Who’s the flock?

So I’m sitting in class. Supposed to be paying attention. Today, however, is frustrating. I’m in my Global Leadership class and we have been talking about focus on making people more than just a task we deal with on a daily/weekly/whatever basis. The discussion soon turns to ministers’ salaries, and a guy from Arkansas a couple rows in front of me pipes up, “I think it would do the churches good if they did away with salaries.”

“Okay,” I think. I can see where he’s coming from if he is taking his argument to an extreme to prove a point. We did, after all, just finish talking about greed among ministers. He then, a few sentences later, states that youth pastors should get paid more than senior pastors because we should be focusing more on future generations than the adults and seniors.

… What?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been a youth pastor before, and I would not mind being one again. I definitely see myself working in that capacity at some point in the future, at least for a short span (2-3 year) of time. But did this guy really just say that? Two things:

1.) When I go into a church office to be interviewed, I now have a ministry philosophy to hand the committee or pastor or whoever a copy of. This idea is thanks to the great Dr. Rusty Wheelington. In that philosophy of ministry, I now state my belief that in a perfect world, the position of Youth Pastor would not need to exist and that my goal is to work myself out of a job. Kind of like a consultant. I would only need to stay as long as there is a gap to be bridged between the adults and the high schoolers. In all honesty, I don’t know that this is an attainable goal. The gap just seems to get wider and wider. Still, what I work toward is the bridging of that gap.

2.) Who says the youth are off-limits to be taught by the pastor? Or even the children? Are the lambs not part of the flock? My favorite pastor so far is a man named George Martin. He was not the youth pastor at FBC Nixon, he was the senior pastor. He was not only involved with adult Bible studies and hospital visits and the like, he taught the youth just as much as the youth pastors he hired did. He was the one at summer camp with the guys and he and his wife were serving the youth on Wednesday nights. He wasn’t perfect, but we didn’t ask him to be. All we wanted was his presence, and that’s what he provided.

Today’s problem isn’t just greed. It’s compartmentalization. There’s nothing wrong with hiring a youth pastor to teach high school students or a children’s minister to teach children. The problem is the “get them out of my hair” policy it seems so many senior pastors and the parents of our youth follow.