This morning a new friend of mine named Ryan Smith drove 2.5 hours from Nappanee, IN to meet with me regarding A New Kind of Youth Ministry. Ryan is the youth pastor at Nappanee First Brethren Church. He has been the youth pastor there for 7 years and is seeking new ways to help his students and volunteers find and follow Jesus.

We had a fantastic conversation about a number of different things including being a new parent (His wife is 8 months pregnant), creating environments for missional living among our students, YS’s National Youth Worker Convention, a new kind of evangelism, authentic living in and among our local communities and a number of other topics.

Ryan and I somehow ended up spending about an hour talking about and thinking around some of the biggest challenges that youth ministry faces today. Whenever I get a chance to ask a youth pastor who is “on the ground” or “in the trenches” a few questions about challenges they see see and/or experience in youth ministry I do — I find that I learn a ton and see things in a new light.

One of the challenges he mentioned has stuck in my mind — complacency. Complacency is a feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially coupled with an unawareness of potential danger or trouble. In this self-satisfaction we (youth workers — and me included!) can become so comfortable and secure in our current roles as youth workers that we become unaware of the troubling conditions around us. I think Ryan is right on! There is a smugness about what we do sometimes and the worst part about it is that we often can’t even recognize it.

Complacency is similar to denial in that most people who are living smack dab in the middle of it don’t know it and therefore can’t admit it. I think complacency might very well be one of the biggest challenges that youth ministry faces. That is, complacent youth workers who are conditionally so content with what is happening around them they don’t realize that making even the slightest adjustment to their ministry framework, strategy, model, etc. could result in significant impact.

Do you know someone who is stuck in complacency? People who are complacent can be known to have been doing the same thing for years with little or no impact, stop pushing themselves to learn — they don’t read books, blogs or articles, they don’t attend seminars or conferences, etc.

So I ask you –What do we do with this? What is the best way to help complacent people realize their self-satisfying life and help them get out of it? Remember, if you know someone like this, treat them gently and with love and grace because there is a very good chance they don’t even know they are complacent.

Oh, and we should ask ourselves … Are we complacent?