Cultivating Relationships With Other Pastors And Student Pastors

How can I find and cultivate openness, sharing, and accountability with other pastors?

This question popped up at a previous Iron on Iron youth pastor conference, during a panel discussion. So, we asked Rob Conti and Ricky Smith, veteran student pastor and pastor to answer this question. If you want to listen to the audio recording, simply click below.

Let’s dig in.

Rob Conti –

Yeah, good question. A very common thing seen with student pastors who come in is feeling isolated. They feel there is no fellowship within the pastoral staff or the group of elders, no matter how the church is structured.

Play the long game

The first thing I wanna say is: Don’t give up. Don’t give up on fellowship. Play the long game.

You very well may be the catalyst that God uses to change that aspect of the church. Because sadly, people don’t often know how to disciple. People don’t know how to have that accountability and fellowship, it’s been lost in the church. Discipleship is supposed to be handed down, but when it’s missed, you may have strong study, books, or podcasts, but not a solid relationship with one another that is Christ-honoring and iron-sharpening. That leaves people who feel like they don’t even know how to disciple.

What can be difficult is that the senior pastor, or the other pastors in the church may be resistant to it. You need to focus on doing it in such a way that it doesn’t seem like you’re usurping authority or as if you’re trying to lead. Instead, do it in a way that’s supportive of their leadership, loving them, supporting them, and intentionally trying to build relationships that break through the walls that are up.

That might be long and painful, and you might get rejected a lot, but I encourage you to not give up on that, pursue it! Seek it wherever you can find it.

it’s not about you!

Ricky Smith –

Rob talked about the danger of isolation. I think we are isolated because we insulate ourselves. And the danger of living in a vacuum in our own ministry is toxicity.

So the best advice I would give you on this is: Get over yourself.

You are not that big of a deal!

You are there to advance the Gospel and make the name of Jesus known, not to establish your own kingdom and become the biggest coolest youth group in town, so you have to get over yourself and realize, “It’s not about me.“

If you simply did the math on the percentage of unreached people in your community compared to the number of students in your community, compared to the number of kids in your youth group, you would quickly conclude there’s a lot of work to do, and there’s no way that you can do this on your own.

Columbus, Georgia, for example, where the population is 85% unchurched. Or let me give you another example. I was doing some consulting with a church in Hartwell, Georgia. Not far from here, in Hartwell, there are 3000 middle school and high school students in this small community, and there are 100 churches. That seems like a reasonable ratio, but they’re 80% lost in Hartwell.

The chasm that we have to reach requires us to reach beyond ourselves. We cannot afford to be insulated, and we have to recognize the huge danger when we become isolated.

Reach out, Initiate Contact

Proverbs 18 tells us a really simple principle,

“A man that has friends must show himself friendly.” – Proverbs 18

I always choose to look at this as if I’m a marketing agent. I have to generate calls, and if I want to build relationships with others for the sake of reaching my community, I have to be willing to generate those leads with those around me. That means I’m not going to wait on somebody to call me.

I’m going to initiate contact with youth pastors, youth leaders, and churches in my area.

It’s as simple as, “Hey man, how are you doing? How are things going in your church? Do you wanna grab some lunch? Let’s get some guys together.”

So don’t sit back and wait. You be the one to reach out. That is the wise counsel I would give to you.

If you don’t have an existing network in your area, you may find that by reaching out to others. One actually does exist. And if youth pastors get together regularly for lunch in your community, you need to connect into that.

But If there’s not one, start it! It’s not hard, just reach out and try to find opportunities to go get lunch.

Focus on Growing the Kingdom

As we reach into our communities for the Gospel, and as we reach out to others and begin to desire and recognize the importance of working with others, we need to start by leaning into each other.

What we oftentimes do, is we sit in our insulated world, we come up with a wonderful idea that oftentimes looks like an event, then when we get into the planning for it we realize that we don’t have enough people and we don’t have enough money.

So then we reach out and get others saying, “Hey, will you come support my event?” And sometimes that works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

To me, what works most effectively is to start by reaching out to others and letting your network organically come up with an idea.

“Hey, I have a relationship with somebody, what if we started with this idea? What if we did ______ together?”

I’ve got to be willing to let go of some of the ownership, and what grows out of that is a corporate, Kingdom-minded, opportunity to reach my community. In that, inevitably you’re going to build relationships.

The best way to build relationships with somebody else is to sweat alongside them. If I’m doing that on the campuses of my ministry and we’re wearing out our tennis shoes together by going on campus, it’s gonna make a difference. I’m gonna build relationships, we’re gonna sweat next to each other, and the Kingdom’s gonna grow.

Ricky Smith

Ricky Smith is the Lead Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church — a Snowbird partner church in Columbus, GA. He has a bachelor’s degree in Christian Education with an emphasis in Youth Ministry from Bryan College, in Dayton, Tennessee. He also holds a Masters degree in Theology from Liberty Baptist Seminary, and a Degree in Educational Leadership from Liberty University. Ricky served as a student pastor several years, and then joined the Georgia Baptist Mission Board as the NextGen Catalyst. He as worked with youth pastors across the state of Georgia to see this generation engaged with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.