Your first two years in youth ministry

With a book title like this, I couldn't go past it. I have started full time in youth ministry so I figured I needed to read about the next two years coming up. From the sounds of it, the author is riding on the coattails of his previous book, Purpose Driven Youth Ministry, which is in turn riding on the coattails of Rick Warren's, Purpose Driven Life. Doug Fields is in fact the youth minister at Warren's church.

From the into and back of the book, I got the impression that each chapter was written by a different author, but as it turns out, each chapter was given to a different author and they wrote about a page and a half in response to it. I only really recognised three names of these authors, Tony Campolo, Rick Warren and Chap Clark. This was a nice touch in getting to hear from other voices, but I am not sure if they really said anything much different or added much overall to the whole book. There were also other boxes with voices from "on the ground" scattered among the pages; again these just seemed a bit like "yes men" comments and I didn't think they were needed as Doug already wrote well and has much to say from his experience in the field.

I think this book really filled a niche. This book wasn't about building a Biblical framework for youth ministry, or how to run a youth group night, or what you should be teaching in your ministry (there are loads of books in those categories). Instead, this book was about real practical things and situations you will encounter in ministry. I would hope that if someone was doing specific training in youth ministry that they would have read this book before starting out (unlike me). This book deals with things like working with parents, dealing with conflict, building up students, recruiting leaders, working with a supervisor or senior pastor above you, bringing in change, defining a job description etc... and there was of cause a chapter on personal holiness. If I was to re-order the book I probably would have put the chapter on personal holiness first (it is third) and then the one about defining a job description second (it is last).

The working idea at the start of each chapter is that you are meeting with Doug over a meal and he is offering some advice on issues. And he does offer advice, most of it really helpful advice. Some would say all he says is just common sense, but the problem with common sense is that it isn't as common as you think. Especially with zealous people trying to do good and sometimes too fast. I thought it was good to hear another voice tell me what was in here.

As I suspected from someone at Saddleback there were paradigms, steps and lists to help in a few of the processes, like having hard conversations, or setting a job description or bringing in change, or asking a leader to step down, etc.. but that pragmatism I found helpful and by no means did I think the process was complicated or existed at the expense of a person. Doug stressed a real relational ministry. Lots of face to face stuff with lots of communication. There are steps or processes that I may go back to as they were clear and helpful.

I am starting to think that I like to learn by "watching" an example, and this book was good for that. I found this book useful and would recommend it to someone else starting out in youth ministry, or even better to someone who is training to be a youth minister, they should read this in their last year.