Reading all sorts of blogs posts this week and came across my favorite of the week fro Craig Gross called Don’t Hire That Guy! It has all sorts of frank observations and opinions about youth ministry – most of it is spot on. Really thankful that Craig shared this with us this week – here’s a clip from the end, but head over and read the whole post – really worth the read:

You want student leaders/pastors who don’t fit in with the rest of your staff, because kids at those ages don’t fit in with the rest of the staff.

Empower each of these individuals to lead and not put a fence around them that is too small.

Hire passionate people who love kids and let them lead in a smaller space instead of making them work all together as a whole.

Parents will go where their kids are happy, wherever their kids love. To keep it going as kids get older is the key, and if you can nail that at each step of the way, I think you keep the parents.

Hire with focus and passion, not administrative and organization. An assistant can handle all the mess these people create.

Before you hire someone, look at their Twitter and Facebook feeds. If they follow and retweet all the popular pastors and authors in the cool club of Christianity, then you don’t want them. That guy just wants to be those guys. You want the person who tweets back at the eighth-grader with 40 followers and who has photos of themselves playing Assassin’s Creed or dodgeball with the students, not tweeting leadership quotes or referencing Logos bible software.

JG