For those who aren’t familiar with what I am talking about. The concept of pacing in student ministry is championed in Richard Dunn’s book, Shaping the Spiritual Lives of Students. (You can buy it online at http://www.amazon.com.) It goes like this… In order to lead people and disciple them you only give them what they are ready to handle, walk along with them as they get it [pacing] and your job is to always throw out the next challenge.
I practice pacing in how I disciple students. I always challenge, occasionally give glimpses of the big picture, but empathize and walk beside mostly. It is helpful with “postmodern” students since they don’t feel like they are just another cog in a program. Formerly, “discipleship” had become such a program and so stringent and so impersonal, that it had become regulated to something people either chose to include in their program or didn’t. Like VBS or a ladies. You can either chose to disciple or you can chose not to.
My personal priority is to disciple people. To chose to not disciple is the choice of misrepresenting Christ’s command in the great commission. It’s not someone else’s job… It’s mine! It’s all believers.
But I am left to wrestle with “how do I go about the business of discipling students in a postmodern, hyperbusy world?” Pacing is a good way to do this because it is mostly about walking beside an individual vs. “come to my discipleship group on Thursday’s at 4 PM.” While this is comfortable for me and I think I am pretty good about keeping the pressure of pacing on… I wrestle with the reality of who I’m leaving behind. Jesus went after the few… But left many behind. But he was God… He had some clue as to who to choose and who not to choose. I don’t have that advantage and I choose to not pace some while I do pace others. How is this right?
My biggest fear [and a dose of reality] is that I am investing in the wrong student. The phone will ring in 2015 and some enthusiastic voice will tell me about how they have grown and they are a father and how awesome a youth pastor I was. The reality of this vision is that someone invested in me and learned from me but I didn’t invest in them. They didn’t ever hit my radar screen. Worse yet. The Sixth Sense haunts me with the reality that maybe their is a student who cried out to me and I missed it. Then one day, out of sheer rage, he will show up in my bathroom and shoot me.
A lesser fear is that I will not invest in a student and a vocal parent will get me fired. They will accuse me of being lazy since I technically could have invested in their child and choose not to. They will say, “you invested in these golf team students, who’s parents aren’t paying your salary, but you didn’t invest in my boy. Look at him, he’s a failure and it’s all your fault.”
So I am left with the same question I started with. Am I pacing with students or am I just lazy?
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