Slowing Summer Down & Speeding Up What Matters

Photo: Ron Doke, Creative Commons, cc license

Photo: Dennis Larsen, Creative Commons, cc license

Throaty Bryan Adams'-style singing drifts over from the church nearby. Flashy classic, sport, and muscle cars line up in rows, hoods propped open, motors gleaming at an annual summer car show. Live music streams past the aroma of grilled hot dogs, steaming metal in the sun, and aerosol spray cans.

"Soo, I sorta did my hair," my nineteen year old son texts me in droll nonchalance. I grin and ask for photos, already picturing red, green and blue dye on a temporary spiked hairdo from last year's car show.

My husband straps on sandals and holds the door open for our six year old. The door blows shut behind them as they walk to church too.

I'm grabbing my green water bottle and jumping into time with you, friends. The counter behind me is lined with half-done dishes, crimson watermelon slices in a bag, and last night's coffee press.

Can you smell the campfire? Wood smoke still emanates from my skin, hair, and clothing. Pony tails hang down my shoulders to rest on my chest, and can you feel it here with me? This slipping away of summer?

Thirty of us teens and adults piled up bikes in a friend's driveway and dropped sleeping bags in the yard for yesterday's Bike and Camp youth event. Bike riding, backyard volleyball, and cooking over a fire brings people together. Tin foil-wrapped packets of potatoes, carrots, and onions smoldered beside ground hamburger, and night fell before we pulled out the marshmallows and chocolate.

"Lord, give me a great love for these teens and for these people in my life," I asked him at one point, slipping quiet under a variegated green maple.

He does, and we all show love in different ways. Whether extrovert or introvert, no matter our personality styles, we slide into familiar ways of relating to the people around us. Some friends love the people around them by scraping eggs on a heavy skillet over smoking fires. Others shake dice in a cup game for hours, bluffing with a smirk; or start up dozens of conversations.

On top of blue trampolines while bouncing and ducking, or on wooden picnic benches beside the blueberry crumble bars, these one on one times with others are what God uses most often to grow deeper love within me for people. I love those chances to see into people's eyes, to hear their stories, and to get beyond the noise and busyness into greater depth.

Sunshine filters through fern-like branches outside now, and my husband and youngest son have returned. Noise commences. Highway hums whine into the distance, dissipating quickly, and a cardinal trills nearby.

Summer slips by, and our moments with the people in our lives flit by too. Grab today with me?

"Six Breakfasts"

 She met me in the church parking lot, long auburn hair pulled into a side -do.

"Beka! What fun to see you!" I hugged her tightly, delighted by the surprise of seeing her there. 

"Sam invited me, saying you might need help this summer," she twisted her nose ring, grinning. "I'm not sure yet if I can, but..." she trailed off, and I jumped in.

"We'd love to have you work with the teens with us this summer, but no pressure either."

We walked through two glass doors and into the cool interior. Teens gathered at the entrance, sprawled out across a carpeted bench and the floor, talking in knots. Guitar sounds, vocals, and drums came from upstairs as other teens prepared for worship. In the large dining room, teens joked and hung out, waiting for youth group to start.

"Want to scoop ice cream with me?" I asked Beka.

In between sticky servings of cookies and cream, chocolate fudge, and green mint ice cream, we greeted incoming students, motioned towards the spoons, and poured root beer around swirling vanilla mounds. Between conversations with teens and handing out styrofoam bowls of ice cream, I slid questions over to Beka, catching up on her last year of life.

"How long has it been since you graduated?" I asked, trying to get a picture of which students she might recognize from her own youth group days. "Samantha does choir at Centennial," I offered, as blonde Samantha came by. The girls chatted about a familiar choir teacher's fourth pregnancy.

"Almost four years," Beka replied a second later, as the line moved again.

"Four years?! Really?" My eyes were wide as I dished up drippy melting cookies and cream. "As our seventeen years here merge in our minds, I find myself thinking that all my teens know each other." 

"Is this normal chocolate?" a teen in short black hair asked. I agreed, yet pointed him to the chunkier chocolate option too. 

Spread out across the large room students clustered. Rising taller than the rest were five or six older broad-shouldered, college-grads and twenty-something youth leader volunteers too. Beka was the newest one considering joining-- some had already been helping for the last year or two. Mentoring younger students in worship-leading, in soundboard-operating, or by regular attendance and participation, these former students work alongside our long-term adult leaders to serve current students.

Glancing across the dining hall, my heart was happy. Youth ministry is the privilege that never ends. Round-cheeked 6th graders grow into lanky high schoolers, who soon sport woodsmen beards and pay college tuition. Weddings, babies, and school-age children swell the families of former students of ours throughout the years, and their jobs change and grow. We see the impact these former students are having on their worlds now, and it thrills us. 

"Six breakfasts" is what Youth Specialties speaker Tiger McLuen once told a roomful of youth workers. He went on to describe how an adult reached out to him during a spiritually-hard time after his first year of college. For six weeks, they met to talk over breakfast. "Those six breakfasts changed me," he told the somber room of youth pastors and volunteers last spring.

