on leaving

Leaving a church to go work at another church feels like a breakup. I lost count of how many people said "We'll still be friends. We've got facebook." The intentions are sweet, but some sort of disengagement is necessary in order to be open and free to fall in place with another congregation.

Just now while packing up some more things, I've been texting back and forth with one of the youth I'm leaving behind. She is one of the kids I got closest to and while I'm incredibly curious about the changes made to the youth program, I also wonder if it would be better not to know.

I owned that program. I let the youth have some say in how things went but when it came down to policies and limits, everything was pretty much my decision. While it was a gradual taking over control, the loss of that control is so sudden. It's very weird to still be in town and to be receiving text messages from a few blocks away.

That's part of the flaw in this poorly executed move. I'd like to think if I could go back and re-do the last few weeks, I'd have packed and prepped to leave so I could be out the door on that last day. Realistically, though, that wouldn't have been possible. I needed my energy for goodbyes. My energy is dwindling now. Which is not great. I still have several boxes and mucho cleaning to get done before tomorrow around noon.

The thing I keep reminding myself is that the ministry I did in this town was never my ministry. Many in the congregation and even the leaders fed into my ownership of it, but it went too far. The youth ministry became synonymous with Sara. And that led to me forcing my vision on the programming. Some good came out of it-- don't read this as all negative. But it will be interesting to see how the church continues to reach out to the community youth. I truly hope they learned something from the past few years, too. I pray that their next youth worker doesn't end up burnt out from being the sole consistent person in the lives of the youth.

I see a tendency for churches to fall into the trap where they consider financial capability as the key to determine if they can afford a full time youth worker. I wish they would look beyond that at spiritual and volunteer resources, too. When a congregation is primarily made up of an older generation, it's really hard to develop a volunteer base that can meet with kids during the kids' free time.

I know that in my next position, I'm going to seek the vision of the congregation. I'm going to remind them and remind myself constantly that I'm there to equip, aid and direct. Yes, I will be an active participant but the team aspect is essential.

Oh, growth... why do you come so much better from hurt and pain?