I Am Never Doing Ministry Again

In October of 2020, I traveled "home" for the funeral of one of my kids.

In California, I am known for leadership and professional development, but in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) I am known for working in ministry and being a Youth Pastor.

I am glad I was able to travel back to Maryland and to be with my church-family during such a difficult time. Seeing the people I love, and the place where I poured out so much of my life in service of others was bittersweet. Being six years removed from my time in ministry, I often forget the scale of what I did and its impact today.

I spoke to people, catching up on life and reminiscing on the loss of our loved one. Some were supportive and excited about my journey in California. Others were sad and a little hurt – there was mentioning of me “abandoning” my kids. One person literally told me that I knew I was not where I was supposed to be and was outside of God's will for my life *insert eye roll*. Most people just remarked on how much they missed me, and how things had changed since I left.

It became very clear to me that my leaving the ministry was a big question mark in the hearts of those I'd left behind. It seemed as if they'd filled in the missing information themselves.

For the record: I left the ministry on good terms. I felt like it was time for a change and picked California. I spoke to my pastors and they supported the transition. But, there was a lot of swirl from the decisions of others which impacted the teen ministry and overshadowed the end of my time there.

I recently realized I've never written about my time in ministry or even my feelings on ministry in general. It was a significant and all-encompassing time in my life. In many ways, I feel like I've lived another lifetime since I stopped working at the church. I am completely different and even more myself. I feel at home in my skin and my mind and my spirit. And, I can honestly say, I will never work in ministry again.

Before I can get into the depths of that statement, I think it's important that I share my ministry experience. Once again, I’d like to preface ­– this is MY experience and I am attempting to represent it as honestly and accurately as I can. There are some messy parts and I hope I do the story justice.

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Grab a snack and let me tell you my story:

Our ministry was quite large; a mega-church by modern standards. We had four campuses and I worked at the main location. I came to be known as the Youth Minister, but that was actually never my job. I was the receptionist, then an event planner, and eventually a project coordinator by the time I left. All the work I did for the youth ministry was completely volunteer—but I'm getting ahead of myself.

While working as the receptionist I had the unique perspective of being the first point-of-contact everyone had with the ministry. Seeing the entirety of the ministry—the good, the bad, the ugly and the FELT needs of the people who called it home—was overwhelming, frustrating, and at times soul-crushing. There was a grand total of ONE person who worked full-time at the church to assist with church member issues. We had anywhere from 15-50+ people a week call or show up at the church for help/guidance/counseling/financial assistance. There were volunteers who helped in some areas, but it was nowhere near what was needed.

When someone is in desperate need, they can’t wait for a volunteer who may or may not be able to help that evening or in the next few days. What was really needed was financial resources, licensed counselors, access to housing, access to food, access to professional resources, substance abuse support, and people who knew how to get things done in the system (and were able to take the time to walk people through the paperwork associated with everything from government support to applying for a job).

Our staff did the best they could—we gave Biblical encouragement/counseling, prayer, and what limited financial resources we could. However, the majority of the needs that we received from the community were big, messy, and systemic. There was very little we could actually do. As the first point-of-contact (church receptionist), I had the pleasure of telling people what we could and could not do to help them. I essentially turned away a lot of hurting, desperate people without any of their real needs being addressed. This experience marked me, but let me get back on topic.

Almost three years into working at the church, the current youth pastor went on to pastor his own church. Then, I was asked to co-lead the teen ministry with a friend I grew up with. As kids, we were in the same teen ministry and we shared similar experiences in our relationship with God and call to ministry.

I was a young, white, unmarried woman. Never in a million years did I expect to lead the teen ministry in a black mega-church. It was my wildest dream come true.

Running a teen ministry as two young, (not-dating-each other) single people was unheard of. We were not your typical youth ministers and did not run a typical youth ministry. I was 23 and my partner was 24 when we started. I worked in the church office (receptionist), and he worked as a middle school teacher full-time. He was a dreamer and the visionary of our ministry. I was the voice of reason and the person who made things happen. I did the admin and logistical work for the ministry ­– planning events, creating proposals, budget requests, the communications, etc.

On a typical day, after each working 8+ hours in our real jobs, we'd do all the work needed to run the teen ministry. I rarely made it home before 10pm on weeknights. We truly ate/slept/breathed teen ministry. It was a passion of ours down to the very core of our being

• We led two teen services at two different locations each week.

• We also hosted special activities at one location or another most weekends.

• We spent our own money to drive 100 miles round-trip multiple times a week to run the ministry at our secondary location.

