Lessons Learned As A Rookie

Her world is about to change! A year ago my daughter graduated from college, came home for two weeks and headed off to an internship in Virginia doing youth ministry.  Now, she is about to be married and a few weeks after that start her first job as a Youth Director at a relatively large church in Atlanta. Faced with starting her career and marriage simultaneously, she is in so many ways in the same boat I was in nearly 30 years ago. That has caused me to reflect on important lessons I learned in my first job, lessons that allowed me to survive and at times thrive in ministry. The following is not in order of importance but merely the order in which they have crossed my mind. Most of these are probably most vital to master in that first job after college.

Excellence is worth pursuit!  The first church I worked for placed a huge emphasis on excellence.  We were reminded constantly that everything needed to be done to the best of our ability.  The programs we planned, the publicity we created, the communication coming out of our office, etc all needed to be the best possible. It helped that we had the budget to strive for excellence. Why was excellence so important?  Our primary target in ministry were the people in the community around us who were very affluent.  They expected excellence and paid for it.  If we were to reach the “up and outers” as they were referred to, we had to do church in a manner consistent with everything else in their lives.  Some may balk at this idea, but there is a deeper theological reason that should motivate everyone in ministry toward excellence.  Our aim should be to glorify God in everything that we do.  Does shabby work and settling for second best glorify God?

Punctuality is important!  I’ve never been uptight about time and usually not the first person to arrive to things.  However, I quickly learned something about people that bears some truth.  When we are late to a meeting, we are communicating something unintended.  We are saying that the time of others is not as important as our time or our choices.  It sounds harsh but really rang true for me the time I sat in a doctors office for well over 2 hours (and had arrived early) for an appointment.  My time was wasted and the unexpressed message to me was that my time was not as important or valuable as the doctor’s time.  Take that to a smaller scale and being late for a meeting says to the others in the meeting that their time is less valuable than yours. Walk in 10 minutes late with a cup of Starbucks in hand and you communicate that it was more important to get coffee than to be on time.  Some folks are as relaxed about time as I tend to be, but not all are.  I think we dare not assume it will be okay to make others wait on us.  Of course there are unexpected circumstances that make us late on occasion, such as a bad traffic jam, but generally punctuality is wise because of what it communicates to those we serve.

Dress appropriately!  In my first week as Director of Youth Ministries at a mega church near Chicago, my new boss commented on the khaki’s, blazer and tie I was wearing.  He said “that is how we like our people to be dressed”. Yet I later took the opportunity to let him know that I would not visit schools, hang out with students, or lead youth group dressed like a business person.  I needed to be appropriate to the occasion.  He reluctantly agreed. The reality is that our clothing choices say much about who we are and how we want to be perceived.  If I am meeting with parents, I dress up a bit.  Sunday morning was always very dressy in that church.  Staff meetings always meant a jacket and tie (lest I offend the older staff members).  I would show up to youth group in jeans because anything dressy would be awkward.  I’d never be seen in skinny jeans though as that is just wrong.

More to come…

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