Jon Enter

No Such Thing as a Cookie-Cutter Pastor

Jon Enter learned long ago that there are a thousand different ways to be a pastor.

He encourages you to get beyond your own cookie-cutter view: “Don’t look only at the small cross-section of pastors and teachers you know and think you have to be like them,” he says.

“Whatever your drive, your passion, that will be the focus of your classroom or your church. So if you’ve got a deep love for helping the homeless, or for working with the elderly, or for music, or whatever—we need you. We need all different kinds of preachers and teachers, so that the body of believers is stronger.”

Jon’s own passion is working with youth. He had a flourishing youth ministry as a parish pastor at Divine Savior in West Palm Beach, Florida, and served as district youth coordinator. This year he’s at St. Croix Lutheran Academy (pictured), working with teens throughout the day. “I now have a church of 101 seniors in religion class. And since the underclassmen are basically prospects, I figure I’ll have a 100% conversion rate. Of course, come graduation, I’ll also have 100% backdoor losses. But that’s okay.”

Pastor Enter knows the importance of this ministry. “Youth aren’t the future of the church. They’re the church now. We need to get them active now, or—statistically and sadly—we’ll lose them.” One way he strives to do this is by creating a safe space for teens. “Teens don’t care how you look or how cool you are,” he says. “They can smell bogus a mile away. But if you genuinely care about them, they begin to trust you. They share their fears and insecurities. They talk about their struggles in the faith. And we all can be honest about the complexities of life. God’s Word is black and white, but living in God’s Word is messy.”

Teaching high school is a big change for Pastor Enter, but it’s not the only surprising part of his ministry. He never would have imagined he’d flip on the TV and see himself guest-preaching on Time of Grace, a national worship program . . . or that he’d preach to 2,000 teenagers at youth rallies . . . or that he’d fly around the country, encouraging and leading and sharing Jesus.

So he encourages you to jump into this ministry adventure, where there are no cookie-cutter patterns, where you don’t know what surprises God has in store—maybe a TV ministry, or a Minnesota high school, or a church near the beach in Florida. After all, he says, “Someone’s gotta preach to the tan people.”