{"id":3532,"date":"2023-03-19T02:52:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3532"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:11","slug":"the-bottom-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3532","title":{"rendered":"THE BOTTOM LINE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a bad take on the importance of youth ministry within the church.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I once worked as a youth pastor under a senior minister who told me &#8211; to my face and on more than one occasion:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t even know why we employ a youth pastor. After all, you work with &#8230; what? Ten or maybe twenty percent of the congregation? And they are ten percent who DON&#8217;T PAY TITHES.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At least I knew exactly where I and the teens of the church stood with him!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This man had no filter on his mouth, obviously.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I can&#8217;t imagine another pastor on the planet saying what he said, but how many pastors\u00a0<i><b>think <\/b><\/i>it?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, more generally, how often do we make ministry decisions based on the bottom line?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a bad take on the importance of youth ministry within the church. I once worked as a youth pastor under a senior minister who told me &#8211; to my face and on more than one occasion: &#8220;I don&#8217;t even know why we employ a youth pastor. After all, you work with &#8230; what? Ten [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3533,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}