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The goal of "Welcome to Student Ministry" is to post interviews that help guide both new and experienced student pastors toward faithful ministry over many years. This 19th interview in this series is with Walt Baertsch. Walt serves as the associate pastor at East White Oak Bible Church in Illinois.

1. Tell our readers some background information about how long you have been in student ministry, how you started, and anything else that you think would be useful.

My family attended a liberal church growing up. It could have been me and not being interested, but although I went nearly every Sunday, I do not remember ever hearing anything about the gospel and/or salvation.

The first time I really heard and understood the gospel was when a friend shared her faith with me at a basketball game during my sophomore year of high school. She asked me if I died that night if I would go to heaven. I said I thought I would because I was “basically a pretty good guy.” She showed me Ephesians 2:8-9 in her Bible and gave me a Four Spiritual Laws booklet and asked me to read it that night and she’d talk to me about it in the morning.

I read it and trusted Christ for my salvation that night and her dad and brothers discipled me for the next couple of years until they moved away.

During high school I felt called to prepare for some sort of ministry, but couldn’t afford the schooling, so I decided to go to a tech school to be a professional baker. The day before I left for Baking School, I told my best friend that I really didn’t want to be a baker. She asked me what I wanted to do and I told her that I wasn’t sure, but I knew that I loved God, I loved kids, and I loved camping. She responded, “Well, that’s a no brainer, you should be a youth pastor.” I left for baking school the next day.

It wasn’t until God shut down the bakery at which I worked, and then shut down my “backup” plan of joining the military — “They’ll take anybody” — except for people with flat feet. (Psalm 139:13-16) that I finally gave complete control of my life over to God and told him that if he wanted me to become a youth pastor, I would, but he needed to provide the means to do it. He did exactly that.

During my first year at Northwestern College (now University of Northwestern – St. Paul), I volunteered with Youth for Christ as an Associate to the Director with one of YFC’s high school worship teams.

I volunteered with my local church for the next three years, during which I also interned andthen continued to be a volunteer until the youth pastor told me that I should apply to be thevery first youth pastor at his dad’s church in central Wisconsin. Long story short, I was offered the full-time position in June of 1989.

God, and the church, were both gracious and the group grew and I stayed there until 1999 when I was asked to come and help a hurting church in Colorado regrow their youth group.

I left a thriving youth ministry in Wisconsin to “restart” the youth group in Colorado. My first day in Sunday School I had three students show up. Over the first couple of years, we started to grow again until, due to a complicated situation my Senior Pastor resigned and then tried to “unresign” which threw the church into significant turmoil which ended with the Senior Pastor being no longer employed there and the church in chaos.

Again, long story short,after much consultation and prayer, I became the next Senior Pastor of the church to facilitate healing and forgiveness. When dreaming of my youth ministry trajectory, I intended to be a youth pastor for life, I had not ever planned to be a Senior Pastor, but God thrust me into the fray. I was the Senior Pastor there for three years and again, God and the church were gracious, and the church was blessed with God’s healing and forgiveness until we could identify an interim pastor that could take over. This meant that I could come back to my passion of youth ministry as I moved back to the Midwest and took over the youth ministry in my current church.

I’ve now been in Illinois for 23 years (all in the same church) and I am the pastor of our Junior High, Senior High, and Young Adult groups. I am loving seeing the second generation (children of students who grew up in our youth group) now starting to become Senior Highers as well as former students becoming adult leaders in our youth ministries, pouring themselves into the same ministry that discipled them.

All those years add up to 41 years with 37 of them being full-time. God has been faithful each step of the way.

2. How has your view of youth ministry changed from when you started to now?

Having not grown up in a youth ministry and having no preconceived notions of what “success” was, I was pretty naïve in the early years and just wanted students to show up and focused on what it took to get students in the doors. We had some success with that and grew the group, but it was not too long before reality struck, and I realized that this about more than fun and games. My focus over the years has significantly shifted to focusing on deeper growth in students in their relationship with Christ and preparation and multiplication of disciples who make disciples. Also, together with our church we intentionally have three main “tracks” for students interested in leadership development: Worship through Music, Leadership, and Missions.

