I just read through The (un)Offical Church Staff Manual: Youth Pastor Edition by Mark Riddle. While there is enough humorous material to make any youth worker smile – even after a the 10th reprimanding by the church custodian, there is a deep and heavy truth laced between the quips and jokes.

Here’s a brief example:

How to Crash and Burn as a Youth Pastor in Less Than Five Years

1. Believe that you’re a rock star – THE youth ministry expert in the church.
2. Take responsibility for everything that happens to, with, and for the kids in your church.
3. Completely ignore theology and its role in what you do week in and week out.
4. Spend time regularly in relationship-building adn one-on-one prayer with someone of the opposite gender.
5. Exclude, alienate, talk against, and look down on your students’ parents. Never to anything that actually supports parents in their ministry to their children.
6. Send anonymous hate mail to your pastor from your church computer.
7. Believe you ahve all the resources you need to lead a youth ministry at the age of 25. Its also helpful to believe that 20-somethings hold the most important and effective gifts for youth ministry.
8. Believe that you’re a wiser and more gifted leader than your pastor.
9. Never take a vacation or days off.
10. Feel surprised every time something goes wrong, because you believe there will actually be a time when everything always goes smoothly.

This is just a list from one page. The book is well worth the $5 bucks it costs. Great buy.

I was given Mike Yaconelli’s Getting Fired for the Glory of God by a pastor who used to work in youth ministry. I’m reading it. Blowing me away. You should read it to. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe it is just awesome because God is using it to speak to me right now. Either way, I’ll recommend it.