• We met with parents and teens in the evenings.

• We interviewed, organized, mentored and trained our amazing adult leaders in the teen ministry.

• We picked teens up, gave them rides, and spent nearly every ounce of free time with them.

• We used our vacation time to run the youth conferences and summer camps each year.

The teen ministry thrived. It is hard to place into words how special and incredible our ministry was. Not only did it grow, but our kids sincerely grew in the things of God. We (and their parents) were able to see the changes in their lives. We encouraged the teens to have their own relationship with God and develop healthy emotions and relationships with others.

We literally loved the hell out of those kids and advocated for "life on life" ministry. In other words, we encouraged our leaders to spend time with the teens, be a part of their lives, and invite them into their own lives. Because of this, we were very selective with who we brought into the ministry. We wanted people with the same heart and passion for God that we had, and a desire to grow.

The ministry’s success was only possible because we invested so much in our adult leaders. We wanted them to thrive and succeed in every area of their lives so they could lead our teens to do the same. We tried not to make decisions out of fear or religion, but out of what we believed our teen's needed. Together we built an incredible ministry and community.

The ministry just kept growing. We took hundreds of kids to summer camp and watched them encounter God in ways we had never imagined as teens ourselves. We put on conferences that were attended by thousands. Other youth pastors and ministries asked to join our services and events and learn from what we were doing. We were invited to preach all over. We received more requests for counseling from parents than we could ever hope to fulfill. We had so many people wanting to volunteer in our ministry that we had to turn people away.

The four years that we ran that teen ministry were some of the greatest of my life! Then, after about three years of running at an incredible pace, it became very clear to my partner and I that our ministry's growth was unsustainable within the current structure.

Maintaining the momentum we were experiencing was overwhelming – meetings, emails, trainings, social media, web design, marketing, event planning, logistics, and the actual PASTORING of hundreds of teens and adult leaders. There was not enough time in the day, resources, or support available for us to do everything that was needed to maintain the growth we'd achieved and continue to meet the ever-growing needs of our teens and leaders while working full-time jobs in other areas.

My partner and I were exhausted and tiptoeing into burnout. We were always incredibly passionate about the teen ministry, but we couldn't keep up the pace we'd been going. It was physically impossible.

I would like to acknowledge that we had the BEST adult leaders in our teen ministry. They were incredible and tried to help shoulder the load. They knew we weren't taking care of ourselves and would often bring us food, force us to go home late at night, or volunteer to do certain tasks so we could rest. Between all of us volunteers, we kept that ministry running.

However, with NO dedicated full-time staff and no significant funding, things began to fall by the wayside. My partner and I decided we needed to speak to our pastors and leaders about what we were feeling and the barriers we were facing, hoping to arrive at a plan which would help.

Now that I am many years removed from this time in my life, I see the really unhealthy and unsustainable dynamics within the ministry and its leadership structure (I don't say this flippantly or accusatory - just as a fact based upon my current work and education in organizational leadership and talent development, addressing team dysfunctions, emotional intelligence, and process improvement protocols). At the time, it seemed normal. It was all I’d ever known and honestly was a lot healthier than my time interning at the other megachurch. The reporting structures and workflows were unnecessarily cumbersome and ineffective. Lack of strategic full-time staff and overreliance on volunteers created slow processes and an inability to respond to problems or improve the system. Staff and volunteers worked on the edge of burnout at all times. Everyone just put their head down and did what needed to be done.

The meeting with our leaders did not go well. We tried to be honest and authentic about what we were feeling and to ask for help. Instead of acknowledging our expressed experience and considering what could be done to maintain momentum and remove some of our pain points – we were reprimanded. Our ask for help was perceived as stepping out of order and complaining. The two of us had never experienced a situation like this before. We were young in our professional lives and had no guidance to navigate this situation. In hindsight, I’m not sure we did a good job of advocating for ourselves, addressing the misperceptions we encountered from our leaders, or communicating what our needs were.

Our leaders decided we were feeling burned out because we were too young when we were placed in leadership and we had not received proper mentorship and supervision. The remedy to our problem was more oversight and involvement from an appointed leader.

Up until that point, we had run the ministry with decent autonomy and great success. There was no moral failure on either of our parts, yet all of a sudden after speaking up, our leadership did not trust us. Nothing we said made it better. It seemed that the more we tried to clarify the less we were trusted and the worse our situation became.

