I was in a fun conversation recently. We were talking about counseling. The other guy wasn’t so sure he saw the value in it. I told him that I thought there was tremendous value in it. One of the greatest questions we have as humans is, “Am I Being Heard?” He agreed but then he said the statement that made me cough.
He said,
“Oh you’re right, people want to be heard. The problem is that’s all they want. Most people just want to talk, don’t ever disagree with them. That’s the worst thing you can do. If you disagree they’ll have a conniption and get angry. You know who the worst offenders for that are?”
I told him that I did not, and he continued.
The worst offenders are pastors! You ever known a pastor that said he was your friend until you disagreed with him.
I answered in the affirmative that I had but that was true of other professions as well.
He responded by saying,
“yeah but pastors are the worst, especially youth pastors. Question them at all about their programming and they get all riled up, and defensive. Most don’t have kids but figure they can tell you how to raise your own and the one’s that do have kids usually have younger ones. It’s never a youth pastor’s position to tell my kids to disobey me or that I stink as a parent.”
He went on to explain the situation to me. It appears that he and his son disagreed about a major life decision. The YP agreed with the son and told him that he thought the mom and dad were bad parents. When the man asked him about it the YP told him that he knew what he was doing (apparently a theme with the YP whenever he was questioned) and told the guy that he was a pastor and his authority. As near as I can tell by my friend who introduced us the man and his wife are excellent parents. Now, here’s my question, what do you think about his assertion that the youth pastor should never tell the kid to disobey or that his parents were bad parents?
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27 Comments(+Add)
hard one…
i’ve seen some really bad parents, even before i had kids of my own…
but you’re on thin ice since the kids in your youth group are not really your own.
i just don’t think you should crap on parents…even when they are wrong or bad…
you should either steer clear or privately appeal to the parents…and if you do appeal to the parents you need to take your bosses or other church elders with you.
i mean, barring abuse, it’s pretty dicey…
all that being said, i don’t think it’s undermining a parent–even a bad one–to give a listening empathetic ear to a student, encourage them and give them strategies to engage their parents.
i agree, barring something abusive and/or illegal – telling a kid his parents are bad parents is a poor tactic.
Youth pastors should speak with and acquiesce to the senior pastor on these kinds of issues. Projecting yourself between a child and his parents is usually a losing and unbiblical proposition, unless there are extreme circumstances.
The YP should not have said to the youth that his parents were “bad parents.” (even if this were true). He should have taken this up with the senior pastor and if it were something that seriously needed addressing than they could speak to the parents directly about it.
I doubt the YP said that, likely the kid to win an argument with his parents.
Of course, modern YP’s, many of which are emergent, may lack a quality we call discernment.
*Rob Bell was not mentioned or mocked in this post
Unfortunately, pastors are people and youth pastors are generally young adults (under 33 is young
) who are zealous and sometimes brash. So I’m not surprised to hear that a youth pastor said that. But as was said, the parents should take this up with the senior pastor and not continue to stew on this situation, projecting it on all pastors.
Just my $.02
#5 and #6, I know for a fact that YP did say that, he and I have been in contact. Hopefully we’ll be sitting down with the parents soon so everyone can talk. And I’ve seen it at least a half dozen times from other guys in various forms.
Most youth pastors I’ve seen are guys who have just graduated from Bible College, and really, I don’t think I’d want any of them doing anything like heavy-duty counseling. Of course there are some exceptions, but I have seen many of them that get the idea that it’s their job to rescue kids from their parents.
I guess that brings up something else that’s always bugged me. It bugs me that in many evangelical churches there are so many pastors who very little experience outside the enclosed enclaves of the church. So what happens is that you have clergy who have very little to relate to in dealing with people’s everyday lives.
I think that denominations that require a pastor to get a degree in a secular field before going to seminary or receiving ministerial training are on to something. It’s kind of like what happen in the departments of education at universities. You have professors supposedly teaching people how to teach who have never spent a day in an actual classroom outside of the university.
I would remind the young fellow of the 5th commandment and try to get the lad to communicate with his parents a little better; because chances are he’ll be a parent too one day. Sorry for the long quote, but reminded me a something a read recently:
our “yp” (he is so much more) does not view his job as ministering to the youth – he sees his job as ministering to the families. he puts as much effort into developing the parents as he does the youth.
