Youth ministry and sleep

A few weeks ago, someone posted a question to the UUA youth advisor email list. I’ve forgotten who posted this question, I’ve long since deleted the original email message, but the question sticks with me: What do you do to recover after you’ve been a youth advisor at a district youth conference (or youth retreat, or local church overnight)?

For those of you who haven’t done youth ministry, a weekend-long district youth conference can last 40 hours. You might have to drive several hours to get to the conference, and several hours to get home. If the conference is not well organized, adult advisors might not get more than a few hours of sleep for two nights in a row.

You’ll likely get more sleep if you’re an advisor at an overnight for a local congregation. I’ll be one of the adults at an overnight planning retreat for our church’s upcoming New Orleans service trip. The overnight will last just 13 hours, and while I won’t get eight hours of sleep, I’ll be fine. Plus I’ll have time to recover afterwards.

After 15 years of doing youth ministry, I’ve decided I’m no longer willing to be an advisor at district youth conferences unless the organizers arrange for me to get eight hours of sleep two nights in a row. I was at a youth conference in a midwestern district, and they arranged for local adults to come in and take shifts through the night so that the adult advisors who had come from far away could get plenty of sleep. Not only are midwesterners generally better organized than people on the coasts, but midwesterners also recognize that they don’t want adult advisors driving home for long distances unless they’ve had adequate sleep. I loved that midwestern youth conference. I got enough sleep, I’m sure I was more present for the youth, I had a great time, and when I went to work on Monday I wasn’t totally exhausted.

If any of you are youth advisors, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you do to recover after you’ve been a youth advisor at a district youth conference (or youth retreat, or local church overnight)?

3 thoughts on “Youth ministry and sleep”

  1. Kinsi

    We just had a SDC here in the Mid South District at UUCA – I helped organize the logistics side as the host congregation and also was an advisor for 5 of my youth. We organized to have over nighters (we had two shifts) so the advisors could get some sleep. Now, *I* didn’t get much because in addition to advising I had to make sure, well, the over nighters showed up, but the other advisors did, in large part to make sure drives home would be ok.

    So it’s not just the midwest that looks after the advisors :D

    As for recop time, well, I slept most of Sunday, and it took me a couple of nights for me to get back in the swing of things, but I am now.

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