Back by Popular Demand

I'm taking a break from volunteer youth ministry.  Whomever takes my place is going to need to know that volunteer youth ministry is...
-jumping head first into a bunch of stuff you don’t know how to do, in front of a bunch of people who've never done it before, who therefore feel free to offer you a bunch of not-necessarily-credible advice.

-hours of praying and planning and preparing before attending a calendar meeting where every great idea you thought God gave you gets annihilated.

-talking to a room full of adolescents while they’re talking over the top of you so that six years later you can find out that most of them weren’t listening, but one of them was.

-phone calls and text messages from students and parents with questions you already answered in person, in emails, in text messages, in letters, in bulletins, and on Facebook.

-scrapping countless hours of lesson outlines because your students have no attention span tonight and they just need to decompress.

-fighting a not-very-Christian attitude toward adults who are gossiping in a not-very-Christian manner about your students.

-developing a fierce loyalty toward every other adult who joins the Crusade to Snatch Every Child We Possibly Can from the Jaws of Stupid Things that Ruin People's Lives.

-carrying several hundred dollars of students’ event cash in your own wallet for several weeks because the secretary is uncomfortable keeping it in the safe.

-teenagers talking smack about you because they thought they were getting away with crap but you called them on it.

-feeling helpless while watching a teenager make a series of poor life choices when you’ve told them, and told them, and told them.

-a choice between doing it all yourself, or taking a chance on volunteers who might make more work for you than doing it all yourself.

-people advising you to delegate, your delegates dropping the ball, parents complaining, and you taking the fall because you’re not going to blame your help.

-planning a fun event and being told you need to make it spiritual, and planning a spiritual event and being told you need to make it fun.

-trying to meet the current standards of awesomeness without a budget because even though you supposedly have one, nobody wants you to spend it.
-getting up early, staying up late, piles of papers, mountains of snacks, and incessant suggestions to do even more because whatever you're doing is never enough.
-well-meaning individuals advising you to get completely out of youth ministry because they think you're doing too much.
-wondering if anyone gets that you're a volunteer, that you don't get paid for this, and that it's not the only responsibility you have in your church, community, or life.
-wondering why in the world you're doing this, because you don't get paid for this, and that it's not the only responsibility you have in your church, community, or life.
-wondering which one would kill you the quickest: continuing in volunteer youth ministry, or not being involved in it.
-a room full of cutiepies who roll their eyes at you and may or may not acknowledge you in public but suddenly randomly hug you and call you their mom.  Which is really cool.  If you're not a guy.
-having your heart torn out of your chest and ripped into dozens of pieces every day and living to tell about it, while those pieces of your heart go roaming around town in skinny jeans and tennis shoes.
So Godspeed to my replacement.  And don't worry, I'll be back.  I already know that not being involved in youth ministry would kill me more quickly than continuing in it.  I'd trade my life-size Jeremy Renner cardboard cutout for all those eye-rolling cutiepies.