Brandon Early
Teaching pastor at Valley Church
West Des Moines, Iowa, United States
I know you’re gifted.
I really do. And that matters. God gave you those gifts on purpose. If you can communicate, lead, connect, organize, disciple, bring energy into a room, or make students feel seen, that’s not an accident. That’s a valuable gift that God has given you, and it matters.
But your gifts, even though they’re valuable, aren’t what make you extraordinary.
If you’re anything like me, somewhere along the way—or maybe for the entire time you’re in ministry—you’re going to feel the pull to build your identity around the things you’re good at. You’ll be tempted to think the goal is to be the most impressive, dynamic, creative, bold, insightful, or unusually effective youth leader out there. And often in ministry, we hide that temptation beneath spiritual words.
But don’t let your spiritual gifts become your identity. Steward your gifts well because your identity is in Christ.
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
People looked at Peter and John and saw boldness, courage, and something extraordinary within them. There wasn’t anything noteworthy about them. They were ordinary and uneducated. But what stood out to people was how Peter and John had been with Jesus. That shone through the ordinary, and the people noticed.
That’s the win we want to achieve.
Make them want to be close to Jesus.
There may be students in your ministry or leaders on your team who look at you and think: Wow, I hope I can be like that leader one day. That’s not automatically a bad thing. But the better win is that people would walk away saying: I want to be as close to Jesus as my youth leader.
That’s what we want our students to notice.
So yes, be faithful. Grow in your gifts. Work hard and steward what God has given you.
But never forget that the most powerful thing about your ministry won’t be your talent; it’ll be your nearness to Christ. Because what makes a person truly extraordinary is not that they’re wildly gifted. It’s that they’ve been with Jesus.
