An Everybody Pastor

By Rev. Hans Fiene

I don’t know about you, but if I’m being honest, I must admit that I get a small case of the heebie jeebies whenever I hear the term youth pastor. It makes me slightly more uncomfortable than hearing people slurp vegetable soup.

Granted, I don’t believe it’s sinful to either have or to be a youth pastor. Not at all. In fact, if a congregation wants to call a pastor to deal primarily with the youth, Christ has given them the freedom to do that. Just as Luther noted in the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, in our Lutheran Confessions, “it is by human authority that the grades of bishop and…pastor are distinct,” so it’s also by human authority that one pastor at a congregation may have the title senior pastor and the other be labeled youth pastor.

So it’s not the title of youth pastor that makes me cringe whenever I hear those two words stuck together. Rather, it’s when the division of responsibilities between the senior pastor and the youth pastor makes it seem like the youth pastor isn’t also an everybody pastor. Here’s what I mean:

Imagine a congregation where Pastor A is overworked and cannot do everything that his duties require of him. So Pastor B is called to be the youth pastor. And when the new guy arrives, what does Pastor A still do? Pretty much everything that he used to do, except teach confirmation or go on youth trips. That’s what the new guy does—you know, the same new guy who barely ever preaches and who never does any of the baptisms or weddings or funerals and who isn’t on a single one of the elders’ speed dial lists.

This is bad. To use a high school sports metaphor, this whole arrangement makes it seem as if the congregation has a varsity pastor and a junior varsity pastor. And if your age happens to place you under the care of the JV shepherd, that must mean that you’re one of the JV sheep.

Granted, I’m quite certain that no congregation with a youth pastor intends to give this impression. But when the pastoral duties are split between the two men in such a way, youth are bound to draw this conclusion. And when this happens, the devil is never far behind, doing his best to convince the youth that, if they don’t matter to the Church, the Church shouldn’t matter to them.

So, how should the middle or high school-aged Christian, who obviously can’t determine which pastor leads the devotion at the start of the lock-in, deal with this? What should he remember when it seems like his pastor isn’t everybody else’s pastor and everybody else’s pastor isn’t his?

Quite simply, what he (and you) should remember is that the job of both of his pastors is to forgive his sins, regardless of how they choose to divide that sin-forgiving work in their congregation. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus said to his disciples in John 20, when he instituted the pastoral office. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

So that’s each pastor’s job. It’s not to have a catalog of video game references ready to drop at any moment, even if the youth pastor is really good at that. And it’s not to comprehend the psychology of the teenage mind, even if the senior pastor stinks at it. Jesus calls pastors to bring sinners to repentance and to cover those who repent in His forgiving blood. That’s their job. That’s why youth pastors will still be held accountable to God for how they cared for the souls of the 71-year-olds in their congregation and why senior pastors will also be accountable for the souls of the 17-year-olds (Hebrew 13:17). Or, to put it another way, Christ’s call for pastors to forgive sinners is what ensures that the youth pastor is also the pastor of everybody else in the congregation and that the everybody else pastor is also a pastor to the youth.

As long as a congregation equally respects both of its pastors as those who must give an account, and as long as a congregation equally expects both of its pastors to do the glorious work of forgiving the sins of its people, then all the pastors and all the sheep of all different ages in that congregation will rejoice in the Lord, providing those gifts to everyone.

Rev. Hans Fiene is pastor of River of Life Lutheran Church in Channahon, Ilinois. You can contact him at pastorfiene@gmail.com.