I have been blessed by a life that prepared me for ministry since day 1. Growing up the son of a Pastor, I saw a lot of behind the scenes of how a church ran, and primarily, for the sake of this post, how a Sr. Pastor and Youth Pastor interacted. I saw a lot of the Sr. Pastor’s point of view and , for instance, learned to understand why a Sr. Pastor would be upset about certain things in a youth Ministry that the Youth Pastor thought were just fine. Now I am on the other side, the Youth Pastor, and really see the value in a Sr. Pastor – Youth Pastor relationship being one of mentorship. I wrote a post a few weeks back about the four keys to effective mentoring, and would say each one of these is especially true for Sr. Pastor’s and Youth pastors.

But if I’m honest, I think one that is the cause of most frustration among youth pastors is the idea of “Believe in me.”

Though my experience goes through my college life, I also am still just recently out of college. I have a lot of friends who are just now getting experience, who have graduated in the last 3 years and just starting out with their legitimate first youth ministry jobs. And the bad part, is that this situation seem’s to play out far too often, church hire’s Youth Pastor fresh out of college because he is cheap, is sure to have some great new ideas, and is a young person who will spend time with the youth so the older one’s don’t have to. The young youth pastor starts doing some things differently, making some people feel uncomfortable, and the Sr. Pastor is suddenly at the office door critiquing.

Not to say they shouldn’t critique. One of the other points in the above post is that they need to be able to correct mistakes to produce growth.

But what I am getting at is that too often there is a messed up view of how the mentoring relationship works. Sr. Pastor’s need to believe in their youth Pastors. If you hire someone young, then accept the fact that you hired someone young. Most likely, if you had hired someone older, they would have their own problems. But believe in your youth pastor, regardless of their age or experience.

Too often, some Sr. Pastor’s take on this mindset of “I can’t trust you until you’ve shown me I can trust you.” But if you want to be a mentor, you need to view it differently.

My dad often tells a story at weddings of the 10 cow bride. The story goes that there was a very wealthy man who came into a town to find a wife, and every girl in the proper age was dolling themselves up and every father was doing whatever he could to get the very large expected dowry. One father had two daughters, a gorgeous one and a decent looking one. Well, when the rich young man came to visit this man’s house he announced he had found his wife, but not the gorgeous one, the decent looking one. He asked the father what her dowry was to be, and the father replied “for her, I could only hope for one cow, her sister, easily 5.” The rich young man gave the father 10 cows instead.

They were married and moved far away. But years later, the rich young man returned to the area with an unbelievably beautiful woman who no one recognized. The father who had given his daughter to this young man was outraged, what have you done with my daughter. The man replied that this was his daughter, and that if you treat someone like a one cow bride, a one cow bride is what she will be. Treat someone like a ten cow bride, and a ten cow bride is what she will become.

Now not all Sr. Pastor’s are terrible mentors. I have seen some great one’s out there. But an unfortunate trend I am seeing among my peers recently out of college is what is described above. Sr. Pastor’s hiring young youth pastor’s because they are cheap, and in return, getting a cheap youth pastor. What I need and what my peers need, is to be believed in, even if we haven’t shown anything to make you want to believe in us yet.

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