CEO to Youth Minister, What Could Go Wrong?

I became a youth minister the same way people end up signing up for a free trial they forget to cancel: a casual suggestion and zero qualifications.

A friend at church said, “You’d be great at it. You should apply.” And I thought, Sure, how hard could it be? Next thing I knew, I was sitting in an interview, armed with CEO credentials but no clue how to corral teenagers without duct tape.

They hired me anyway. Desperation, I’m sure. Or maybe they thought I could fundraise my way out of chaos.

And honestly? I kind of could. We threw candlelit Valentine’s dinners where the youth served in ties and aprons, trying not to spill water down the choir director’s back. We recruited retired teachers to help with math homework, because parents had given up somewhere around algebra. I bribed the local tire shop with free dinner if they taught the teens how to change a flat, and convinced our bankers to explain how a checkbook worked. (The kids’ eyes glazed over halfway through. They were like, “Why not just Venmo Jesus directly?”)

But then I got bold. I wanted them to really understand what hunger and poverty felt like. So, I signed us up for a mission trip to SIFAT, Servants in Faith and Technology.

This was no regular youth group camp. Forget s’mores and trust falls. SIFAT dropped us into simulated third-world villages. The kids hauled water from the river, learned how to filter it with sand and charcoal, and discovered that boiling water wasn’t just something your grandma did for pasta, it actually saved lives.

They cooked over open fires, coughing like chimney sweeps, until they learned about a simple clay stove that reduced smoke inhalation. “So wait… you’re saying this brick oven keeps moms from literally cooking themselves sick?” one girl asked, eyes wide. Yes. Exactly.

The boys learned how to make mud bricks by hand. The girls learned the art of keeping a fire alive all day (and how exhausting it is). Together they saw technologies like solar water purifiers, hand-powered washing machines, and water pumps that didn’t require hauling buckets for miles.

And then came the grand finale: the slum experience. They had to build huts out of scrap, barter for food, and work fake jobs to survive. Slumlords showed up in the night, banging on huts, demanding things. It was terrifying, chaotic… and, in its way, unforgettable.

By the second day, teenagers who normally couldn’t survive a missed Taco Bell run were begging me for food and water. “Miss Pam, pleeeease. We’re starving.”

I just smiled sweetly and thought, Welcome to my childhood.

Here’s the thing: the trip wasn’t about turning teenagers into survivalists. It was about showing them that simple technologies, a water filter, a smoke-reducing stove, a hand pump, can literally save lives in places where people live this way every single day.

The kids went home grateful for air-conditioning, microwaves, and clean water. I went home grateful that none of them staged a mutiny when dinner didn’t show up on time.

Let’s just say the next time those kids complained about cafeteria food, all I had to do was raise an eyebrow and whisper, “Remember the slum?”