Is student ministry work a crazy career?

   I have done youth ministry as a paid youth pastor and moreso as a volunteer at various times since 1997.  During that entire time, I have received few compliments, much grief, and poor pay.  Why continue on?  Of course it is a personal affirmation from God to know your calling.  Yet the "evaluations" I get from God which keep me going are measures of success such as is exhibited in the following story.
   Once in a long transition period, I was worshiping on Sunday mornings at the church where I had been the youth pastor about seven years before.  After one routine morning of church, I went to a nearby fast food restaurant to get lunch.  I approached the register and the lady behind the counter said, “Hunter!”  Not recognizing her at first, I looked carefully at her face and then recognized it was a student from our youth group years before.  She was currently working as the manager of that fast food restaurant.  We talked for a bit while no one else was in line, and then she took my order.  After she retrieved the food, she paid for my meal.  Then she walked around the counter to where I was standing and gave me a huge hug.  I was so touched.  That is an example of an "evaluation,” the likes of which have kept me in this seemingly crazy career.  To know there are people out there who were once in rough or disastrous circumstances, yet whom I was able to bless in the love of Jesus is the reason I am grateful to God for my calling.
   I have been searching for ministry employment for over six months, and it has been a downright discouraging process.  If you likewise are searching for ministry employment at this time, I encourage you to persevere this day.  You may end up like me, with plenty of sorrow in this world, yet being in your calling you can still have joy and peace, and you will have treasures in heaven.  In my first youth ministry job in 1997, the head pastor Dr. John Bruington, had a framed quote on his back wall.  It stated: "Ministry work: the pay stinks but the benefits are out of this world."  And there are blessings to people in this world as well, where everything matters so much to God that one day He will judge for everything that people have ever done.  For those in Jesus, they will be righteous in Christ, because of the forgiveness of sins He made available by dying as the atonement on the Cross, and because of the daily sanctification the Holy Spirit works to bring about in the heart of a person who believes in Jesus.
Hunter