3. Share one of your favorite student ministry moments.

I absolutely love watching the “light bulbs” go on in students heads when the “get it” and discover the freedom that comes from trusting Christ, followed by the realization that God is using them to make a difference in other people’s lives. I have been blessed in each of my ministries to prepare students to be leaders as they are sent out and get involved in other ministries and watch those ministries grow under their leadership. (Disciples making disciples.)

One of my favorite ministry moments was having the opportunity, during my sabbatical, to travel both domestically and internationally to visit former students from each of the three ministries who are still following Jesus as adults who are still multiplying disciples in their own families, ministries, and other vocations. There is nothing like taking former students and their families out for dinner and/or staying up late at their homes and hearing about how God is using them (hurts and all) to multiply His kingdom!

4. Share one of your least favorite ministry moments

There have been plenty of these as well. Some of the most painful ones have been watching students who have not trusted Jesus or who turn their back on Jesus and walk away. This even has resulted a few phone calls to former students in prison. Usually, during our first prison phone call both of us sit and cry on the phone for the whole time.

5. What resources do you find helpful to use in student ministry?

• Sonlife (Sonlife.com) resources have been essential in helping to think through and solidify my philosophy of youth ministry. Without their resources I’d likely still be adrift out there wondering what I should be doing on Sunday and Wednesday. Instead, I’ve been focused on Win, Build, Equip, Multiply.

• I am a HUGE youth networking guy. There is just something great about getting together with a bunch of folks who know what you are going through and are willing to encourage and pray for each other. The National Network of Youth Ministries (nnym.org) is a great resource for looking up those near you.

• Continuing to go to conferences has also been essential, not even necessarily for the conference content (which is usually great), but even better is just sitting next to or across from another guy and swapping strategies, commiserating together, praying for each other, and encouraging each other. Take advantage of the “downtimes” at conferences.

• I am also huge on pouring into the next generation of volunteer youth leaders: myown (especially) as well as so many others.

6. What is one or two things that you do to make sure that you don’t burn out as a youth pastor?

• I know that not everyone agrees with it, but very early on my wife and I decided (through experience) that both of us working with students wasn’t healthy for our family life. So my wife keeps the home-fires burning so I can come home and it is very different from youth ministry, and I can relax instead of so many of our conversations, trips, and events being about the youth. Again, this is not for everyone, and many couples work very well together – it is just that our experience was that all conversations ended up revolving around students in the ministry instead of our family and we decided that was not healthy for our family.

• I alluded to it in the earlier question. Gather and train a team to work together with you. No one can do all the things needed for a spiritually thriving group by themselves. Gather a team, resource them, train them, and connect them with students to make disciples! I have been overly blessed with three fantastic teams. I am still in touch with many of them even from 30+ years ago. Some of my current team now have decades of experience as well as my 18 year olds that I just added to our Junior High team the other day. We even have a combination of a 73-year-old grandmother teamed up with a twenty-something-year-old both pouring into our freshmen girls’ small group this year!

• Network, network, network. If you don’t have one, create one. Even if you have to drive a couple of hours to meet with someone, it is worth it just to hear “Really? I thought it was just me!”

7. What advice would you give to yourself when you started as a youth pastor if you could go back to that time?

• Don’t quit in the first three years! This advice was given to me by one of my youth ministry professors and it is TRUE. I’ve wanted to quit in the third year in each of my churches. In reality, it is not until after the third year that the group really is “yours” because those who were freshmen when you came are now your Seniors.

• Prioritize your family times. Youth ministry is life consuming. Don’t let it consume you.

• Enjoy the fun and relationships but focus on Christ and multiplying disciples. Play games, have fun events, but do them with purpose.

• It seems mundane but develop an effective filing system (both physical andelectronic). I should have 41 years of archived material. But nope. I might be able to find stuff if given enough time… or if I can dig it out of the recesses of my brain.

• Stay in touch with your students even after they/you have left your ministry. The ones who continue to follow Christ will encourage you to stay the course.

The ones who have wandered will help you refocus, refine, and help you realize the great need of the world for the reality of Christ.

Thank you, Walt, for taking time to answer these questions.  In coming weeks I will post our 20th edition of "Welcome to Student Ministry."