This YP definitely does not like to be questioned about anything. If he wasn’t directly dealing with so many kids and families it would be amusing to watch. The parents (this may end up being a multi-family gig) seem to assign this to “every pastor” they “have ever known.”
on what stats/research do we know that most YP’s are “emergent” now?
because they attended a conference where ONE of the speakers MAY have been Tony Jones?
on some level, pastors DO know more about certain things…and they should be given some latitude because they put in the work…
that being said, saying so or telling someone they’re a bad parent or NOT listening to the people entrusted to you is a bad bad move.
actually he said “many” – but the point remains that it is basically a form of xenophobia.
Yes, they do know more about the latest XBox 360 and Playstation games than I do… I’ll give you that.
I don’t think the position of ‘Youth Pastor’ ought to exist as a separate entity. I’m opposed to the construct of youth pastor.
on a certain level i agree. it perpetuates the demographic/generational segregation of the church.
i think there is room for the role, of helping shepherd families and focusing on youth – maybe a hybrid of sorts.
#16 I am with Jerry on this one.
One of our elders leads the young people in Bible Study, but he is not the youth Pastor. We believe (quite a bit has been said and written on this lately, like by Voddie Baucham) that adolescence is really an invention of the industrial revolution, and, like the people of Israel, we see those young people (around age 13) as young adults, and treat them as such. They are given responsibilities and held to account as any other Christian within our fellowship would be. The culture does not recognize this, but the reality is that young people can thrive better when they are given expectations and responsibilities as they have been reared with Christian values and are held to those standards.
I will suggest something even more radical- I do not believe in children’s church, or even nursery. Perhaps a crying room- but not a nursery. The children sit with their family, they listen, and by the Spirit of God take in what they can comprehend from a young age.
Even more radical than that- I believe that children and young adults should be biblically trained primarily by their Christian parents and only in the case that that does not exist should the church step in.
Which brings us around to the OP- if this were happening in this situation, there would not be this problem.
The young person needs to repent and honor His parents. The YP needs to be disciplined by the church, and should repent before God and beg forgiveness of the parents with the child present as he tells the child that He should honor His parents and that he did a wicked thing in encouraging him to dishonor his parents in that manner.
Thats my $2.50
* Rob Bell was not mentioned in this post
was it established that the YP actually disrespected the parents?
that being asked, i actually agree with PB on this one in principle.
holy cow!
#18 – Good argument, PB, I would agree with you very much. The church is not the provider of spiritual leadership to the children, it’s the parents. The church leads the parents, who then lead the kids, who then lead their friends (maybe?).
One quick note, you can drop the “Rob Bell not mentioned” stuff, it’s getting kind of annoying. But good job on that at the very least.
What do I think? I think the YP should have “Eph 6:1″ tattoo’d backwards on his forehead so he sees it in the mirror every morning.
Then he should be fired.
Can you explain what you mean to me by this quote please?
Ah, yes, Brendt, I see you go for the subtle approach, as always…
OK, Phil, I’ll make allowances. If his conscience doesn’t permit a tattoo, it can be carved in his head instead.
Seriously though, this guy has overstepped his bounds big-time. The YP is a “sub-contractor” that the parents have “hired” for a couple hours a week. The parents are responsible for the raising of the child. As Joe said, the YP “told the guy that he was a pastor and his authority.” That’s a bunch of skubala and shows that the YP knows nothing about his job. The YP’s attitude is no different than that of the teacher, school official, or Ninth Circuit judge that thinks that school supersedes the parents in authority.
Even if the life decision that Joe cited was the kid deciding that he didn’t want to be a male prostitute, the YP’s reasoning of “pastor/authority” is dead wrong. I’d rather the blind guy drive the church bus to the camping retreat than have this YP around kids.
along the lines of what pastorboy said:
we revamped our children’s ministries a while back to include parents… particularly the mid-week stuff.
we caught some flack ’cause parents were used to dropping their kids off and heading to a date-night or something.
but we started requiring their attendance… and while some dropped out, the result has been much much better.
the goal is not to make it a parents or church – but a parents AND church scenario.
This will be an interesting story as I am hoping to mediate some reconciliation for these folks
the best course of action since it has already happened…