Youth Ministry for the Long Run
Feeding Your Forgotten Soul: Spiritual Growth for Youth Workers by Paul Borthwick, Zondervan, $12.95
Reviewed by David L. Goetz, associate pastor, Mountain Christian Fellowship, Golden, Colorado
What do youth workers and minor league baseball players have in common? Neither feel like they’re in the big leagues.
What youth pastor hasn’t felt like a minor leaguer? “The church’s impression of youth workers is like that of a league-leading hitter in the minor leagues,” insists Paul Borthwick, author of Feeding Your Forgotten Soul, in a recent telephone conversation. “You’re good, but you haven’t made it in the majors.”
That attitude drives capable men and women out of youth ministry. Often they cycle back to the marketplace, pursuing “real jobs.”
The church’s misperceptions and the peculiar demands of youth ministry inflict heavy casualties on youth workers. Feeding Your Forgotten Soul is about maintaining the spiritual vitality of youth ministers, keeping them in ministry.
Borthwick, a seasoned youth minister, begins and ends his book with the warning: “Veteran youth workers have determined that the side effects of youth work can be hazardous to your spiritual health.”
The underlying hazard is spiritual flabbiness. “The spiritual race has many hurdles,” insists Borthwick, now minister of missions at Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. “We may clear one or two with ease, but it is the repeated challenge that may knock us out of the race.”
In the first of three sections in his book, Borthwick identifies six hurdles to spiritual growth. The chapters on motivation, the learning plateau, and lust can be pored over and pondered.
Is your motivation for youth ministry legitimate? “Although I hated to admit it, my own immaturity, ego, and insecurity had been woven deeply into my sense of call,” confesses Borthwick in the chapter on motivation. Errant motives will cripple effective ministry. Only by sifting through some hard questions-Why am I here? What am I living for? What would I die for?-can this hurdle be cleared.
Discussing the learning plateau, Borthwick targets a hurdle endemic to youth work. “Youth ministry can create an environment that fosters a spiritual sloppiness in us. We need only four years (or less) worth of material, and we can survive forever.”
The plateau is easy to spot. An uncontrolled tongue, self-pity, and deceit are just three indicators of stagnation. On deceit, Borthwick writes, “We become like the prideful emperor of the fable, trying to convince others that we are wonderfully dressed when in reality we are naked.”
Lust is another high hurdle. “I thought that marriage would cure me of lustful thoughts,” reveals Borthwick in the chapter on lust. “While getting married does offer some relief from the burning passion, it is not the panacea.”
Throughout Feeding Your Forgotten Soul, Borthwick repeatedly confesses his own weaknesses. In a recent phone conversation, we chuckled about his transparency. “Hopefully, I’m not the only one that struggles with these issues,” Borthwick said. I assured him he was not alone-unless, of course, there are only two of us.
Statistics, however, indicate otherwise. Over a quarter of youth ministers occasionally peruse pornographic magazines or films, according to a recent Youthworker Journal survey. Borthwick appreciates the perils. “Our own sinfulness plus the temptation associated with work in a sensual culture of maturing young people equals a recipe for sexual failure.”
Spotting the hurdles is the first step towards a healthy soul and a lengthy ministry. Clearing them, however, is more strenuous. The second section of Feeding Your Forgotten Soul is devoted to the soul, working the youth workers’ spiritual muscle back into condition.
Forgiveness, spiritual disciplines, learning, and balance are Borthwick’s workout for the flabby youth worker. The chapter on spiritual disciplines, however, is exceptional.
“Busyness is the enemy of quietness,” he argues, “yet quietness is mandatory for worship.” He calls for a return to Scripture reading, personal worship, and service.
Staying in spiritual shape is the business of the last section. Youth work is a marathon; the youth worker must be in it for all twenty-six miles. “Developing Christ-like responses once may not be a problem, but sustaining a Christ-like spirit certainly is.”
Each chapter is packed with practical pointers to stay in the race. For example, in reference to sidestepping lust, Borthwick writes, “Spiritual maturity means running. At the newsstand, buy the newspaper and run.”
The chapter on getting away contributes Borthwick’s own “hot tips” for maximizing time off. “When I go to a conference, I think in terms of ones.” He looks for one idea, one book, or one friendship to impact his life.
