6 years ago I had the chance to move to Clarksville and be a part of my current church as the Family Pastor. I still had the chance to lead our student ministry hands on but I also led the entire family ministry and build a team that would lead each area. I loved every minute of the journey and I loved being able to establish a team that would fight for the next generation.

I am now in a new role here at my church leading our staff as the Executive Pastor and it’s full of new challenges. I have had time to look back and process mistakes I made from my role as Family Pastor. Every mistake I made is just a chance for me to help another leader avoid that same trap so why not share what I have learned.

Here are some of the the mistakes I made while serving as Family Pastor…

1. Allowing too many ministries to depend on me // No doubt I did too many things in every area of our family ministry team. I created a dependence on me at times that I learned slowly I could not sustain. This was a constant learning process.
2. Not meeting enough with my entire team // I should have met more with my team so that we could lead together more instead of alone in our different areas. I think my hands on leadership of student ministry brought this on but it is a mistake I made.
3. Many times I moved too fast // As a leader I love progress and many times I pushed ahead when I should have slowed down and waited on the right time to advance. Timing in family ministry is critical!
4. Not giving more focus to partnering with families // Many times I allowed the perfect plan for connecting with parents to get in the way of progress in partnering with families. I learned you just have to go for it.
5. Not giving focus to volunteer equipping and mentoring // Many times I spend so much time investing in ministry to kids and teens that I did not have enough room for focused equipping and mentoring of volunteers.
6. Allowing the pace of ministry to rob me of the joy of serving Jesus // Trying to balance many different ministry areas many times robbed me of time to rest and celebrate all the good God was doing. After a few years I finally had to choose to celebrate every win because I would never be able to celebrate everything being perfect. Perfection simply never comes!

I would love to hear from any of you leading as Next Gen or Family Pastors! What are common mistakes you see leaders at this level make?