Since 2004, the month of May has been bitter sweet for me. On one hand, May 2004 was the most amazing month I have ever seen in my youth ministry career but one of the most difficult, as well.

May 2004 began a continuous series of reflections for me as a youth pastor, especially as I contemplate the idea of leaving a legacy that will draw people into a relationship with Jesus.

To fully grasp the events of the May 2004, you need to understand that as a youth pastor I was trained on various tools and techniques that work in the world of teenagers, and in many ways am viewed in the church context as the “resident professional” when it comes to reaching teens for Jesus. Whether a fair assumption or not, the youth pastor usually is perceived as the “hired gun,” “top dog,” “answer guy” or whatever label you want to put on him. He’s the guy who gets “the big bucks,” so he must have it all together. Right?

I believe youth pastors need to be trained to do the very best job they can to understand and reach out to youth culture with truth, but it always has bothered me that in many church circles the volunteer youth leaders often are overlooked and underappreciated because they don’t have a parchment from Bible College X.

I’m only one guy with a small sphere of influence. If all the gifts, talents, abilities, resources and energies represented by the team are funneled in my direction to help me reach my sphere of influence, that’s a waste isn’t it?

I’ve always been about doing ministry on a team with members who are passionate about their identity in Christ, as well as passionate about loving students in the name of Christ.

Hang Time

Hang Time is a ministry born from a seminar on spiritual gifts and personality styles that I did with our core students. The seminar was all about turning the mirror on ourselves to discover how God had designed us, and asking, “How does God want me to use my design for Him?”

John, one of the seminar participants, came up to me at the end and said, “Pastor Brent, in to this seminar I learned a bunch of big terms and concepts, but to me the bottom line is I love to skate; I’m good at skating. I love my friends, and I want them to know Jesus. What should I do with that?”

It wasn’t long before the answer to John’s question became very obvious. Build a skate park that’s led by a student skater, who also has a passion to reach fellow skaters for Jesus. So, that’s what we did. We opened our facility and made our trash cans, orange cones, metal pipes and broken pool table available to the skaters to do their stuff on. We had a skate park!

Hang Time was built on this motto, “No one else wants you to skate…We do! You’re welcome here, it’s not much, but all we have is yours…Enjoy Hang Time!”