The other day I was digging through the stats on my website – seeing where people are coming from, how many of you there are, and the search terms people use to stumble across my humble site. Occasionally I’ll come across something interesting, like that someone from Saudi Arabia read my blog. For some reason, thats really cool! As I was looking into this stuff, though, I found out that one of the search terms someone googled for my website was “How to get rid of a bad youth minister.” I have no idea how that particular search term led to my blog (the craziness of of Google I guess) but since it led someone to this blog I thought I’d address the topic.

So how do you get rid of a bad youth minister? Simple – you make him a good one! I do not believe you should ever fire a minister, with one notable exception – moral failure. Otherwise, a youth minister should not be fired. “But, what if they do a bad job!” you might be asking. Be patient, I am getting there!

Youth ministry is not like your normal 9-5 job. Like I’ve said in previous posts, you learn the best through doing ministry, which means making mistakes (and lots of them!) I can guarantee that if you talk with any youth minister in the country, you’ll find out that every single one of them had numerous mistakes – many of them monumental. Unfortunately, churches are often extremely demanding and impatient. They expect 22 year olds straight out of college to know how to do every aspect of ministry flawlessly, in addition to knowing how to handle the often treacherous politics of the church.

I’ve had this discussion before, and I’ve heard the argument, “But if they were in the ‘REAL WORLD’ they would be held to a higher standard…” Is that really the case? Maybe, but not in my experience. I’ve worked in retail, finance, and blue collar (warehouse) and in every instance I was treated far better than in the church. When I made mistakes, I might have been yelled at but as long as I was working hard and trying to get better the bosses would work with me.  For example, I worked at a bank for a time several years back. Each night, we’d count the money and make sure it all added up with how much we were supposed to have. Even though you’re doing it all on computers, it doesn’t take much to make an easy mistake (deposit instead of withdraw, cash instead of check, etc). I would say that, with 4 people working each day, that a day didn’t go by when someone made an error. So we’d have to go back through the whole day with a fine tooth comb until we figured out our error. One day, I was over $1000 off (in the positive for the bank, so its not like I was taking from the till…). I could have been fired cause thats a big error. But the manager looked through it with me, and we worked until we got it right. In the “real world” a good boss or employer will train and work with a person, and as long as they have a good attitude and are growing in the right direction, they are considered a good employee.

So, the best way to get rid of a bad youth minister is to make him a good one. Here are some suggestions on how to do that…

1. Talk with him – Its easy to complain, its another thing all together to discuss like adults the problem. Maybe they didn’t realize what they were doing. Or maybe they are struggling, but they don’t know how to fix it. A rational conversation could do wonders. Just avoid assumptions about their behavior or accusations or personal attacks. Just simply say, “Hey, I noticed this is going on, what do you think about it?” Quite possibly, YOU don’t have all the information either, so it will be a good meeting.
2. Offer to help – If you see a problem, stepping in to assist would be a big relief to a struggling minister. If everyone in the church did this instead of hitting the gossip/complainer circuit, think of how much better the kingdom of God would be? Because this isn’t about the youth minister or you, but about God and those that He loves.
3. Provide additional training – If the church doesn’t have money in the budget to provide additional training, then that needs to change! Whether its schooling, a conference, or whatever, the $1000-$2000 in training is small change to the cost of finding a new youth minister every 2-3 years. A youth minister needs to continue to learn, or they will stagnate and struggle.
4. Refine the job description – For some reason many churches think that working with teens isn’t actually a full time job, so they add on things like worship, tech, children, college age, or all of the above. Focus the job description to as few jobs as possible. Also, there are often a lot of extraneous expectations. Try to boil it down to a few key expectations with clear actions steps. That way, instead of trying to do everything, they can do a few things well and grow into the the other areas.
5. Encourage her strengths – Encouragement is key. If a youth minister is struggling, a letter or card could do wonders. Also, target a youth minister to work towards their strengths. If they’re a good teacher, make sure that they teach. If they’re hospitable, make sure they’re opening their homes to teens. If they’re good at planning…you get the point.
6. Help fill the weaknesses – No one can be good at everything. But, you can fill in those weaknesses with people who have gifts to fit. That way they can work to their strengths while the ministry gets the benefit of others’ strengths.
7. Pray for them – Are you praying for your youth minister? And I don’t mean, “God, you better do something with them!” I mean genuinely praying for them, their family, and their ministry and asking God to bless them. You’ll find in short order that God will answer that prayer, and YOU might be the start of that answer.

You can get rid of your bad youth minister, all without grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and throwing them out! Just work with them to make them better, try to understand them, maybe even be their friend. You’ll find that 99 times out of 100, doing this 7 things will help to make your bad youth minister a good (or maybe even great!) youth minister.

Note – there are some times when you may need to get rid of a minister. Moral failing is the obvious one, but hopefully you would continue to care for this person and help them through their struggles, even if they will never be in the ministry again. Also, if a person has a bad attitude, it might be time to send them on their way. But if it comes to that, I encourage you to go to them in gentleness and say, “Hey, I don’t think this youth ministry thing is working out for you. Why don’t you look for something else?” and keep them around until they find something new (within a reasonable timeframe, of course).

Let me just clue you in to what its like for a fired youth minister. You don’t just lose a job. You lose your church family. Many times you lose your town and have to move. You lose lots of friends. Sometimes, it even means leaving the ministry, even though the firing had nothing to do with you but by sinful people who will end up doing the same thing to someone else 3 years down the road. Its a traumatic thing for a minister and his/her family. If you can do anything else, try to work with a minister to get him to be better. If not, do everything you can to move them along gently. I am making a big assumption, that the person doing the searching was looking for a way to fire or otherwise chase away said bad minister. If you know anything about my recent history (I was fired through no fault of my own), then you know that I have first hand experience of this type of thing. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. If it wasn’t for God and His great provision, I don’t know where we would be. So, I encourage you to work with your ministers to make them better.

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