It’s been almost a year since we launched the new lifeteen.com, and I realize that I’m on salary as a full-time under-achiever. The site is simply too big for our staff of two people, so I am left doing basic the routine Webmaster required to keep the website up each day. There’s never enough time to do fun and exciting projects on the site. So I go home each day feeling like an underachiever. I’m not set up to succeed.

Taking the month of November off broke the game day mentality I had while working on the website over the past year. I used to rush to work each morning, work myself to death all day, and then finally get home when it was dark and time for bed. There was no room for new thoughts or ideas because I was up the next morning to pick up where I left off.

I’m 27 now, and here I am at the beginning of 2006. I’m questioning whether or not I want to be in youth ministry anymore. It’s not that I don’t believe in youth ministry or that I don’t like what I do, it’s that I cannot be placed in a box where I have no chance to be creative and successful. In all reality, my job right now is as confining as my rural high school in the South. I am a creative person with big ambition; I need room to grow.

It’s hard for me to talk about this with my friends because most of us work in youth ministry. It’s already a hard job–excessive hours, low pay, criticism–and I don’t want to be another downer in their life.