Youth pastors approaching 50 often run right into a brick wall. The really tragic thing is when a guy like Mike pours himself into his youth ministry for years and years and then is rewarded with a pink slip.

Mike is one of the best youth pastors I know. He has given the best years of his life to his church. If ever there was a guy who deserved to be celebrated for his long-term commitment to a relatively thankless job, it was Mike.

When I saw what happened to Mike, I figured it was just bad luck. But then I saw this same ugly phenomenon happening in the last few months to three other guys. All of them had committed their lives to discipling young people. They were succeeding in the one criteria of success that means anything: Young people graduated to adulthood making Jesus lord of their lives.

The common denominator for these four guys is that at the end of the day, no matter how they poured their lives out for their ministry, they were still treated as hired guns by their boss, the senior pastor.

Senior pastors will usually leave well enough alone. But let some student complain to his father, who happens to be an elder in the church, and the senior pastor has to do something.

If the complaints against the youth pastor continue or are joined by the complaints of others, then that youth pastor has a real problem. The nature of his hired gun status is exposed. If the senior pastor is relatively spineless and the elder board relatively clueless, then this youth pastor nightmare can become a reality.

What's broken here? Is it just the system? Steve is one of these youth pastors who, at the peak of their careers, had a political train wreck and was asked to leave his church. I don't know a more gracious guy than Steve, but he had to restrain himself from telling the whole lot of them to take a flying leap.

You hate to leave a place with sheep bites on your rear.*

*Maybe that's what Jesus was talking about when he said "turn the other cheek."