We did our best to honor our leaders and we continued running the ministry and loving our teens. We were placed under a leader and were required to run everything we wanted to do by him--from the way/frequency we met with our leaders, to the topics we taught in service, to what activities we did with the kids and how we did them. He was a really great man, incredibly caring and sincere -- but he had very little work-experience in ministry and no experience working with teenagers. It was really hard to get anything done with him. Almost all of our proposals and ideas were changed and many were outright denied.

The mental and emotional strain of needing to convince someone who didn't understand why we wanted to do what we wanted to do the particular way that we wanted to do it was more than exhausting. The added time spent in meetings, added administrative work, and jumping through hoops to get things approved was incapacitating to two already overloaded individuals.

At that time, I felt like I was being asked to run a marathon through quicksand. In addition to our new reporting structure, I was given a promotion at work and was told I was not paid to do work for the teen ministry during the day. I was reminded that anything for the teen ministry needed to be done on my own time.

As I began to work overtime every week for my actual job, I lost nearly all capacity to stay on top of what needed to be done for the teen ministry.

I cannot express to you how overwhelmed and emotionally fried I was. I cried everyday and not just a little. I'm pretty sure I seemed emotionally unstable to my coworkers. I was struggling to keep my head above water, let alone maintain my passion for ministry.

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As I moved into my late twenties, my satisfaction in the way I'd been living and working diminished. I was coming into my own personally and professionally. I wanted to spend my time and energy doing the things I felt created to do. The majority of my days were spent on things that I did not enjoy, did not bring me life, and I was not passionate about. My skills and competence were being underutilized and devalued. I was also tired of living with my parents and having only $200 a month to survive on after I paid all my bills. I realized I was stuck, and I didn't know what to do.

A friend saw me struggling and asked if I'd like to meet weekly to talk about personal growth. I'd spent so long investing in others, I hadn't been taking care of my own growth outside of anything but spiritual. My life was so consumed with the work of ministry, I had not stepped back to explore who SARAH was and wanted. This simple act of pausing for an hour or two each week to focus on myself, my needs, the growth I needed and a plan to get there changed my life.

I felt things deep inside me shift and realize it was time for a change. I asked myself where else I'd like to live if I could do anything I wanted, and the answer was CALIFORNIA. I picked Sacramento because it seemed the most cost-effective at the time. I didn't know anyone in Sacramento and had no ministry connections there. I had no idea what I was going to do, how it connected to my dreams, or how I was going to make a living. I just knew my season in the DMV was over, and it was time to step out of the boat into the unknown.

I met with my pastor and told him I wanted to move to California. I explained that I wasn't going for ministry or work. I just felt like it was time to go and that God had something for me there. My pastor looked at me thoughtfully and then gave me his complete support. He said, "You're supposed to go. This is the right thing for you. I give you my blessing and release you."

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This is where it gets messy.

While I was working on my personal growth and exploring the dreams God placed in my heart, so was my partner-in-ministry. We loved teen ministry, AND we needed to take care of ourselves and continue to grow personally and professionally. We wanted more than working ourselves to death. We wanted lives, financial freedom, and families of our own,

I will not tell his story because it is not mine to tell. Suffice it to say, he resigned from his (volunteer) role as youth pastor right around the time I told our pastor I was leaving.

All that was said to the teens and our adult leaders was that he wanted to focus on his teaching career. It was presented as if it was a good thing and fully supported by the church leadership, yet there was no going away party and no celebration of the contributions he made to the ministry or the lives touched. He wasn't even allowed to speak in his last service with the teens. The kids knew something was wrong. This man who had spent every moment of his free time with them and poured into their lives for years, and all of a sudden he was completely absent and no one would saying anything about it. It felt like the church was lying to them, and rumors spread like wildfire about my partner.

As I write this, I am still hurt by how my leaders handled this situation. I do not know their side of the story, but there was a lot I suggested be done to address and help mitigate the hurt I was seeing in my kids and adult leaders, and my feedback seemed to be dismissed. I had to put on a smile, take the lead, stick to the company lines and try to help everyone process the loss of their beloved leader. all while secretly knowing I, too, would be leaving soon.

With my partner no longer there and myself moving in less than six months, it was decided by my leaders that the best course of action was to transfer leadership away from one person to a panel of volunteers who would run the teen ministry. I was not consulted in this decision and not provided an opportunity to speak to my pastor and express my concerns or feedback. I was told that this is what the man of God had decided and all that was for me to do was to get on board and help pick some good people for the role.

