I started in ministry as a people pleaser. I thought that my responsibility as a pastor was to make everyone happy and if I did that, they would have a strong relationship with God. One of my top goals in my early years of ministry was to do whatever it took to make peace and to please everyone. In my utopian mindset, I believed that If I just tried hard enough I could make everyone happy.
My optimism was quickly challenged in my first position.
Within the first week I had a mom of a 5th grader come into my office and inform me on how youth ministry should be run and how she would coach me since I was young and didn’t really know how things worked yet. I smiled, nodded, and thanked her for the input.
The next week I had another mom come into my office and tell me that the first mom was over-controlling and if I let her influence the direction of the ministry her family would leave the church.
I didn’t know what to do, but I figured I had a year to make everyone happy. Within days, my senior pastor said that he heard that the first mom had volunteered to mentor me and he thought it was a great idea and hoped I would take her advice. When I mentioned to him that I didn’t know if I agreed with the ideas she shared with me, he just laughed and told me that I was young and I could learn a lot from her and that I should have her dictate the ministry.
There was a momentary thought that this wasn’t going to turn out well, but I was optimistic, I thought that If I just talked to these people they would understand and they would agree with a compromised plan. Over the next two months, I spent numerous hours in conversations that ended up with yelling, anger, and disagreements. I spent a couple of very uncomfortable meetings with my senior pastor as he disagreed with my decisions and told me that he had hoped I wouldn’t be a typical young youth pastor that wouldn’t listen to what he was told to do. My optimism started to wane.
Over the next 20+ years I had experience after experience of realizing that you can not make everyone happy. I have had students, parents, and staff member extremely upset with decisions that I have made. I have had people say that they are leaving the church because they couldn’t believe I called myself a pastor and made the decisions I had made. Through hours of intentional investment, strategic planning, and eventually heartache, I concluded that it was going to be impossible to please everyone.
Over the last decade of ministry, I have changed my mindset over the value of pleasing everyone. I have realized that whatever I value is how I will prioritize the ministry I lead. If my goal is to make everyone happy, my ministry will be about whoever complains the most, will have little accountability among the volunteers and students, and will gradually evolve into chaos and purposelessness. If my goal is to help students make their next step in their relationship with Jesus, then I will be focused on helping students feel loved and cared for with the intentional purpose to help them grow in who Jesus is in their life. When (not if) someone disagrees, I can be confident in how I respond to them.
It still hurts when people disagree with me and the direction that I am leading. I still want to explain myself when people misunderstand why we do what we do. I still cringe when an upset parent wants a one-on-one meeting to discuss a situation. But because making everyone happy is not a high value to me, I am freed up to spend my time and energy helping students know and grow in Jesus. My emotional, mental, and physical energy is focused on helping students move forward, not pleasing people, and I am finding more peace, joy, and success in ministry. I would encourage all leaders, especially young leaders, to learn to live in the reality that you can’t make everyone happy. Learn to invest in what matters most. Remember who you are and why you do what you do. As you learn to walk in this way, I believe you will find peace, joy, and purpose.