Struggles In Ministry:

These came down my twitter feed today and I can really relate. Maybe you need to see this today. First John Piper sent out this bit of Second Timothy, "So many sorrows in the ministry. 'Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.'" I'm dealing with a real sense of abandonment right now. I'm sure it's not as bad as I make it, but it's something and I'm dealing with it. The reminder that even Paul dealt with abandonment, not to mention that Christ couldn't even get a crowd to hang with him is helpful.

The second thing that I got today was from Doug Fields his list of "10 ideas to help with ministry discouragement."(here) This is how it starts.


• Discouragement is painful.
• Discouragement is untimely.
• Discouragement is lonely.


Yes, yes it is. You really need to read the whole thing whether you are in youth ministry or not. It's applicable to all walks of life with a little tweaking, because we all deal with frustration. Here's a couple points that have really hit me.

2. Seek to spend time with an upbeat friend who is outside of your youth ministry. The benefit of an upbeat friend is that being with a friend who doesn’t really care about your ministry, but cares about you, can be very refreshing.

3. Realize that not everyone will understand you and your ministry. Actually, it’s fairly safe to state that no one will value your ministry as much as you. Perspective can be insightful.

I don't know if I have a local easily accessible friends who isn't in youth ministry. And, I don't mean that as a knock. I love my fellow youth minister friends, but I don't think I have anyone I can just hang out with that I'm not also working with on some level. The other point actually came out of my mouth last night, no one is going to care about my ministry more than me. I need some perspective and I'm not getting that from sitting at home with my dog. I think it's time to go make some friends and get some perspective.

It's pretty cool to me that both of these showed up right next to each other. I bet God new I'd look past one of them so He, in His immaculate timing got both of these guys to tweet around the same time. Thanks, God! I needed this today.