My friend Matt McGill, podcast co-host and great youth ministry friend, has a great new blog called Love God, Love Students that is going to soon become another youth ministry daily stop for many youth workers. His site’s just coming online now, with some GREAT content, including this post about insecurity in youth ministry. Here’s an excerpt:
Insecurity is inescapable for youth workers.
We’ll never be cool enough. (If you think you are, just wait a few years.) We revisit our leadership decisions. We wonder if people like us. And the deepest bowel-shaking, fear-spawned question: Am I spiritual enough?
Insecurity is debilitating fear and doubt. Some fear and doubt is good (hungry, angry bears will maul you). Too much fear and doubt will ruin a person’s life (for example, believing there is a hungry, angry bear around every corner).
The opposite of insecurity is confidence, which is the attitude that comes from an accurate understanding of what we can control and the faith that God controls everything. “Too much” confidence is pride which says, “I don’t need God.”
Insecurity has a million different shades of meaning. So you and I can be on the same page, I’ve tried to establish a clear definition: insecurity is too much fear and doubt.
Living with deep insecurities isn’t God’s design for our lives. Fear makes it impossible to be experience the joy and significance we can have in Jesus. Also, God is calling us to be more like him, and that often means leaving our comfort zones. We can’t take these risks if we are filled with too much self-doubt. In the tough times and wild seasons of life, we can’t rest in God’s peace if we don’t trust him. We know all this, we teach it to the teenagers in our youth groups.
