If I had a dime for every time I was asked this question, I would be loaded!
The fact is I have a really sweet gig being able to travel and speak to students. So many people I talk with tell me they’d love to do what I get to do.
But people always want to know how I got into this. So in case you’re wondering, here’s the back story…
When I was in high school, I was really involved in my church youth group. I had a great relationship with my youth pastor, who really had a significant impact on my life. Partly because of his influence, I decided I wanted to be a youth pastor. I felt like I was good at connecting with other students, and it seemed like a cool way to make a living…hang out with teenagers!
I went to college and after graduating, I took a youth pastor position at a local church. I did that for about 18 months, but it was somewhat of a challenge for me. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about what I did, but there were also a lot of parts to my job I didn’t enjoy. I began trying to figure out if this was the right role for me and if I didn’t do this, what could I do? One part of my job that I really enjoyed was speaking. I spoke each week to the students but also spoke several times a year in the main weekend services. The more I spoke, the more I enjoyed it, and surprisingly enough, the audience seemed to like it as well.
The idea of becoming a speaker never really crossed my mind though. It seemed like a cool idea, but I wasn’t sure you could make a living at it. I thought if you could make it work, you’d have to be gone all the time, which with a young family, that much travel didn’t appeal to me.
After I left my youth pastor position, I spent a solid year trying to figure out what to do next. I went to school for 4 years to become a youth pastor and then when I was one, it wasn’t what I thought it would be. So now what?