The chapter on accountability aptly concludes the book. “An accountability partner is someone who loves us enough to wound,” says Borthwick. Accountability keeps the soul on marathon pace. Youth workers committed to long-term ministry need a soulmate. Soulmates make us vulnerable; they expose our brokenness.
I identified with Borthwick’s brokenness. While reading the book, I kept saying to myself, “Yes, yes, that’s exactly how I’ve felt.”
Now I know: youth work has impacted my spiritual health. The words of the rock group Pink Floyd on their album “The Wall” express it best: “I have become comfortably numb.”
If ministry numbs our souls, we will never discover that youth work is major league. We may end up with an early retirement, leaving ministry for another vocation. In Feeding Your Forgotten Soul, Borthwick hits a home run, helping youth pastors stay in the game.
Preventing Staff Infection
Improving Your Multiple Staff Ministry: How to Work Together More Effectively by Anne Marie Nuechterlein, Augsburg, $12.95
Reviewed by Cinda Warner Gorman, Westwood First Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
Driving home from a clergy conference at which there was the usual assortment of complaints from associates, I wondered about staff relationships.
Are most associate leaders chafing in the position of followers? Are they itching to show the church their talents while being overshadowed by “tall steeple” pulpiteers? Are most women unhappy working with men?
I also wondered who could teach pastors how to improve staff relationships. Now I know: Anne Marie Nuechterlein, assistant professor at Wartburg Seminary and a practicing psychologist, who has written a concise volume, Improving Your Multiple Staff Ministry. Few up-to-date books about staff relationships are available; this one meets an aching need.
After studying forty multiple staff situations, Nuechterlein determined that a number of ingredients go into making a successful staff relationship Three of these stood out for me.
What most startled me is what startled Nuechterlein. She had expected to find a significant correlation between Myers-Briggs type indicators and the health of staff relationships-for instance, that certain personality profiles (extroverts and introverts, thinkers and feelers, for example) would clash or mesh, and that this would account for harmony or conflict.
There is, in fact, something to that. But, more importantly, she was surprised to find “most staff members related to their colleagues in the same way they related to the families in which they were raised, including birth order, how close members were, how families communicated, and how conflict was handled.”
For instance, Nuechterlein told me about one healthy clergy team: The senior pastor had a close relationship with a younger brother, even though they lived apart. His associate had a good relationship with an older sister. These two staff simply carried over their ability and need to have close “sibling-like” relationships from their families to their working relationship. It worked because they both were fulfilling the same roles they had in their families.
Over lunch with a friend in ministry, I shared some of Nuechterlein’s insights about the relationship of birth order to ministry staffs. With wide eyes and a big smile, my colleague nodded and told me of another woman on her staff who was the big sister in her family of origin. My friend admitted that, as the second youngest of five, she resisted every suggestion that implied big-sister advice.
Nuechterlein also discusses the relationship between power and self-esteem. People with high self-esteem comfortably share power. They know they are in control of their life and need not control others. Those with low self-esteem express power in covert ways-becoming two-faced or manipulative-or simply relinquish power, acquiescing to others.
Nuechterlein also faces squarely some of the tensions staffs with both male and female clergy have. Sometimes one becomes the primary emotional support for the other; sometimes they’ll play the roles of parent and child. Of course, she also discusses the volatile danger of romantic interest.
In talking with other women ministers, I find few that report their staff relationships with men as even approaching Nuechterlein’s ideal model of collegiality. The issues of self-esteem and male-female relationships play a large role in relationships that lack collegiality.
Take, for instance, the relationship between “Sheila,” and “Ed,” two staff members in a case study Nuechterlein presents.
Sheila had been acting out the child role in her relationship with Ed. She wanted an adult-adult relationship and decided to take steps to secure it. She stopped asking Ed’s opinion on everything she did; she asked for at least an hour to reflect on changes Ed suggested in her areas of ministry, she looked to herself, and not always to Ed, for recognition on her accomplishments.
That is but one of the many relationship problems that Nuechterlein deals with. In just 154 pages, of course, Nuechterlein cannot give a full course in group dynamics. But simply raising the issues seems to be enough: Nuechterlein told me that many church staffs have used the book as a weekly study, where it has begun to open communication among people who had been meeting merely to compare calendars, if they had been meeting at all.
“It was a vehicle to start talking again with one another” has been a recurring response by her readers. And if you judge a book by its ability to achieve its goal, that makes this book a big success already.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
