It was early Sunday morning, and the furthest thing from my mind was what waited for me in my office. Two parents sat looking at me. “What are you doing with our teens?” It was an accusation, not a question. “What do you mean?”
“We’re talking about the two boys drunk at the young people’s picnic Saturday afternoon who got arrested!” “What? There wasn’t anybody drunk at that picnic.”
“You might as well begin packing, because after the board meeting tonight you won’t have a job here!”
And with that they both walked out. Talk about being astounded. A little checking in the high school department produced a different story. After we had split up, two of the senior high students went into another area of the state park and began throwing rocks at beer bottles. A park ranger came by and made them pick up the bottles and put them in his pickup. Then he escorted the boys out of the park. Somewhere in all of this, a parent saw the boys with beer bottles in their hands and the ranger “arresting” them.
Armed with this information, I faced the board meeting confident that all I had to do was explain things and be on my way. Was I ever surprised.
One parent in particular repeatedly attacked me and the youth program. With a shock I realized this guy wanted me fired. It was all the more unbelievable because his daughter had run away from home some time before, and I had spent hours talking her into going back. What was the matter with him?
Didn’t he know I was trying to help his daughter and his family?
Finally when the board decided I had somehow acted unwisely but didn’t need to be fired, he announced he was resigning, then walked out.
That was my first serious conflict as a youth minister. This year a young colleague called me late on a Saturday night and wondered if I had time for coffee.
He had been working at Grace Church about five months in youth and music. That evening had been his dress rehearsal for an hour-long Sunday morning presentation by his youth choir prior to leaving on a tour.
One of the more popular boys who had several important parts had arrived thirty-five minutes late. During the ensuing discussion, my friend told the teen he had wasted everybody else’s time by being late. “In fact,” he stated, “you have just cost us about fifteen hours of practice.”
The teen’s reply was less than reticent: “How would you like to lose fifteen more?”
There was a confrontation on the platform, and verbal abuse turned into a nose-to-nose stare. The youth minister was pushed, and he pushed back. Then he physically escorted the teen out of the church. When he walked back in moments later, his youth choir had picked up their things and walked by him without so much as a word. Several of the girls were crying.
A serious conflict in the youth group can evolve over a number of things, but the potential cost of the crisis is always about the same: one’s job and future seem suddenly on the line.
During this crisis a division arises about what should be done. Several parents and some teens feel the youth minister needs to be replaced. Several families think about quitting the church. And some strongly support the youth minister’s actions and program.
I call this kind of conflict a fracturing crisis. The issue fractures the youth group into segments and damages it to the extent that the future life of the group and the career of the youth minister appear to hang on just this one issue.
Fracturing crises are usually generated over three main areas:
- Conflict over goals.
- Conflict over programs.
- Conflict over leadership.
Positive Aspects of the Crisis
Fracturing crises are not abnormal in youth ministry. While I was working on this article, several youth ministers told me about early flare-ups.
One had sent a teenage girl home to dress more appropriately for an all-day outing. He felt her blouse was too revealing. Her board-member father did not. The youth minister lost.
During an all-night lock-in, two boys had a fight over an insult to one boy’s girlfriend. Before the youth minister even knew what was going on, he had to rush a teen to the hospital for emergency stitches. The church lost one family and a youth group member who showed real promise.
The crisis does not mean that the group is bad, nor does it mean that the youth minister has failed. Sooner or later a crisis comes to everyone, and the youth minister does not need to feel that he or she is unqualified to lead young people.
In fact, the resistance, the hours of discussion, and the debate about “The Problem” can actually be a strategy for self-organization by the youth group. On a deep level the group is growing up and learning how to deal realistically with its problems. Unless it can learn to work together and resolve conflict, it will never develop an effective ministry. What play does for children, conflict seems to do for teens.
The long-term fruit of weathering a fracturing crisis is not a near-defeat but something to build upon. The youth group has proven that it will now be able to accommodate itself to unusual stresses it might face on the way to some of its ultimate goals.
The best aspects of crisis are summed up by this statement: Every crisis has within it the seed of spiritual growth and maturity. An experimental attitude and good leadership can bring fruit out of the conflict.
Anticipating the Crisis
If fracturing crisis is a normal part of youth ministry, then there should be some signs that announce its coming.
Perhaps it was a feeling or an intuition, but when I walked into my office and saw those parents, I was not surprised that it was those two. The youth leader who took his teen to the hospital after the fight told me the two boys had been vying for leadership positions at school and in the youth group. The teen who walked out of the choir had just broken up with a girl he was supposed to sing a duet with.
Although the intensiveness of the fracturing crisis may make it appear sudden and unpredictable, there are usually some warnings.
• One of the early indicators is unexpected sarcasm or passive disobedience on the part of a teen. Later there is a selective withdrawal from youth activities. I have had teens attempt to get others not to come and go so far as to plan an alternate activity to draw a portion of the youth away from the church activity.
• A troubled teen may seek out other staff members. Without revealing confidences, these colleagues can then alert you to potential trouble. Open lines of communication with other leaders in the church, both professional and lay, are important.
• The youth group may begin to take sides on an issue, and more and more time will be devoted to dealing with it. Several teens, parents, and the pastor will want to discuss it with the youth minister. People who have no contact with the teens whatsoever will be upset and concerned. Some of their comments are the ones I have found hardest to take.
• And for those who need a two-by-four over the head (which I occasionally do), the group life and program might become centered around one problem. Communication becomes issue-oriented, and discussion is charged with emotion. Sometimes that emotion seems aimed right between the eyes or just a little left of center in the middle of the back.
