10 Things Every Youth Leader Should Know. They love Jesus and they love kids. When you boil it down, that’s what really matters. If you start with Jesus, all of the intricacies of youth leading should align conceptually, biblically, and practically. You should be able to trace everything back to Jesus.
There’s a science to asking the right interview questions. Too often interviewers pull up a bunch of random questions and look for the answers they like best, but is that really the best approach?
Having a clearly defined strategy and well-crafted questions is truly going to help you identify the best candidates. After all, one doesn’t have to look to hard to find stories of church’s who really should have interviewed their youth-pastor candidates a little more rigorously.
Here are 20 potential questions to ask your candidate—along with a brief look at the strategy behind each question:
You’re hoping the candidate reveals their preparation for the position. Ideally, they’ll have researched your church and be able to talk about how they’ll benefit your church specifically. If they haven’t really done their research, they’ll likely launch into a more generic discussion about their desire to work with youth and/or serve God.
Is this candidate a team player? Do they respect authority? Look to see if their previous pastor is a reference. If they’re not, ask why. Then ask if you can contact the pastor see how their question matches up. If they tell you no, thank them politely for visiting.
The answer to this question is going to reveal a lot about the applicant’s personality type. Are they organized? Do they prefer to work in a room with others or alone? This can help you identify whether they’ll fit in with your team’s work culture.
This question isn’t really about having the right answer. In fact, whatever their answer is, you’ll probably have to fine-tune it to work within your church’s culture.
What you really want to see is how easy this is for them to answer. The more effortlessly they answer this, the more likely they prioritize family dynamics in their idea of ministry.
Does there seem to be a genuineness to their story? Do they share their testimony in a way that shows that they’ve shared it often or does it seem like they’re struggling to find the narrative?
Our testimony is an integral part of our ministry, and an inability to articulate it might be a sign that sharing the gospel isn’t really a priority.
This question is nonnegotiable. Anyone coming to you for a job in youth ministry needs to be able to clearly communicate the gospel.
Hopefully the candidate is self-aware enough to answer this. If they launch into one of those answers where they twist a positive into a negative (“I just care too much.”), stop them and ask the question again.
Everyone has weaknesses. The important thing here (beyond getting an honest answer) is finding out what they do to mitigate it.
This is another question that reveals the personality of the candidate. Not really having an answer isn’t a sign that they’re not being forthright, but it can be a sign that they won’t fight for what they believe is right.
Any church team of passionate people is going to have some conflict—it’s how they resolve conflict that’s important.
This question will help give you a good handle on how the applicant sees diversity and some of their past experience. Do they include working with other races, income groups, perspectives? How do they work to engage others? Do they have a one-size-fits-all approach to ministry, or do they adjust their ministry to speak to the experience and perspectives of those involved?
Ministry isn’t a job like managing a bank or clerking at Safeway. Ideally it involves a calling of God and a confirmation from others in ministry.
Ultimately all ministry should be about leading people into spiritual maturity. A youth pastor should definitely have thoughts about the best way to turn students into disciples.
This is another question that’s going to reveal how prepared an applicant is. I can’t imagine coming into a youth-pastor interview without a few growth-oriented ideas in my holster. Give them extra points of their ideas are specific to your congregation and town.
Ministry is stressful, and having a plan to deal with stress is the best way to ensure that someone’s ministry (and by association the church) doesn’t blow up. This is another question that’s really intended to probe the thoughtfulness and introspection of the applicant.
Do they know how stressful this position is? Do they have an adequate fear of unresolved stress? Do they already have a way they deal with stress?
Most great ministers are readers, but they don’t necessarily have to be. This is an interesting question because it helps to identify an applicant’s honesty. If it takes a long time to answer, they haven’t read for a while or they’re trying to think about a book that will impress you.
If they give you a book that’s completely unrelated to youth ministry—or church for that matter—give them points because they’re likely being completely honest with you.
If they answer with a work that seems right on the nose, don’t be afraid to probe a little deeper and see if they can answer simple questions about it.
Similar to the book question, this question does a good job of revealing a lot about how your applicant sees the world and what’s important to them. It’s kind of a red mark against them if they stumble around in response to this question and then list off a couple really mainstream answers.
If you have sent applicants a statement of beliefs prior to their interview, this question can also be “would you have any problem ministering within the parameters of our statement of beliefs?”
This helps you identify the areas that are important to the candidate, and elevate any potential problems between their theology and yours.
Provided they don’t pander, this can be a helpful area of discussion. Do they plan to ultimately pursue another area of ministry? Do they want to be the director of youth ministry in a larger church?
Their ambition is actually a good thing for your organization, but you might want to talk about it if they ultimately don’t want to be in youth ministry.
You should should be planning to do this anyway. So if the answer is no, it might be a good sign that the interview is over.
Ministry is highly detail oriented. I’d seriously be concerned about an applicant that doesn’t have a plan to keep themselves organized. It can be a lists in a spiral-bound notebook as far as I’m concerned, but they should have some plan for staying organized.
