The Senior Pastor / Youth Pastor Relationship: The Myth of "Feed Me"

Lesson #2 - They Are Not Your Private Mentor

Honestly, a lot of times when I'm teaching college students who are ready to leave school and begin in ministry, they have this unspoken idea that when they get to a good church, the senior pastor is going to mentor them, shape them, and pour tons of time into them.  They have this picture of them and their senior pastor taking long walks, eating ice cream together, spending hours exegeting Numbers 14, and having their wisdom tank filled up and over running.  In this dream, birds sing, a rainbow appears in the sky, and Jesus comes down and plays disc golf with them as the light fades.

End scene.

Uhh.....no.  Let's be perfectly honest here.  I love my senior pastor today.  He has poured into me, and taught me more than I can imagine.  I owe much of who I am as a pastor to him.  I am completely grateful for him, he's my brother, and he's an amazing man of God.  But we don't eat ice cream and study ancient texts together.  We are brothers and friends.  But his role in the church is to lead the church, and to train the people to do the work of ministry.  He is not my personal mentor.  The pastor in my previous church wasn't, the pastor before that wasn't either.  It's not their role.

I do learn from him, and he does pour into me from time to time.  But the reality is, in most churches, there isn't enough time or resources for the senior pastor to give you that much attention.  Your growth is up to you.  I do have friends with very different relationships with their senior pastors.  Some are very close friends, some aren't.  Some are very discipleship focused with their staff, some are more hands off.  It varies, just depending on the church's size, values, the pastor's personality, and the stage of life of the youth pastor. 

One thing I try to pour into everyone I send out into ministry is that their personal spiritual growth is up to them, not anyone else.  It's their responsibility to figure out who to learn from, and their responsibility to be sure they are learning and growing.  God is our mentor.  But don't look to your senior pastor to do that for you.  It's an unfair, unrealistic, and sometimes selfish idea.

So, how do you grow?  Read.  Alot.  Pray.  Alot. Attend conferences, listen to podcasts, get around leaders who know more than you do, and admit to them and yourself that they know more than you do.  Be a life long learner.  We are all disciples.  We all need to grow and change everyday.

Just don't dump that weight on your senior pastor's shoulders.

God doesn't.