Articles

3/19

Someone asked me the other day, “How did you end up in Youth Ministry for 23+ years?”

That seems like a little bit of a loaded question. How does anyone end up in ministry? I can tell you this is not where I would have envisioned my life going 30 years ago.

I went to Bible College with a plan to go into the pastorate. I wanted to pastor a small church in rural Iowa of 20-30 people. I wanted to invest in it and grow it to 150 people then hand it off to someone else and go do it again. But what I wanted was not necessarily what God wanted.

From my first year in Bible College, God began to prepare the way for me to head into youth ministry. I tried out for a music team that would travel all summer and represent the school. I didn’t make that team. Instead, they thought I would be a great fit for the youth interaction team that would spend the entire summer working at a Christian camp.

I enjoyed aspects of that summer, but the teen weeks were rough. Teens had hard questions and problems I didn’t want to deal with. My plans were not going to change.

The summer after my sophomore year of college I ended up on the same ministry team again. It was another summer of craziness, activity, and heartbreak as I had the chance to work with teens going through hard stuff. At the end of the summer, I was more determined than ever that teens were not going to be a part of my future ministry.

I needed to do a summer pastoral internship after my Jr. year, so I spent the entire year setting up and planning my internship. I had been in contact with pastor I had met through camp and the plan was for me to come do a SR. PASTORAL INTERNSHIP. I was supposed to preach, do Bible studies, make hospital calls, help with administration, and all the other stuff a Sr. Pastor does. NO YOUTH!

But God had other plans. When I showed up to do my internship that summer, the youth leaders at the church had just quit. The very first conversation I had with the pastor was him letting me know that my internship had changed and would now be entirely focused on the teens. I was not a happy camper!!!

That summer I preached to teens, taught the teen Sunday School class, called on the teens, went to teens sports events, counseled teens, and spent a lot of time discipling teens. By the end of that summer, God had done an incredible thing in my heart. He helped me to fall in love with ministering to those teenagers. For the next school year, I drove 1 1/2 hours each way on Sundays and Wednesday nights to continue the ministry God had used me in throughout the summer.

As I was nearing the end of my Sr. year, God opened the door for me to interview to be the first Youth Pastor at Nevada Baptist Church. I figured God would use that position to continue to teach me until He was ready to move me into the Sr. Pastoral role. Boy was I wrong!

God gave me 17 1/2 years of ministry in that church. We started with 5 teens regularly attending and bounced all over the place in size. I think our largest attendance for multiple weeks was around 90 teens. That was incredible for our small town of 7500 people. It wasn’t long into ministry at Nevada Baptist that I realized God had wired me for the Associate Pastor role. I loved working with the teens, helping with the administration, encouraging and supporting the Sr. Pastor, and training the next generation of youth pastors and workers.

After 17 1/2 years of ministry at Nevada, God moved me and my family on to Good News Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I continued as an Associate Pastor there for 4 1/2 years, and God ultimately called me to the Executive Director role at Lincoln Lake Baptist Camp. This was definitely not my plan for my life, but I am grateful that God knows better than me. I love what I do. I love the people I get to work with. I love all of the discipleship opportunities. And I can’t even begin to imagine a day where I wasn’t working with teens. God is so good!

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