Youth ministry is a notoriously low salary field with many youth pastors and youth directors making far less money than other similar professionals. This hurts individual churches, youth ministers, and the entire profession. Good youth ministers leave their calling altogether because they can’t make ends meet or change churches more often than they’d like to chase better paying work. [Read more…]
How to Pastor When You Have to Report Child Abuse
I’m glad to have this guest post from Dr. Ryan Darrow, a pastor with a professional counseling ministry.
With a look of panic Eve yelled at me, “You did WHAT?” [Read more…]
Full-time and Part-time Youth Minister Salary Guide
As a professor of youth ministry that supervises interns and consults with churches as they hire personnel, churches often ask my advice about the appropriate salary for youth ministry personnel: Youth Pastor, Youth Director, Associate/Assistant Youth Director, Youth Ministry Intern, etc.
To A Student At Graduation Time: An Open Letter From The University Chaplain
Photo Courtesy of Hagerstown Community College
Dear Student,
You are leaving this place for new adventures and new responsibilities. Some of that is exciting and some of it is scary. Some of it is just unknown.
But you can be certain of one thing. The relationships that have been so meaningful for you while you have been here are about to change radically. [Read more…]
3 Things To Look For In A Mentor: A Tribute To My Own Mentors
In my work as a University Chaplain, I talk a lot with students about having a good mentor and becoming a good mentor to another. One of the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion is that only committed religious parents can have more impact on the religious faithfulness of young people than adult mentors. Mentors matter.
You Don’t Have To Save The World
Most of us are pulled in lots of different directions. Sometimes we come to church and are challenged to do more: more prayer, more missions, more giving and so on. Our university students at University of Indianapolis’s McCleary Chapel are no different. This is my call to the students to “Do Only What You Are Called To Do.”
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How N.T. Wright Saved My Faith: A Call for Theological Complexity
After a couple of years of diving into the depths of theology, it had become clear that the “Sunday school faith” I had absorbed from my local congregation would not be enough to answer my difficult questions. At the same time, the deeply liberal theology of my college professors projected a God that was too weak and too far from the Jesus of Scripture for me to accept. Was I going to have to choose between being faithful to the God that I loved and having intellectual integrity?
Dr. Jeremiah Gibbs 