I've just been reading an interesting article about things youth ministers need to say 'no' to, and naturally it got me thinking.

I've got to be honest and say that I've always found it hard to say no, and it's only in the last few years that I've really had the confidence to act on those times when I really know that I should answer something in the negative.

Generally, I've always found it hard to say 'no' to more work when I knew I was already overloaded; I've found it hard to say 'no' to the young person on a residential who wants to stay up a little longer than they should; I've found it hard to say 'no' to the volunteer who wants to do something that he's not really ready for yet.

For me though, the most damaging times when I've failed to say 'no' has been in selecting which work I should be doing.

During one particular summer, my day job gave me a rather generous six week holiday. If you work in a school in the UK, then that's pretty standard. People in other professions love to mock people who work in schools for the length of their holidays, but the reality is that you need the holidays to get you through. The demands are so high that you need those six weeks. 

And that... is why I was rather stupid to say yes to not one, but two large projects that summer.

One of the projects had some pretty large leadership problems which meant that most of us came back feeling pretty low. More than that though, after working two very intense projects, I came back feeling very tired and run down. I suffered from exhaustion over the next weeks, and it took me until well into the autumn (over a month) to properly and completely recover my energy levels. I went back to school to see a multitude of refreshed and relaxed colleagues, many of whom commented on how rough I looked!

I had said yes to two projects because I really wanted to work them, but I hadn't considered the fact that I needed to rest. I had forgotten that I couldn't be at my best constantly going from one thing to the next.

Youth ministers, generally, are nice people. We want to please. In short, we want to minister. But we need to consider the bigger picture.

Saying 'no' matters in many other areas too though. We need to know when to say 'no' to young people. We need to know when to say 'no' in a charitable way, when necessary, to the question 'Was that okay?'

Sometimes the easy thing isn't the best!