Full-time - for a season?
Any Christian periodical tells the same story. The church is looking for full-time youth workers. Our response to the well-known and frightening statistics is to appoint someone (if we can afford it) to deal with our young people, or lack of them.
But this is not something new. The need has been there for some years and there are now people who have been working as church-based full-timers for a number of years. Some of these people started in smaller churches or worked part-time and have now moved to larger churches where they can work full-time. There are many different roles. Some see themselves as very much hands on who are in daily contact with young people. Some see their roles as evangelists and look for places like schools (or even streets) to serve God. Others work as coordinators with little daily contact. Many youth ministers are not clear about the expectation of their churches and try to juggle several roles, and end up being driven only by the expectations of different parts of their communities.