There’s a reason that this is the go-to interview question. Nothing reveals faster whether an applicant is informed, interested, and engaged. Most interviewers see it as a huge red flag if they haven’t come up with a question or two by the end of the interview.
(Are you looking to prepare for a youth-ministry interview? Check out this article.)
Leave us a comment and share with us some of the best questions you’ve given to a youth-pastor candidate or received as an applicant!
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When it comes to youth leadership, Eden Eskaros is learning about social innovation at a young age.
On a recent trip to Mexico, Eden, age 10, was horrified to learn that children lived in dismal situations, using cardboard boxes as beds. She also noticed they had no shoes. Eden was moved to help these children by making a commitment to bring back 100 pairs of shoes on her next trip.
She returned home to New Jersey and enlisted the aid of a local shoe store and her church. As a result, she’s prepared to send over 1,000 pairs of shoes to her new friends in Mexico.
Eden’s story is a great example of how children are often transformed by face-to-face interactions with people living in poverty. Clearly, Eden has developed the ability to empathize, to put herself in the place of another. Most children develop this capacity by the age of six and are capable of taking action to help people in need. They particularly benefit from seeing the direct benefits of their actions.
Close to the age where she will ask deeper questions about poverty, Eden Eskaros is on her way to becoming an engaged, compassionate citizen. During adolescence, children’s brains develop the capacity to understand the systemic issues involved in helping those in need. For example, Eden may begin to ask, “Why are children living in poverty?” or, “What are the root causes of poverty?”
In Tomorrow’s Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation, I studied youth leadership — how young people adopt passionate causes, most often between the ages of 14 and 18. Developmentally, this is the age when kids form civic identities that often stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Raising children to become active citizens doesn’t happen by chance. The students in my study reflected on their childhoods and adolescence and the critical experiences that led them to work for civic causes. Being familiar with the common steps in their journeys can help parents, educators, and other adults support kids through these important learning experiences. And it can help develop effective youth leadership programs.
Kids who develop a passion to serve can usually point to a critical experience that became transformative for them. Like Eden Eskaros, the experience frequently involves face-to-face interaction with people who are different from them, and most often, with people who are in need. These youth leadership experiences might occur in food banks, homeless shelters, nursing homes, disaster areas, and places where people live in poverty. Similarly, those who work for environmental causes point to intense moments of learning, involving a deep personal connection to nature or animals. Their youth leadership experiences might occur in animal shelters, wildlife refuges, or experiential projects that raise awareness of environmental issues. These experiences can occur at young ages, long before children have the intellectual ability to understand the complexities of the situation.
During adolescence, teenagers develop the capacity to think in more complex, interconnected ways. The potential for youth leadership occurs when teenagers form relationships with people in need. This creates moral dilemmas for them. They begin to ask questions that compare their own circumstances to others. For the first time, they may wonder why people are hungry or why children are homeless. The same is true for the environment. Kids feel such a connection to nature that they begin to ask deep moral questions about how we care for the planet like, “Why don’t we pay attention to climate change?” or, “Why don’t we protect certain species of animals?”
As they consider these moral dilemmas, adolescents reach deep within and think about their values. Instead of mimicking the opinions they have heard from others, such as parents or friends, they begin to form their own conclusions. They need to process their feelings with adults who are not judgmental, who trust in their abilities to find their own answers. Often, these adults are leaders of volunteer programs, older siblings, or a favorite teacher. Encouraging teens to discuss their feelings with others, or even write about them, helps facilitate learning.
Through reflection, talking with others, and linking their values to the issues that impact them, young people experience a shift in perspective. They begin to see how issues are connected to each other, and they become interested in understanding the root causes of societal problems. For example, they may see links between social and environmental issues, understanding that climate change will most affect people living in poverty. They may connect sex trafficking with girls living in poverty in Cambodia. They may understand the need for breast cancer research because it affected a mother or aunt. This is a turning point for youth leadership — a time that begins to fuel an inner purpose and passion toward specific, important causes.
Young people reach the last step in this journey when they see themselves as active, engaged citizens. They are able to articulate their beliefs about how they understand a social or environmental issue and they hold a worldview that incorporates themselves as agents of change. They know that small things they do to contribute to social and environmental causes have a big impact. At this point, they are ready and able to make a long-term commitment to serving the public good. They have a passion for giving!
Eden Eskaros could not have achieved her goal at age 10 without the help of her parents and other supportive adults. Likewise, teenagers also speak passionately about the adults who played a supportive role in their route to adopting passionate causes. These adults help young people believe in themselves.
Students reported six main ways adults helped. They 1) supported and encouraged, 2) listened, 3) set high expectations, 4) showed interest in them as individuals separate from academics or civic activities, 5) fostered self-decision making, and 6) provided another perspective during problem-solving.
Understanding the common ways kids navigate the challenges of volunteering may help adults mentor children and adolescents more effectively.
CIRCLE: The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Tufts University College of Citizenship and Public Service
Engaged Youth: Civic Learning Online, University of Washington
John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University
Youth Service America, Washington DC
Published: August 9, 2011
Tags: empathy, initiative, moral development, parenting, service-learning, youth civic engagement