Youth ministry was not the career path I desired. Though pastoring has been the dream since I was 18 years old, I rarely saw myself as a youth pastor. A senior pastor? Absolutely. Youth pastor? In the words of Moses, \u201cPardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
To my surprise, I have served in youth ministry in various roles from 2013 to the present. Though my current role is less involved in youth ministry and more involved with leading staff and pastoring young adults, I still get to jump into youth ministry every week.<\/p>\n
Though this has been a surprise direction for my work life, I am forever indebted to the lessons I have learned in youth ministry. One of them is the importance of listening.<\/p>\n
Now, as someone who is pragmatically focused and time-conscious, simply sitting with a student and listening to him or her talk about things I don\u2019t care about is a stretch. But the Holy Spirit has used all of these moments to shape me as a leader and, I sincerely hope, help each student feel seen and loved. Listening is a core element in pastoral work.<\/p>\n
This truth was reinforced in reading Tom Camacho\u2019s Mining for Gold<\/em>.[1]<\/a> In fact, through reading Camacho\u2019s book, an excitement for pastoral appointments welled up in me. In utilizing Camacho\u2019s framework for Spirit-directed coaching, I could help people find their next step in engagement with God\u2019s mission here on earth. Mining for Gold<\/em> is all about noticing the value within everyone (like mining for gold), and, in partnership with God\u2019s spirit, drawing out people\u2019s passions, giftings, and encouraging them toward their next step. In doing so, we will have more people engaged in ministry and less dependency on church leaders as the sole effector of God\u2019s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Camacho writes,<\/p>\n Instead of building ministries by trying to fill positions, a coaching form of leadership would free people to become all God had created them to be. Leaders would begin to discover who they were and how God had wired them. Then they could step into the roles and positions that made the most sense for their development and where they could bear the most fruit. By drawing out the gifts, callings, and passions inside Christian leaders, those leaders could be deployed in the right roles where they could grow and flourish.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n A key element to this is a reliance on the Holy Spirit in the refining of the individual. In reading this, I felt a sense of freedom like a weighted vest being removed as I run the long race of pastoral ministry.<\/p>\n In all honesty, I have been angry lately. It is, admittedly, a self-righteous anger. But this self-righteous anger has masked itself as my desire to put on the \u201cCoach David\u201d hat and, in my frustration, yell at people \u201cGet it together!\u201d as their spiritual formation coach. The image of an officer at SEAL training, barking at the trainees preparing them for war, is how I unconsciously envisioned my next season of pastoral leadership. I mean, discipleship means training people for the war that we fight, but not with flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12), right?<\/p>\n By God\u2019s grace and the kindness of His Spirit to reveal this misplaced desire in me, I realized the anger, intensity, and dependence on myself is not a recipe for effective pastoral ministry, but bitterness and burnout.<\/p>\n I want to close this blog with how Camacho\u2019s coaching model is effective in mitigating burnout. The first way Camacho\u2019s invitation to mine for gold in those around us is, in the words of the Vineyard movement, \u201cIn the kingdom, everyone gets to play.\u201d[3]<\/a> In an interview for my project last semester, the interviewee provided a line that has stuck with me. She said, \u201cOur culture demands too much of pastors! In my tradition, we don\u2019t have pastors because we believe in the priesthood of all believers. Are there downsides to this? Yes. But pastoral burnout is not one of them.\u201d If we truly believed in the priesthood of all believers, that everyone has a role to play, we would rely less on pastors for being the jack of all trades and perfect executor of them all.<\/p>\n Second, as I shared earlier, there is a reliance on the Holy Spirit as the \u201cprimary refiner\u201d of peoples\u2019 growth into Christ-likeness.[4]<\/a> This takes the pressure off of me as a pastor. This does not eliminate my concern for people becoming like Jesus, but I do not have to be \u201cCoach David\u201d and yell at people in an attempt to get them to be more Christ-like. Rather, I can, in my conversations with people, be attentive to the Holy Spirit and ask \u201cLord, what do you want me to ask this individual? What are you already up to in this person\u2019s life that I can partner with you in?\u201d<\/p>\n A week ago I had lunch with a young adult from our congregation who wanted to meet up. With Camacho\u2019s content in my mind, I prayed as I drove to our lunch spot. As we ate our pizza, multiple times I brought my mind to the Holy Spirit and requested guidance in our conversation. After we went our separate ways, I spent time in prayer as I was driving. In doing this, I thought \u201cI can never go back to pastoral ministry without being attentive to the Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n The pressure is off.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching<\/em>, First published (Nottingham: IVP, 2019).<\/p>\n