From Anders Lee
During a recent busy season in my life in ministry and personal matters, I asked a couple of individuals to write articles in my place. I know you will enjoy this second article from Brian Prochaska, Youth Pastor at First Baptist Mantachie. I met him about a half year ago and have grown to respect and love him as a co-laborer in ministry. Enjoy these thoughts from him! Great job Brian!!!
“My experiences with youth pastoring”
by Brian Prochaska
Greetings youth pastors, workers and teachers. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Brian Prochaska. I am the bi-vocational youth Pastor at Mantachie First Baptist church in Mantachie, Mississippi. I am married to the former Jana Hood Prochaska (24 years) of Mantachie. I have two daughters Abby who is 20 years old and Lydia 15 years old. I have served in youth ministry for the past 27 years as a bi-vocational youth pastor/youth director. I first felt the calling to youth ministry in 1994 while attending Itawamba Community College in Fulton. Little did I know what God had in store for me after answering the call into youth ministry? I have recently surrendered to the Gospel ministry this past February 2021. I struggled with the call to the ministry for 14 years and did everything in my power to drown the call out. I couldn’t believe that God was calling me into the ministry! I asked God “why me?”, “I’m nothing”, “ask somebody else to do it”, I felt alone. I had every excuse you could make not to answer the call. After lots of prayer and with the support of my family and church, I answered God’s call.
I wanted to write our BMA youth workers, bi-vocational or full time youth Pastors and teachers, about my experiences in youth ministry. Having served 3 churches in the past 27 years I have experienced the challenges of balancing a full time job and a full time ministry. Even though I was hired as a bi-vocational youth Pastor the youth ministry is never part-time, it’s always full-time! I had to make a lot of adjustments. I have had a lot of first experiences too. I’ve learned what to do and what not to do. I have seen youth ministry change over the course of several years as well. If I could sum up this whole article in one word that I have learned about youth ministry that one word would be “dedication”!
My story starts in Amory, Mississippi, back in 1994 (makes me feel old, HA). I was hired by a church, part time to direct their youth program. Let me tell you, I was clueless and non-experienced. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I had a Junior High and Senior High youth ministry. Best I can remember I had about 25 students under my leadership at that time. I also remember the very first trip we went on in the Summer of 1994! I took my students to a church camp in North Carolina. I worked hard all that summer preparing for the trip. I made sure the church van was reserved, a map in the glove box (we didn’t have GPS back thenJ), traveler’s checks in my wallet, and all my registration forms in line, etc. I remember sitting in front of our pastor before the trip and he was asking me all sorts of questions. I told him I had everything in line and we were good to go. Then he asked me the million dollar question, “who are your chaperones?” I stared at him with a glazed look on my face and told him “what chaperones, who needs chaperones?” He immediately picked up the phone from his desk and started calling other church members to assist me on our trip. I felt about an inch tall!
This was my very first lesson, you need faithful adult leaders or college students helping you in your youth ministry program. It doesn’t matter on the size of your group either, from 5 to 45 students it’s always a good idea to have some help. It’s hard to talk to every student in your group when you have your youth services. There’s a lot going on because you find yourself running around and making sure things are ready to go. This is where I lean on my help. I ask them to do simple things such as set up our activity for the night, pick up the pizza (we love to eat), pass out the lesson materials etc. Having dedicated help in your youth ministry is essential.
The second thing I have learned in youth ministry is to “love unconditionally”. I told myself a long time ago no matter who walks through my doors on a Wednesday night I was going to love that student no matter what. We all have those crazy students, the ones who talk a lot, the ones who don’t say anything at all, the ones that are broken, and the ones who barely have any friends…they need our love and more importantly, they need the love of Jesus! I make it a priority to show them that I care, that they are loved, and that our church is a place where they can find the love of Jesus. It doesn’t matter where they come from or what they’ve done, we need to love them and give them Jesus.
The third thing I have discovered is learning how to balance a full time job and a full time youth ministry (even though I am part-time). I have made a lot of sacrifices over the years. Some of you reading this know where I am coming from. It’s hard to manage a family, full time job and a youth group all at the same time. But hey, it’s what we are called to do. Sometimes we have to give up a few things so that we can make time preparing lessons for our youth groups. We have a lot of distractions in our lives. I tell my students one of the biggest distractions we have is that little device that sits in your pocket or purse. Yep, you guessed it, cell phones! I read an article a while back about the average time a person spends on their cell phone and I was blown away by the result. Most Americans spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours a day on their mobile devices. Just think what we could do with a couple hours of spare time and use that time to pour into our youth ministry.
The last thing I would recommend to any bi-vocational youth Pastor or teacher is plan, plan, plan! Do your best to stay ahead of the game. Don’t wait until the last minute to whip up a quick message or anything else. Plan out your weeks ahead of time. I am a huge fan of study series, you know the 4 to 5 week study topics. My students love these series and so do I. Planning ahead is always a good thing. When you plan ahead it gives you time to focus week in and week out on your message/activities with your students.
Youth ministry is hard work. It’s definitely a God called work. It requires dedication, love, support and lots of prayer. I pray for my students a lot. I have seen so many students over the years that are broken, depressed, confused and lost. I have also seen several students give their lives to Jesus through our ministry at Mantachie First Baptist Church. I encourage you to stay the course, stay dedicated, have faithful workers, love unconditionally, and plan.
Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
God bless,
Bro. Brian Prochaska
Director of Student Ministries
“The Main Event”
Mantachie First Baptist Church
I may be reached by email bjapro@nexband.com or cell 662-401-5531