What Do You Do When "IT" Is Not Working?

I have recently taken the role of Youth/Children/Family/Small Group/etc. Pastor of a local church plant in Jacksonville, Fl. I have been doing youth ministry for almost 10 years, and that is definitely what I considered (past tense) to be my specialty coming into the position. I have served at churches ranging from 100 members to 2000 members, and I thought coming into a church plant where I could develop the ministry from the ground floor would be an awesome experience. So, after a year of service, I am left wondering what on earth I am doing right now. I have never been at a church where so few of our students know Christ as their Savior, and the ones that do have come to know Him within the past year, and I have felt lost. I have been trying to move toward that traditional ministry where Wednesday night is the big worship service, and everything revolves around that, and we have grown numerically almost 4 times over. So, why (about two months ago) did I feel like I had no idea where God was taking this ministry? More kids were coming, we had a small group operating on Sunday morning, and we have seen three new students (out of a small ministry) come to know Christ as their Savior. So why did I come home one night and tell my wife that I had no idea what direction God was leading our ministry? It seemed like things were going great, and to look at it from an outsider's perspective, it was, but why was I uneasy in my heart about the ministry? Then, it hit me like a rock. I was doing ministry the way that I had always done ministry. I was trying to draw people in, I was trying to get them saved, and then I was trying to move onto the next set of people who needed to know Christ. I was not building a ministry, I was not building a community of students who were following Christ together. I was building a bunch of separate individuals who would hopefully come to know Christ on their own, and then hopefully grow by listening to what I had to say on Wednesday nights. God finally just said, "That's enough." This was not ministry, this was trying to turn this youth group into my last group without realizing these were completely different kids with completely different issues, and I had to approach it from a completely different angle.

So I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed some more and I finally am beginning to see what God really wants from me. He does not want me to proceed with my own way of doing ministry and pray Him along with it, He wants me to pray and ask Him what type of ministry I am supposed to be doing and follow along with His answer. He has lead me to the point of doing ministry a new way for my new youth group. He has lead me to bring up leaders, 1 leader for every 2-4 youth to be their "youth pastor." I will lead the leaders, but they will be in charge of leading small group Bible Studies on Wednesday nights, hanging out with them during the week, showing up at their sporting events, counseling them in the ways of God, and everything else that goes along with being their "youth pastor." God has lead me to know that Youth Ministry is not my "specialty," it is His, and He will do whatever He needs to do to make this ministry successful.

The point of this is not to say that the way that I am doing ministry is right. The point of this article is to say that the way God wants to do ministry is right. We cannot assume that youth ministry has to be done a certain way no matter what. We have to be willing (no matter how humbling it is, and trust me, it is very humbling) to come to the point where we just give ourselves up to God and allow Him to lead us into His type of ministry no matter how different, how humbling, or how difficult it may be. God showed me that youth ministry is about Christian youth doing life together and learning together and growing closer to Christ together. This cannot take place when we (Youth Pastors) do everything, but it can when a small group of believers get together and do the work of Jesus Christ.