the years I have struggled with choosing the ladder over the cross, and at times I have failed. Sometimes those I sought for counsel have not been helpful. As a young man serving in Indiana I had the opportunity to teach in a university in Texas. The school was small and not well known, but I had a strong sense of calling to teach. I saw the opportunity as a great place to learn to love and serve and teach students. One of my heroes, one of the more influential leaders in my tradition, told me I would be wasting my life to go there. “God is going to use you greatly,” he said, “So don’t waste your life going to a school no one ever heard of.”  That is the talk of ladders. Probably more because of my idealism than my integrity I chose to go to the school where I enjoyed a fantastic season of ministry.

Since then other “opportunities” have come and gone. I am honored to have been considered for each: a deanship here, a college presidency there, more recently an executive position of significant influence. You go to school a long time and earn a PhD like I have and you get these requests; they do not make me more special than you.  I probably wouldn’t have been hired by any of these had I rigorously pursued them, though I am grateful for the consideration. But while these offered significant financial gain and by some measurements greater influence, I am a teacher. I want to teach. I have no great desire to lead an organization or institution, nor do I seek any certain title. This is not due to some great nobility on my part, but is simply the recognition that the best way to have the maximum influence (which I think we should want to have) is to be in the place where we can be most devoted to Christ and most helpful to the gospel. It is less about the position of influence and more about the posture of growing as a man of God.

For me, I believe my greatest way to grow as a man of God and to be an influence for the gospel is as a teacher. For another, it is as a dean or an executive. For another it is a church planter or pastor.

It is less about the climb and more about the call.

Young men, you especially need to guard against the lure of the ladder.  Something very important and needed such as church planting, for instance, can become so popular that some could pursue planting as a ladder opportunity more than as a gospel call.  Be sure that your passion for a given ministry flows out of your broken heart for broken people rather than from a hidden yearning to be known. In my time in seminary the ladder looked like this: the county seat church would lead to the suburban church, which would lead to the megachurch.  Today the ladder looks differently, but it is there. You must identify the ladder’s lure in your own life. Just be sure — it is there.

And be sure to remember, the ladder rarely leads one to the cross.

Tomorrow as you reflect on Good Friday, remember it is good because the One who created us did not seek to scale the heights of power, popularity, and possessions offered to Him by Satan during the season of His temptation. No, He chose to lay down His life on a rugged cross.  Seek the path of suffering, surrender, and sacrifice that comes with taking up a cross.

P.S. if you want to see an example of this read here.