All of Life is an Interview

You never can tell when you might be meeting a future boss. So it’s important to always be yourself and to guard your character. You might lose a job because of some snide comment about a mutual friend or someone they don’t even know.

I met Doug Clark, my boss with the National Network of Youth Ministries, around ten years before I ever worked with and for him.

Adam Mclane recently talked about his 3rd anniversary at Youth Specialties.  That was a fun ride for him, going from a local church youth dude in Michigan to Internet Dude for YS in San Diego, in about a month.

Adam lived out this principle. Every time he interacted with the YS crew, it built into greater credibility for him. So when they began looking for a “web dude”, Adam was at the top of their list, even though he wasn’t looking to leave his church.

I am happy to announce that I reaped this principle recently when I was asked to join the team at Simply Youth Ministry. I’m going to oversee their new pastoral care service, Simply Soul Care.

Here’s the background of my  year and a half “interview” with Kami Gilmour.

We met in 2009 at the National Youth Workers Convention in Atlanta. I had just come on board with NNYM and Doug thought it’d be good if we met.  I don’t think we talked for more than twenty minutes but it was clear that we were on the same page on a lot of things regarding youth ministry and Kingdom building.

We kept in touch and one day, about two or three weeks before the 2010 Simply Youth Ministry Conference, we were talking about helping hurting youth workers and we just kind of dreamed a little of what could and should be done.  I arrived at the conference and discovered I was co-leading three workshops.  One was “What to Do When You are Fired” and the other one, we did twice, “Help and Hope for Hurting Youth Workers.”

I didn’t mind not knowing about the workshops because both of those topics are close to my heart and part of my story so I could do them rolling out of bed in the morning.  I also didn’t mind because Kami wanted to do whatever she could to help youth workers and to put it off a year was unacceptable. I also served as one of the conference pastors.  People would make appointments and I was part of the team that met with youth workers to help then process what they were facing, encourage them and pray with them.

Kami and Andy Brazelton (I met Andy around 1995 when he was a high school punk on a mission trip to Haiti, but that’s another story) invited me to join a group of 15-20 youth workers from around the country to discuss and plan the 2011 SYMC in May or June of 2010.  That was a fun group, I felt like I was the last kid picked for an all-star team as I looked around the room. While there, I think she and I discussed improving the pastoral care side of the conference.

That fall I was able to check an item off of my bucket list by serving as a convention pastor for both of Youth Specialties’ National Youth Worker Conventions.  That was a fun and humbling experience. I met with Kami during the Nashville convention and we got caught up on a lot of things and we talked about “The Shelter” at the Simply Youth Ministry Convention.

The Shelter would provide a pastoral care service to youth workers but the distinction would be that Patti Gibbons and I would meet with youth workers, hear their story and then connect them with the best person on our 25-30 member Shelter Team.

It worked wonderfully.  Our team helped around 75 youth workers during the the conference.  The greatest part for me, was not meeting with the few youth workers I met with but connecting the youth workers to the Shelter Team members.  It was the same kind of joy you get when you equip someone to do ministry and you see them succeed.  I did not equip our team members, they are all top notch, but it was fun to hand off ministry needs to capable people and hear the stories that resulted from making those connections.

That’s what Simply Soul Care will be: connecting youth workers with trusted veteran youth ministry friends, who will be able encourage them and provide pastoral care during the storms of ministry.

Here is Kami’s announcement: Simply Soul Care – an oasis of hope by youth workers, for youth workers