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Phoenix

I left to get into Church communications, and I was having a rough time in Phoenix, Arizona at a Lutheran Church that I went to as Youth Minister in 1984. It was a large 4000 member church with a 7 full time ministers on staff. They had been impressed with my resume and my goals for youth ministry, as well as my ideas for using media studies and developing some production from within the church for communication. The youth seemed to like me as well. When I arrived from Keokuk in September 1984, things began to get scary. There wasn't much of a volunteer base on hand (I could always get by with fewer with smaller churches before, although I should have been developing a stronger "lay ministry team" emphasis before. I was unprepared to do some new groundwork to build a team. And the youth became "bored" with me almost immediately. Maybe I said something wrong to a key young person who could easily influence the others. Whatever it was, for the first time in my Youth Ministry career, I felt an "outsider". And I must have felt a little intimidated by the legacy of one of the other staff members who had been instrumental in bringing me there. He was the former Youth Minister for 10 years , but had since been away to get Seminary training to obtain Lutheran ordination status, and became the Minister of Adult Education and Singles. He was a Southern Baptist Seminary Grad like myself, so he had aided in the search for a Youth person by getting some resumes from the seminary in Louisville. I loved the guy, and I had seen what he had accomplished from 1972-82 before he went on to other ministries. He put so much effort into "orienting" me to the histories of the youth ministry there, and of the present group of youth. I quickly began to feel that I wasn't the "wacko, off the wall kind of leader" that they apparently wanted. I know this because I remember someone telling me just before I left that the senior pastor had remarked to them that he had said "I thought he'd more dynamic." I had a lot of respect for the senior pastor too, and this news hit me hard. BUt I couldn't help but wonder what steps had started me off wrong with the youth, and what might have been if I had been more successful at winning their confidence at the outset. Like my previous ministries, I felt I had accomplished quite a bit relationally with the youth in just a year to year and a half , and I was to stay only 10 months in Arizona. I lost control and confidence quickly. I couldn't trust myself with the youth because I suppose I placed too much emphasis on how I thought they saw me. One highlight I'll alaways remember is the day I left, and there was a note on my desk from a girl who was an "outsider" in the group, often the topic of derisive conservation behind her back at the hands of the "leaders" among the youth. She said "I'll miss you. God bless". I'm so glad that someone who must have been pretty lonely in that youth group felt supported by me, despite the frustrations I was feeling that must have distracted me from being as observant as I should have concerning youth who needed special attention. I liked everything about Phoenix except that it was far from home, and that my time in ministry there was not very happy. It was as I began to see that I should leave that I looked toward what I thought I could really accomplish best in ministry. This seemed to be communications and electronic media. I called back home to secure a video sales job, as I mentioned earlier.