It is at this point of the conflict that many youth ministers consider resigning in an effort to resolve a conflict that does not seem Christian. They may hope that if they leave, the church will resolve the issue and get back to being a church. This is a false hope. The conflict and its intensiveness is nervewracking, but it needs to run full course for the youth group to profit from it. Quitting (or being fired) during the first serious conflict short-circuits the growth process.
Leadership in a Crisis
The youth minister may be tempted to do two things to reduce conflict:
Approach One: place the planning of youth activities into the hands of the hostile clique, hoping to appease them.
Approach Two: retreat, taking what remains of the youth group and freezing the hostile clique out of activities.
Both approaches will usually fail. The first is not what the teens and any hostile parents really want or need. No matter how loud they have complained about the program or its leadership, sudden responsibility for the success or failure of the youth program will immobilize them. The loss of face through failure to get anything going in a hostile environment will probably terminate future participation—and the youth suffer.
The second approach is also destructive. All teens need to share responsibility for the youth program. When teens have no way to meet such psychological drives as the need to be liked, the need to do something important, or the need to win, the result is anxiety.
The anxiety of teens being left out of youth activities will express itself destructively at the youth leader. A teen who appears to be the instigator of the fracturing crisis needs to be loved and wanted in spite of what he or she has said or done.
When we were leaving our second youth position in Missouri, I had spent most of a day packing the truck and thinking about various teens. I had made very little progress with one in particular and, as near as I could tell, had failed to impress him at all. He had been a constant source of irritation.
Just as I finished packing, he called.
“Rick, this is Steve. I want you to know that I’m sorry I was so much trouble to you. You’ve been more help to me than you know. I’ll miss you.” CLICK.
That call made me vow never to give up on a teen. I must go out of my way to communicate about youth activities that are open to him or her, keeping the doors open.
Obviously, it is never smart to discuss one teen’s problem with another teen. Any negative comments that a youth leader makes “in confidence” to a teen are invariably repeated throughout the youth group. A label such as “troublemaker” will find its way into the next board meeting, and the youth minister may be called on to explain it
Sources of Potential Conflict-and How to Deal with Them
1. Parents. Fathers and mothers need to be constantly informed about what the youth group is doing. They want to know how much the activity will cost, how it helps the family unit, and when their teens will be home.
Don’t depend on your teens to tell their parents this information. They’ll forget or just not do it. If parents don’t know when an event ends, for example, you’ll get the blame when the teens aren’t home. I have been called twice in the early morning hours by parents wanting to know why their teen was not home from the church activity. In each case the activity had been over for hours and I thought their teen was at home. Since then I clearly communicate to parents when things will wrap up.
2. New members. A new teen introduces new problems and new relationships into the social structure of the youth group. Sudden infatuation by a member of the opposite sex may break up two friends, leaving one out in the cold. The new teen may present a leadership threat to someone insecure in his or her position. When new teens walk into a group in conflict, they are forced to choose a side or else withdraw from the group almost without knowing what is going on. Carefully integrate new members into your group and be especially alert for relational problems.
3. Prejudice. The best way I know to reduce prejudice within a youth group is to stress the value system expressed by Christ in racial and social areas.
4. Budget. Youth programs should not become so expensive that they set up artificial barriers. Any program that requires a series of fund raisers should be structured so that every teen who is going participates in the fund raising. When it becomes evident that an elite group can afford anything without having to work for it, the lines have been drawn for a future fracturing crisis between the haves and the have-nots.
5. Courtship. When couples break up, the ripple effect lasts several weeks. Parents tend to stay out of this sort of conflict, but the youth minister finds that impossible. Both sides want to tell their side of the breakup, and if it is over a third party, they want you to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Remain supportive but neutral.
Achieving Group Unity
Unity within the youth group is an outgrowth of the decision to do fun and spiritually rewarding activities together. A warm atmosphere can be promoted by group-centered and goal-oriented leadership. Group leadership results in more involvement by all members of the group and a greater chance of common consent in ultimate matters. Moving away from an authoritarian position also reduces the potential for fracturing crisis.
An overnight or three-day retreat can be used to build the bonds of fellowship. Structure activities with this goal in mind. Choir trips and mission service trips are less likely to help a youth group resolve a fracturing crisis. In fact, the trip can become a center stage for the crisis to be reviewed and intensified. Wouldn’t you just die if you and your group were at another church to sing, and one of the teens stood up to preface a song with something like “Some of the kids in this choir have really never liked me,” (insert long look at one particular teen) “but this song really helped me ….”
Here are the seven golden steps to group unity:
- Be willing to listen to the other side—and compromise.
- Eliminate, or at least reduce, status differences.
- Avoid excessive leadership control.
- Clearly define group goals.
- Praise, thank, and take notice of contributions and work.
- Be positive.
- Be dependable.
The Youth Leader’s Devotional Life
The devotional life must be maintained. Youth leaders who find themselves involved in fracturing crises suddenly find out a lot about what their faith really means to them and to how they live. Prayer and Bible study become supportive, uplifting experiences. Christ is a rich example of how to live with pressure and stress. The leader who remains faithful and teachable finds Christ meeting personal needs.
Conflict is written into the message of Christ. In church history, the call for total commitment has always brought the deepening of Christians and the departure of those who turn away and follow him no more. In my front desk drawer is a three-by-five card with a pair of quotations. One side says, “When it gets dark, the stars come out.” On the other side is a quote from Norman Vincent Peale: “It is the individual who has a deep faith and gut courage who comes through life’s tough battles with a victory instead of a defeat.” Youth leaders who abide in the Word experience personal spiritual growth during their own times of crisis.
Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
