At least once a week, I hear a story of a youth worker who got fired …
… or was asked to leave.
And after hearing dozens of these stories, I realized these weren’t just random events.
People were getting fired for many of the same reasons every single time.
That means that lost ministry jobs aren’t random chances based on unique circumstances …
… but instead predictable outcomes.
This is important because if you know what usually gets youth workers fired, you’ll know exactly what to avoid.
Let’s start with what’s NOT on this list.
You’ll find no mention of boundaries issues, sexual sin or any of the other scandalous transgressions that get people fired and make headlines.
Of course, we know that these things happen, but they don’t nearly constitute the majority of ministry failures. They get the media coverage, but realistically total less than 2 percent of ministry failure.
If you’re looking for a tweet-sized bit of wisdom, it’s this:
Ministry failure is not generally due to big controversy, but instead a series of small, repeated mistakes.
In fact, each of the items on this list is the kind of thing that will probably be forgiven if it happens once or twice …
… but if you allow these seemingly innocuous mistakes to become a defining habit, you’ll quickly and seriously be in trouble.
Want to keep your job? Don’t do these things:
1. Mismanage budgeted money.
Depending on your theology, you’re either working with God’s money or other people’s money, and either way, it’s not yours.
You have a responsibility to steward the resources you’ve been given, and that means you need to figure out what you’re doing.
You might not have the background or skills to be a budget wizard, but it’s something you can certainly work at.
Bottom line, if you continually lose, waste or mismanage the church’s funds, you’ll be looking for a new gig pretty quickly.
2. Complain about your church publicly.
If you spend any time around youth workers, you’ve heard one or 20 complain about their church’s leadership, the lack of parental involvement, the drummer in the praise team and boring sermons.
And while there might not be anything wrong with honest-to-God venting with a friend, there is something wrong with venting on your Facebook wall or to a congregation member.
If it’s public knowledge that you’re fed up with your church, people will wonder why you’re there …
… and then you won’t be anymore.
3. A blatant lack of punctuality.
In the boldest example of this, I’ve heard stories about youth workers who were—with some regularity—late to their own youth group events.
Not only is this behavior demonstrative of irresponsibility, it’s also incredibly disrespectful of people’s time.
Believe me, it was probably a far more difficult ordeal for Mrs. Jones to orchestrate her family’s schedule so that Tommy would arrive on time …
… than it was for you to wake up from your nap.
Anyone with a secular job knows what would happen if they showed up late for work more than about twice.
You can expect the same thing to happen to you.
But there’s something much deeper going on here too, and it’s not just about showing up to staff meetings on time, because punctuality is almost never the problem.
It’s the symptom of a bigger problem, a much bigger problem.
An ongoing lack of punctuality is the most public way to announce that you are disorganized and unprepared, and that’s the reason behind the reason that too many youth workers aren’t doing youth ministry anymore.
These are a few of the most common indicators.
Of course, there are hundreds of different ways that you can manage to lose your job. Someone could probably start an entire blog dedicated to cataloging the different reasons youth workers have lost their jobs.
But in the stories I’ve heard over the past four years, at least ONE of these reasons was present virtually every single time.
Keep in mind, if any of these three items currently describes you, I hope you’ll start making a few changes.
If you’ve overcome any of these firable problems, I’d love to hear about how you did it, so tell me about it!
