The phone call to Child Protective Services. The student leader who chooses a life of sin over Christ. The statement you made that hurt a family. When you forgot to meet up with a student and they didn’t have a ride home. The email from a disgruntled parent. When family time is disrupted unexpectedly. The tough conversation with your senior pastor. The disappointing actions of an intern. When you choose immaturity over maturity. There are many times and situations where youth ministry isn’t fun. It isn’t the highlight, celebrated, raucous, or joyous job we want it to be. As a pastor it’s hard to detach from the job even when you leave the office. Ministry has highs and lows—if you work in a church longer than eight months you’ll understand this clearly. The days when youth ministry isn’t fun are the days that I feel I get a sense of what God’s heart must be like when he constantly sees his creation choose a direction other than his. It’s those days that I ask myself how Jesus could have spent so much time in the midst of Judas, his betrayer? These days are when I read the Psalms of David, when he was on the run for his life; I feel like I can understand a little bit more. These days are when tough questions become more real in my faith journey. It’s days when youth ministry isn’t fun that I’m deeply reminded that life isn’t perfect. Where people & situations are not at all that they’re supposed to be. Part of me reminds myself to deal with it, and the other part reminds me that God is so much bigger and more in control than I will ever understand: God is God and I am not. It is these days when Hope drives me. Hope that my faith in Christ is the same faith that the early disciples had in their ministry. Hope that God is still God and doing something divine in the entire world. Hope that my human failures can be used to teach me. Hope that sin won’t keep conquering people’s lives but God’s Spirit will break through.  Hope.  Hope is what allows people to get out of bed with anticipation that today will be different than yesterday. Hope gives people—it gives me—the chance to rest in God’s sovereignty. Hope is when I let God be God and my trust rests in the person of Jesus Christ. Everything else I manage to the best of my human abilities with God’s guidance. May your day be filled and focused on the hope we find in Christ and nothing else.

http://www.simplyyouthministry.com/community-articles-from-the-field.html