When to Report Up
As a youth pastor, as much as you might like to be the one who’s in charge of your church, you’re not. Whether it’s another person in the youth ministry or an associate or senior / lead pastor, you’ve got a boss who directly supervises you.
One of the best things you can do for that relationship is to learn what you should report to your boss and when.
Right about now, you might be wondering: “Isn’t it my job to problem solve? Shouldn’t I be trying to keep things off my boss’s radar?”
Well yes… And no.
Here’s what I mean.
My first year in ministry, I led a mission trip that went horribly wrong. One of our adult leaders said something that deeply offended a number of our students. Those students promptly called home and proceeded to tell their parents what had happened. Before long, those parents called our senior pastor (my boss) and told him what had happened.
By the time we returned home, I’d worked with my team to resolve the conflict. Unfortunately, that part of the story never made it home.
So I arrived home to an irate group of parents and a boss who was ready to fire me for my gross incompetency.
While I’d successfully resolved the conflict on the ground, that didn’t matter because I’d failed to report ANY of it – both the conflict AND its resolution – to my boss. With no information from me, he could do only one thing: Believe the one-sided story he was hearing from the parents.
That botched reporting incident has deeply shaped me and helped me learn what to report to my boss and when to do it.
Nowadays, any time there is a serious conflict in my ministry (especially one that has the potential to escalate), I let my boss know as it’s happening, not just when it’s been resolved. Doing so does three things.
