I came across this question on ChristianForums.com and was curious to see how people responded. Some responded by saying, “No, you can’t care too much.” Others said, “Yes!” So which is it?

You can read the responses here, but I want to go ahead and answer the question here. I have a lot of kids in my group dealing with real issues in their lives. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I need God. I need God a lot, actually. As Louie Giglio so simply put it, “I am not, but I know I AM.”

Caring for students becomes unhealthy when…

• Your motive for caring is selfish. You do it for the glamor, or you do it because of the affection the kids show you. You “care” for them because they give something back.
• You don’t trust that God can take care of the students’ problems. You may think this to be true and say it out loud, but do your actions believe in God’s power? Or do you think you need to be God’s backup plan?
• You think you’re some sort of martyr. You carry around the burdens of your students and act as if you’re some sort of martyr. In a twisted sort of way, the emotional burdens bring you comfort or validate you as a minister.

An unhealthy level of caring leads to…

• Unnecessary stress. A little stress is okay; it’s part of our instinct. But an unhealthy level of stress can lead to your other responsibilities suffering. You job suffers and your family suffers. Stress also lends itself to an unhealthy diet.
• Emotional burnout. This can lead to an apathetic approach to other responsibilities or the inability to fully care for your family.
• Loss of sleep. Just this past weekend, I became overly stressed about a situation at youth group and had a hard time sleeping. I immediately sought the counsel of a wise mentor the next morning.
• Physical sickness or unhealthiness. Too much stress is actually unhealthy for you. That’s fairly well known.

How to maintain a level of healthy caring:

• Our care for students must first be given to God. Trusting in God to take care of our kids frees us to truly do ministry in a healthy way. (“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” -1 Peter 5:7) Constantly giving over your cares to God in prayer will help relieve your own stress. I make a list in a confidential notebook and pray to God for them daily.
• Create and maintain healthy boundaries. Take days off. While being a youth leader can sometimes seem like a 24/7 job, we need to take the necessary steps to care for our souls.
• Get counseling. Always have a mentor, Biblical counselor, and/or another youth leader that you can go to when you need to unload. I have several people I can go to in order to do this.
• Exercise and eat healthy. Sounds like a strange place to say this, huh? Seriously, exercise releases endorphins and eating healthy helps your body retain chemical balance. I (try to) run on a regular basis, but especially when I feel an emotional burden.
• Spend time with friends on a regular basis who are not associated with your ministry. Or if they are, don’t talk about youth ministry things. I admit, I have difficulty with this one, since many of my friends are also youth workers.

Additional Reading

• For additional reading, I highly suggest Tim Schmoyer’s post How I Will Crash and Burn(out) in Ministry.
• Also, check out Adam McLane’s Responding to Stress post.
• My post on dealing with kids who keep making bad decisions.

Now what?

Assess your own level of health. Do you care too much? Or perhaps too little? Do you put up too many boundaries?

You invest more than just your time into these kids, you invest your life. You can’t clock out of a relationship. And it’s hard to deal with the emotions involved with kids who go on making decisions that can and will ruin their lives.

This post will be more personal than those I’ve written before. And I’m writing this with the hopes that you might be able to get some encouragement from it.

Will and the Issue of Drugs

(warning, long story ahead)

I met Will [I changed the name and details for confidentiality sake] a year and a half ago when his parents forced him to go on a retreat with our church. He seemed to be the typical punk kid with a skateboard under one arm and a too-cool-for-school attitude under the other. He wasn’t an issue on the trip, but he didn’t spend much time around me either. We got back home and I didn’t see him again save for a few Sundays at church.

A few months later we headed off to summer camp, Will included. He knew some of the kids from school, so he fit in pretty well. We had a lot of opportunities to connect during the week and he admitted to me that I was one of the few people he felt he could trust.

Some of the kids kept making jokes about him, though, and the insult “pothead” was thrown around more than once.

I usually didn’t do this, but I asked him to come aside during one of  the evening chapels and asked him if the accusations were true.

He nodded.

I asked him for more details. How long? How frequently? With whom?

The answers were short and reluctant.

I admit, I was as curious as I was concerned. He told me things that I did not expect. Different kinds of drugs I had never heard of. Certain kinds of parties similar to raves. Experimental drugs he and his friends were inventing.

He never made eye contact with me.

I began to ask him about his family. If they knew. How he was dealing with it.

Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, he began to cry. The cry turned into sob, and very soon he was weeping. I wrapped my arms around him and he buried his head into my chest. I could feel his hot tears soaking my shirt and pouring down my arms.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I don’t remember much else of that moment, except all of a sudden, I was crying too, but I do remember telling him that God still loves him and his family still loves him and that this youth group loves him.

That was over a year ago. Since that time, he’s had good days and bad days. He’s spent some days on his knees before the Cross and some in the back of a cop car. Some days he’ll tell me everything. Others, he’d rather not say anything.

“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.”

There have been times when I hugged him and told him how much I loved him and days where I wanted to punch some sense into him. Not to mention one or two sleepless nights, mostly right after church trips.

I know Will is not the worst-case scenario. But seeing him make bad decisions has been painful. I don’t want him to be the guy in rehab or on the side of the street asking for money. I don’t want to see that worst-case scenario.

Over this past year, I think God has been teaching me these things:

1. I am not Jesus. I knew this in my mind but my actions were still saying, “I can do it all!” The result was burnout, one that I’m still trying to recover from (though I’m on the upswing of things right now!)
2. I can’t change kids’ hearts. I need to lead them to the foot of the Cross and let the Holy Spirit do his work. Then I pray, pray, and pray some more.
3. I can be there to support them. While I can’t make them change, I can be one of their biggest fans. I can encourage them and let them cry on my shoulder. Sometimes they need nothing more from me than that.
4. Some kids won’t change. Some kids, because of their own decisions, will not allow God to transform their hearts. There will be those who “perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess 2:10). Regardless of the outcome, I need to keep loving them, in hopes that through my dedication to them, God’s faithfulness will shine all the more.

What’s next?

When was the last time you called a kid and told him or her how much you cared about them? Maybe they need that bit of encouragement right now.

Maybe a youth leader in your town is dealing with a Will. Why not encourage him or her?