Being direct in your communication is not always the path of least resistance. In fact, it often invites more resistance, and youth ministry is hard enough without unnecessary conflict, isn’t it? While the path of least resistance may lead to short-term peace, it often leads to more problems in the long run.

What do I mean by being direct? When we need to tell someone about a decision we’ve made, we should be as direct with our explanation as we possibly can. Sometimes it’s easier to find a secondary or tertiary explanation for why we made a decision when we’re afraid the primary reason will hurt someone’s feelings or make someone angry with us. Those auxiliary reasons may be perfectly legitimate; but if they aren’t the primary reason, we are setting ourselves up for future problems.

Being direct might come naturally for some; but for many of us, a desire to avoid conflict can lead us to avoid being direct in order to keep people happy with us.
This comes into play frequently as it relates to those you choose or don’t choose for volunteer positions. Awhile back, I had a volunteer leader recommend one of his college-age children for a leadership position in our ministry. After getting feedback from a trusted co-leader who knew this student better than me, it became clear that she wasn’t ready for this position.

My first instinct was to find another reason why she shouldn’t serve. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I began thinking of other reasons why it wouldn’t work out for her. I thought about telling him that his child was too young and should wait until she was older.

Now this was a perfectly legitimate reason, and wasn’t completely untrue; but it wasn’t the first reason. Further, we had leaders in the ministry who were the same age as this potential leader; and it would have been easy for the parent to point that out and then question my honesty.

Blaming it on the person’s age would have helped me save face with this parent in the short-run, but would have led to more problems in the future.
So I decided to be direct.

I told the parent that I didn’t think his daughter was ready for leadership right now, but I appreciated the suggestion. I also had to stop myself from making future promises, such as “let’s give her a year, and then she’ll be ready.” This also might have made it easier for the parent to swallow the potentially disappointing news I was sharing, but then would put me on the hook for the following year.

You may know people who do this well. Learn from them! I remember sitting in on a job interview when a candidate for a junior high position at our church asked our senior pastor about the possibility he’d also be able to do college ministry. I liked the guy and was thinking he might be a good fit, so my first thought was: “I hope he at least says maybe. We don’t want to lose this guy!”

I looked on as our pastor said, very simply: “No, we’d need you to focus all of your attention on the junior high ministry.” I was disappointed because I knew it probably meant the candidate wouldn’t pursue the position, but I knew it was the right answer because our pastor had spoken honestly and directly.

Sharing unpopular news with people is never easy, but taking the easy way out by not being direct brings short-term peace with the potential for long-term conflict.