rob's reflections

As I mentioned before, I was a youth pastor in a few mega churches for some 30+ years before I became a hospital chaplain.

As I reflect on this new life in chaplaincy, I can see many similarities between being a youth pastor and being a hospital chaplain:

• As a youth pastor, you never really know what is going to happen when you talk to a student. They may burst out with emotion, or they may be aloof. They may open up and share their deepest hurts, or they may make fun of you to your face. I have found that as a chaplain, you never know what to expect when you enter a patient’s room: they may be delighted to see you with tears of gratitude, or they may tell you to leave them alone. Being a youth worker has prepared me for this.
   
• As a youth pastor, you need to be present when you’re talking to a student or a parent or a volunteer. There is always a lot going on in your peripheral vision, but you have to stay in the moment. Someone is sharing some deep things with you, and you don’t want to communicate that you are distracted. That is true for chaplains as well. Recently, I was talking to a patient, and she was sharing how she had lost her son. She was pouring out her heart with tears in her eyes; and just then loud construction noises came from the floor below us. I did my best to stay in the moment and to communicate that I was present, caring and listening. 
  
• As a youth pastor, and as a chaplain, you are planting seeds in someone’s life. You may never see the fruit of the seed that you planted as a youth pastor, you get the opportunity to work with someone for several years. As a chaplain, you may see a patient only once.
  
• As a youth pastor, you have to get good at greeting people. You need a few good ice breaker questions, because students aren’t always great at making conversation. You have to always be ready for a conversation to go from a surface level conversation to a deep one. Chaplaincy is a lot like that. I have a list of go to questions to get the conversation going. Most of the time they work, but sometimes they don’t.
  
• As a youth pastor, sometimes you’re presented with the hard questions of life: “why did God take my family member from me?” “Why did God allow something bad to happen to me?” That happens somewhat regularly to chaplains. I have learned that the answers are not as important as letting the person ask the question.

Which brings me to how chaplains and youth pastors are different:

• As a youth pastor, I felt that my job was to tell people things. I got paid so that people could come and sit in my meetings and listen to me talk. As a chaplain, my job isn’t to talk, but to listen. My job is to not only let people talk, but to encourage them to talk. I have recently learned all over again that talking is healing to someone who is hurting. It is healing to have someone listen as you process your hurts and experience out loud. 
  
• As a youth pastor, you need to be good at so many things: preaching, leader development, vision casting, game leading, programming, event planning, and just being magnetic. As a chaplain, I just need to be good at one thing: caring for the person lying in front of me.
  
• As a youth pastor, you need to reach all kinds of people all at once. There is always a question of how many people were in your meeting; is the meeting growing? Shrinking? As a chaplain, I just need to minister to one person at a time.
   
• I always felt a sense of comparison as a youth pastor: I was being compared to my predecessor, compared to the pastor who brought a bigger group to camp, compared with the leader from across town. As a chaplain, no one is comparing me to anyone. They are just glad that I’m there. Its refreshing.
   
• As a chaplain, I work a full day and a full week. As a youth pastor…not so much.
  
• As a youth pastor in a mega church, you interact with different kinds of kids, from all kinds of backgrounds; but they all chose to come to your church. As a chaplain, I interact with people from all kinds of faiths, orientations, languages, age groups and ethnicities. Youth ministry prepared me for this, and I love the diversity. 
  
• As a youth pastor, I spent a lot of time preparing my talk for the week; as a chaplain, there is no talk, just listening.
  
• As a youth pastor, there was a stage, with a spotlight, and a microphone, and this internal sense that I was someone really important, almost a celebrity. As a chaplain, there is no stage. There are no lights, no microphone. I’m not a celebrity, though many are happy to see me. This transition is easier for me than I thought it would be. I was never super comfortable in the spotlight. I may not be important in the eyes of a crowd of kids, but as I sit across from a hurting parent or patient, I know that I am very important to them and meeting a real need in their life in that moment. 
  
• Toward the end of my student ministry time there was an emphasis on HYPE. How well was I at hyping a crowd? How hype was the environment? How hype was I as a leader? I was never that great at the hype. Thank goodness, there is no hyping in chaplaincy. 
  
• As a youth pastor, I felt that there was an underlying message that some kids were cooler, and should get more of my attention; as a chaplain, everyone is valuable, and everyone gets my attention. We used to refer to some people as “extra grace required” as though they were draining to our energy because they were so needy. As a chaplain, everyone gets extra grace. No one is too needy for my attention. 

I used to read the Bible passages that talked about spiritual gifts, and in my heart I knew that the gifts of leadership, preaching and administration were the best ones. Now I know that those gifts of hospitality, healing, helping, mercy and service are just as valuable. 

Reading through this, it sounds like I have bitterness towards church ministry and student ministry, but I don’t mean to communicate that. I’m grateful for my time as a youth pastor, and I’m so grateful for what God allows me to do as a chaplain. 

God is love.
-rev-rob