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In 15 years of youth ministry, the youth work horror story I’ve heard most often involves the exposure of this fault line. Few youth workers are motivated by growing a church congregation; they’re much more likely to grasp a wider vision about seeing local young people impacted by the love of God. So when the church doesn’t grow, and perhaps the youth worker even dares to suggest some sort of separate provision for young people at the same time as the service, disaster can strike. The church realises it’s hired someone who isn’t content babysitting the congregation’s kids, and the youth worker suddenly feels alone, unsupported and misled. Often this is the beginning of the end for the youth worker’s employment, or at least represents a major breakdown in the line management relationship.

You need to take time to listen to what your church is actually hoping for from you

This isn’t the only example of a divergence of vision of course. Views could differ on whether youth and children’s (and families’, and students’...) ministry can really be packaged together successfully, or there could be disagreements over theology, culture or lifestyle. In my experience, many of these issues get buried deep for the first 12 to 18 months of a youth worker’s employment, before being spectacularly unleashed, disaster-movie-style.

Ideally, things would never get to that point. The best way to prevent this kind of conflict is to do the hard and grown-up work of properly talking through vision together right at the start - before an offer of employment has ever even been made. One of the most important things to remember about a job interview is that it’s a two-way street: as a prospective employee you should be interrogating them just as much, because you need to be sure that this is the right place for you. As part of that then, you should take time to outline your real vision for young people, perhaps even handing it over on paper. That way, while you might not get the job, you didn’t compromise your beliefs, and it wasn’t right for you anyway. And if you are then offered the role, you’re in a much stronger position to argue your case later on: you’ve agreed a direction together and been employed on that basis.

All of which is great, but doesn’t help if you’re in a role where that fault line is already rumbling and threatening beneath the surface. If that’s the case, then perhaps there’s still some things you can do to remedy or at least improve the situation (unfortunately for the sake of the rapidly-less-relevant San Andreas metaphor, we’re looking to do more than paper over the cracks). Firstly, as the youth worker you need to really take time to listen to what your church is actually hoping for from you. Ask your leader to define what true success in your role would look like. What are their priorities for young people and your work among them? This might be enlightening in itself, or it might be a tad depressing, but don’t lose heart just yet.

Secondly, you need to make sure you’re clear about your own vision, and why you hold it. What are you really hoping to achieve? What would successful youth work ultimately look like for you and your team? Make sure you really know - and have prayed about - the answers to these questions before you try to defend your position in any argument. Take some time out to think this through, and perhaps to write some of your answers down, even if only for your own reference.

At this point, you’ll understand two visions, and my hunch is that they won’t be entirely different; in fact they may even have more similarities than you expected. So in your head, or on paper, try to create a venn diagram between the two, looking for the areas where your visions align and diverge. Now you have two things: a list of potential conflicts to work through, and a list of agreed priorities to work toward together.

For a few, this exercise will reveal that it might just be time to look for a new job. For most though, it should enable mature conversation between youth workers and their churches before the relational and emotional carnage of an unemployment earthquake. One of the biggest contributing factors to talented youth workers leaving the profession is the way that they feel they’re treated by a church that just didn’t ‘get’ them. Let’s do the work earlier on to make sure we all understand each other.