Why I am Passionate about American Military Youth Ministry
• Honestly- I worked in the stateside church for 8 years before joining Malachi. The corporate church is really hard to work with. I often got sucked into so much administration and politics that I had little time for students. Church leadership often did not look out for me and coach me in ministry other than when I was falling down on the job. But instead of telling you my bad experience let me tell you what I did have in Malachi. I had a ministry that was committed to my success. I was challenged and encouraged to grow as a youth pastor and after 12 years with Malachi I am continuing to grow in my understanding of youth ministry. I have friends in youth ministry that I can rely on for encouragement, ideas and real heart felt friendship. Some of my deepest friendships are ones that have been formed in Malachi though I am separated by thousands of miles. The parents that I got to work with were incredible. I rarely had to deal with parent complaints. In the 8 years overseas easily under 10 parent complaints about what we did with their kids. More often than not I had chaplains in the military that I worked for and with who were Godly men and set me free to do ministry. Words that were often said to me were, “Go do what you do best, work with and love on kids, let me know if you need anything” That does not mean that there were not bumps and sometime hard things with Chaplains but I found my experience to be a great one. The chaplains reeeeeally supported our ministry. I rarely had to work so hard to get them to support what we did. I was given thousands of dollars to sponsor kids to different retreats. Though the days of that kind of money are slowing down it is still much larger than when I worked in a church and had to fight and scrimp to get a few hundred dollars for different things. If you have been through a difficult church situation I know that these things that I write a breath of fresh air. But the working conditions don’t hold a candle to the students. But that will have to wait for Parts 2,3,4.
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