I left in June of 2014. They did throw a going-away party for me and they did celebrate all the contributions I made to the ministry and lives touched. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I was honored that people in the ministry and my kids recognized the blood, sweat, and tears I had given to see lives changed. The event was overshadowed for me by not celebrating the moment as a team with my partner. We’d been in the battle the entire time together and I honestly would not have gotten through it without him. Having his contributions wiped away and his good name soiled...sucked.

The way I left was so hard. I do not like how it happened or the response by the ministry. However, I do not have regrets. At the end of the day, I did my absolute best. I served with my whole heart and I loved people well. Everything else was outside of my control. It was never MY ministry. I trust that whatever experiences my teens had with me and my partner shaped them into stronger, smarter, more resilient human beings. They are all adults now, and it brings me great pleasure to know and love them in this season of their lives.

Baby Youth Pastors

Partners Two Years In

Lohikan Summer Camp

Having fun with my kids

Our Kids

Age of Heroes Conference

Our Leaders

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Grown Up Youth Pastors

My Last Day

I promise I did not write all this as a bait and switch. I'm getting to the point.

I moved to California with no idea what was in store for me. I assumed I was going to start working in another ministry and it would be there that all my dreams would be realized. Now, I think I just needed to step back and stop doing what I’d always done so I could see all the world had to offer.

While I was trying to figure out how to do ministry in California, I happened to land in an amazing job. Within a few months, it became very clear to me that it was exactly the environment I had been looking for during my time working for the church -- and Jesus wasn't mentioned ever.

I work in an environment where I am valued and supported. I empower others to be more effective in the things they were created to do. My talents are nurtured and developed. I have the opportunity to grow and take on leadership. I am reasonably compensated for my time and expertise. I work on things that really matter to me. I can improve the way things are done around me. I can travel, and I see the fruits of my labor and enjoy a job well done. I am supported by incredible leaders who walk the talk and model their values; many of them are strong and effective female leaders. I love my job. I am incredibly fulfilled, and I am doing what I was created to do. My job is not my sole purpose in life; however, it is absolutely a gift from God in which I am able to be a light as well as use my talents and skills to serve others.

AND.... HERE'S MY POINT

I have come to embrace a much more holistic view of my relationship with God, my calling, my dreams and what serving Him truly means. I was raised to believe that there was a separation between the sanctified and the secular. The highest calling or purpose in life was a life devoted to “ministry”. I loved God so much I wanted to serve Him in the BEST way possible and assumed that meant doing ministry full-time. However, this thinking boxed me into a structure and system that wasn’t designed to do what was in my heart to do. I’m not called to work in the church, I’m called to serve God and change the world.

I love preaching the gospel and teaching people how to develop their own relationship with God. I also love helping others implement practical strategies to see results in the world around them. I am especially passionate about helping people break out of the cycle of poverty and systematic oppression. I believe poverty is absolutely evil, is not a moral failure, and should not be penalized. I hate it and I hate how government policies, the justice system, and public assistance programs are not designed to solve it and in many cases make it worse. But I’m getting off topic…

I am never working in ministry again, because my LIFE is ministry. I do not need to be within the four-walls of a church, have a title, or be seen by others in order to be who I was created to be. All the dreams in my heart have been given to me by God. Chasing my dreams is ministry. Loving my family and friends well is ministry. My job is ministry. Chasing my passions is ministry. Taking care of my body is ministry. Maintaining my mental and emotional health is ministry. Developing my talent and skills is ministry. Managing my finances is ministry. Working to solve the problems I see around me is ministry. Enjoying the life I have is ministry.

From the outside looking in, you may not see the depth of my connection to God or intense purpose in life. And I'm okay with that. I am literally enjoying my life, following my passions, serving others, and making my world better. That is my calling and I will never do “ministry” again.

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Lastly, for those who work in ministry or the church, or may want to:

I am not in any way suggesting that no one should do full-time ministry. We need 5-fold ministers AND those who actually do the "work" associated with running a ministry. I do, however, feel that we often expect the church to be the answer for every need in people’s lives and I think that is wrong. Church is a place where people gather, worship God, and grow together. Those people (the real church) are then supposed to be the answer to the problems in the world around them. We change the world by working inside and outside of the walls of the church at the same time. We need to reconsider how we do church and what we spend our time and energy on within “ministry”. I’d love to talk more about church administration, organizational structures, leadership development, staffing, volunteer utilization/recruitment/retention and more in another blog (I’m sure by now you know I am bursting with information, thoughts, and ideas).

So happy growing!

Sarah Dawn