Youth ministry is a privilege that doesn't end. My husband and I are honored to get to know teens of all ages, and for opportunities to connect with them after their youth group years. Tonight, several former students will pull up into our driveway, and sprawl across our sagging couch to learn how to do youth ministries to the new generation of teens, and I will be smiling happy, I know. Older ones mentoring younger ones mentoring younger ones.

We are thankful for chances to offer hope and advice into any of our teens' lives, and we humbly recognize how much we learn and are encouraged by them too.

What about you? Whatever your vocation or volunteer options, who can you invite out for breakfast or coffee? It will be a privilege and joy for you too, my friend.

The Secret Lives of Teens

They scare me sometimes, I confess. Or they have in the past.

The tough-looking ones who are angry and sad at the world, bristling for a fight. Bored teens milling at store entrances, or jostling each other on the side of the road.Or the teen girls on the cutting edge of fashion, as I am suddenly aware of my thrift store bargains.

My mom is a petite woman with dark swirled hair and blue eyes in a lovely Irish combo. Walking out of her yard to a commotion recently, she saw several inner city teens look up guiltily from where they had been throwing rocks and kicking over garbage cans in the alley. Stepping near, she chose a disarming gentleness, pausing to greet them, look them deep in the eyes, and asking how they were doing. They stopped, flustered.

"I wanted to diffuse the situation, and let them know someone cared," she told me later.

She knows a secret. Because the truth is: everyone is a bit terrified. Not of teens (well, maybe that too some days) but of what they see in themselves, and the questions about whether they are loved and loveable, or beautiful, or man enough, or valuable.

When we stop and get that answered for ourselves about who we are -- who Jesus says we are, and who he says He is-- then we can inhale strength, and turn to answer that question in another's eyes.

Because they are all asking it. The teens in front of the grocery store and on the city bus, and the ones who live next door to you. That sullen macho mask? It just hides the questions they are all asking. The questions we are familiar with too.

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend three days with 65 teens and adults in a camp setting. I saw them interacting in ways that delighted and amazed me. They tied on red and black aprons and ran tray-loads of dirty dishes through industrial-sized dishwashers. I saw them tie on orange-striped aprons and sweep floors, wash down tables, help prepare meals, and scrub pasta-encrusted pots. In between gagaball games and polar bear plunges, I watched teens reach out to special needs children and shyer new people on the fringe and pull them in to join the groups of happy conversations. I heard teens cry as they broke down and shared stories of God talking to them through Bible verses and worship songs, and I observed nearby friends lean in for comforting hugs.

The teens around you? They can change the world. They just need to know who they are. Only Jesus can completely answer their questions, but we get to gently disarm the teens and adults we encounter with our words, lives, and humble care.

And watch them transform this world then!

Six Essentials of a Great Youth Program

Summer heat pours through a September window, and my student bends head over her math notebook. Legos tinkle in the distance as preschooler relishes rest time. 

Our youth group switches back to school hours tonight, so sixth graders through eighth graders will separate from the ninth through twelfth graders. Youth pastor husband and I love our youth group teens, and savor having our own kids in the program too. After more than eighteen years of youth ministry, we have settled on several vital components for a great youth program. Through conversations with friends or family over the years too who were pleased with something they saw, or who were dissatisfied with features they desired in a youth program, we have noticed common factors.

Looking for a great youth ministry program for your kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews? Or are you in youth ministry and striving to make it phenomenal? 

Here are six essentials of a great youth program: 

1. Jesus and the Bible are seen as the source of truth, joy and purpose in life. Lessons are derived from there, and clear salvation messages are taught regularly. 
2. There is a clear vision and philosophy of youth ministry that reaches out to and teaches both those who are curious about who Jesus is, as well as to those who have chosen to follow and serve him, taking them further in their life-changing walks with him.
3. Youth leaders recognize that their job is to love, connect with, model Jesus to, and mentor the teens, and don’t fall into being peers. Authority and approachability are paired carefully, humbly, and lovingly. (It’s a hard line, needing God’s help and input from other leaders.)
4. Missions trips and service projects are interspersed with fun social connecting times, and rich learning times in God’s word, all seen as an extension of loving God, worshiping him, joyfully being his hands and feet, and with a humble desire for others to meet Jesus,  our source of rescue too. 
5. Events are never seen as required or babysitting; always a privilege to be there. This frees up both the teens and the leaders to jump in, connect, and participate in; lovingly responding with correction when needed. 
6. Youth leaders tap into God's agape love for their teens and the ministry, knowing they can't do it on their own.

As a youth pastor’s wife, and a mom of two teens, these are pivotal foundations for us, on both sides of the youth ministry coin. We haven’t perfected these either, but they are what we strive for as youth leaders, and what we look for in youth ministry as parents.

What about you? What stood out to you in youth ministry when you were a teen? What do you look for now in a youth program for your kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews?

 In ministry? What is the hardest aspect for you? Or what is your list of non-negotiables? 

I appreciate these conversations with you. Thanks. To comment from email, click here.

Photo credit: Microsoft clip art