I don’t know if I’m alone, but when I was a youth minister, I had a really, really, small office. No joke.
My office was so small I could’ve dropkicked it through a set of goal posts.
My office was so small I almost stepped on it while walking down the hallway.
My office was so small I used a Kleenex for wall-to-wall carpeting.
Seriously! I could barely get myself in the door let alone all those supplies before retreat. What’s a youth minister to do?
Praise God for my car! And even though it was held together with a couple clothespins and some paperclips, it served as a great mobile storage unit. Where else was I supposed to keep those buckets of Red Vines before the big Fall Kickoff? And while towing around ten boxes of Bibles for Confirmation Candidates in my trunk for two months didn’t do much for my miles per gallon, it was just more convenient.
I spent so much time in my car driving to all the different productions of “Grease” it just seemed right to use it as my office. My thought was, “Toss a laptop in there and I’ll sit in the parking lot of a Starbucks when I need to send a few emails or do some relational ministry on Facebook.” Talk about saving the parish money!
Instead, I got the big clunky desktop that takes four and a half days to boot up. At least it was a good deal on Craigslist. But all was not lost. Using my car as a second office may have had its ups and downs, but it led to one of the best comebacks ever in the history of parish ministry:
Staff Member: “Do you still work here? You’re never in your office?”
Me: “What are you talking about? I was driving around in it yesterday.”
Question: What’s the most unique thing about your Youth Ministry office? (Share below.)
I started my new job as the Director of Youth Ministry in a Diocese just over 3 months ago. When I came in to set up my office, it was filled with dozens of boxes of stuff from the previous person. I went through each box and was amazed with what I found. At the bottom of a box filled with oddities, I found an Apostolic Blessing from Blessed John Paul II to the youth of the Diocese. Needless to say, this Blessing hangs right by the door for all to see.
Dave, what a great treasure to find! Praise God!
When I moved into my new office, I was shocked to find how large it was. I have had small offices before, but I was blessed to find that my new office is spacious, and in fact offers equipment that I have never had available to me before. If I had to say one thing that is interesting, it has to be a filing cabinet, which when opened, revealed every single Life Teen video support, dating all the way back to VHS tapes.
Robert, That is so great. I’m sure there has to be some pretty amazing videos on those VHS tapes.
When I first started my job in August I actually didn’t have an office for the first month or so. I made use of my personal laptop and carried around my Life Support and Edge Support boxes and would set up where ever there was space in the office. Sometimes that was a meeting room, other times the hallway, sometimes I would steal someones office while they had the day off or were out for a meeting. It was quite the experience, but it did start me off right away using my car as my storage space!
Haha! Amanda, I can only imagine you thinking that week, “What did I get myself into?”
My parish recently added a bunch of new offices to the Family Life Center, giving our EDGE and LifeTeen youth ministers the opportunity to have their own offices. Instead, they decided to continue sharing an office so that us youth could have a cool youth room with couches to hang out in! Our YM rocks:)
What great YMs you have Nicole! What other cool things do you have in your youth room?