Category: Youth Ministry

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The Long and Winding Break: Time for a Sabbatical!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Twenty-one years ago, I returned to Lawrence County after being away at college, unsure of what was next. I found myself in youth ministry, something I never expected to be doing. Ten years ago I founded Between the Crowd, a new ministry for the adolescents of my home county.

Through the years, thousands of students have passed through our programs. Some students are still struggling in life. Some are knocking it out of the park, and several are actually leading ministries of their own now.

Suicides were prevented… Addictions were challenged… New life was offered… A lot of students said yes to Jesus and some are still searching.

In the past twenty-one years, I have done my best to build a brighter tomorrow. I have spent myself to borrow from Sir Winston Churchill, in blood, toil, tears, and sweat. I have broken bones. I have had sleepless nights. I have sat in restaurants into the early hours listening to teenagers weep, and answered my phone in the middle of the night. On more than one occasion, I stood at the edge of burnout. In all this, Jesus has held me up and helped me focus on the task at hand, reaching young people with the gospel of Jesus.

To be honest, amid success, I have had my moments of failure. Students have needed me to show up, and I didn’t. Some needed a listening ear, and I talked over them. Others needed sympathy, and I offered judgement. In all cases, I hope people can see Jesus despite me. I am a flawed, growing human being who is trying to be better today than I was yesterday. It requires a lot of grace from Jesus and patience with myself and from the surrounding humanity.

All that said… It is time for a break, a long break! This summer, 2023, I am taking a sabbatical. There is Biblical precedent for this journey. Every seven years, the people of Israel were to rest and let the land rest. I’m going to take a rest and do some things that fill my soul and go on a couple of spiritual pilgrimages. That means I am trekking all over Europe. I want to visit the places C. S. Lewis taught, wrote, and sat. I want to walk where John Wesley walked. I want to kneel and pray where the Moravians launched a 100 year prayer meeting; then cry in the places where St. Francis of Assisi wept. I want to walk for days to let it all settle in my heart and mind. There is a lot of fun spread out in there as well. My aim is to give myself space to rest and recover from twenty-one years of an amazing rollercoaster—ministry.

I want to invite you into this process. Between the Crowd gives me a stipend and I will put my money into the adventure. I want to invite you to join me in making this adventure happen. I have set a goal for $5,000 raised. I consider anything above that goal a donation to Between the Crowd. If you can’t give, please take a minute and pray for me as I refresh and pray for Between the Crowd as we prepare for the next ten years.

Thank you in advance for whatever you choose to do! I am grateful for every student, parent, and volunteer that has crossed my path in the last twenty-one years.

This is the link to my Go Fund Me account: 

https://www.gofundme.com/f/its-time-for-a-sabbatical?qid=9c9124c15d07af0dafedc1e801ad4ad8

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Freedom From Their Emotional Baggage!

How do you let go when someone has dumped their emotional mess in your lap?

I’m not convinced I am better at disconnecting than anyone else, but if someone

Photo by Erwan Hesry

else has noticed, maybe I am better than average. In 20 years of ministry, I haven’t always been good at it. I have struggled with sleep and lost my appetite because I was wrestling with someone else’s problem.

I’m not sure that grappling with someone else’s struggle is the problem—after all, prayer is interceding for another person. The problem arises when we internalize another’s brokenness, and then it becomes our own.

The great predicament with internalizing another’s hurt is our incomplete perspective. We see a snippet of the burden of their life. We fill in the gaps for our friend based on the five minute or five hours they gave us in conversation. Minutes or hours is nothing compared to living with an affliction all day every day—so we decide what they must think or feel. We are not privileged to decide what other people think.

When you onboard someone else’s baggage, here are some things that are worth recognizing and practicing.

1. Admit, “I am not God nor should I try pretending to be.”

This seems obvious, yet it is the struggle of humanity since the beginning of time. If we aren’t trying to shape God in our own image, we are attempting just to be him. Years ago, I had to realize that I couldn’t fix people. I could hear them out. I could be present in a particular moment. Sometimes I could even offer some advice, but I could never fix the brokenness. A wounded heart is beyond our ability to heal, the best we can do is point to a loving God and allow Him to do a wonderful work in the lives of our loved ones.  

2. Journal

We all started this practice in elementary school. In January of my fourth-grade year, I wrote about Desert Storm. It allowed me a space to process my emotional state without internalizing the angst or stress I felt as a little kid hearing about war and not understanding what it meant. It’s a discipline I have continued, in fits and starts, over the years. My journal is now more a place I go to pray or clear out the mental cobwebs so to think more clearly, and it provides space to get unhealthy thoughts out before they become lodged in my psyche.

3. Realize some don’t want to be fixed they want to be heard.

Sometimes in life when I was struggling, I just wanted to speak the issue out loud. I struggled to find a space where I thought I could, because everyone I knew wanted to fix things. There are times people want to be heard—not fixed. All you can do is ask. If they simply want to be heard, honor the desire, listen and move on. If you genuinely listen in those circumstances, you have done your part and you can sleep that night.

4. Recognize, “I can’t carry a burden that isn’t my own.” 

As I said above, I can’t understand every facet of another person’s affliction, and so I can’t allow it to become mine. When we do onboard baggage, we marry it to our own thoughts and perspectives, creating an entirely new dilemma that exists nowhere but in our minds. That isn’t helpful to the other person or yourself. Seneca once said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

5. Pain and difficulty are not always bad things, it is good to struggle. 

In our culture, we have become convinced that pain is an evil. It is not. Look at nature, she tells us that pain isn’t an evil but is, sometimes, a great good. If I want to become stronger than I must endure the pain of sore muscles. A person suffering from leprosy will tell you, “they wish they felt pain.” Study and learning fatigue our minds, and in that mental exhaustion we form new synapses. During childhood I was all over the place emotionally, as most of us are. From the struggle with emotions, I learned how to sort through feelings and understand what a healthy response is. In our striving we don’t need people to take on our problem, we need cheerleaders that have walked their own road of pain and know we can survive. I don’t need them to take the pain from me I need friends to remind me I can make it.

6. I train people not to lean only on me from the beginning. 

Many will think this cold, but it’s the job of any adult in a young person’s life. I tell students from day one, “there will come a time you will forget me.” If I have played my role well, I have taught young people how to think, how to make decisions, and how to better the world through love and service. Occasionally over 20 year’s students come back around and we become close friends, but that’s not the point or the object. 2,000+ students passed through programs I led, there are a couple of dozen I still talk to regularly, I have no sense of failure. I did something right because they were all seeking advice as teenagers. When they come back around as an adult it’s because they want me to share in a significant celebration (marriage, birth of a child) or their life has gone off the rails and they need help to find the reset button.

7. Make the decision that their problems can’t become yours. 

This feels simplistic and on the verge of insulting, but it’s a basic truth. You decide you will not allow someone else’s problem to become yours. It is a loving action. If I allow others’ problems to become mine, then I become burned out and tired and become unhelpful to anybody.

The greatest gift we can offer someone that’s dragging too much baggage around is to love them where they are, pray for them, and point them to Jesus who can help unload their burdens.

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The Questions You Asked Series… Q4/5

This question is part of a series, The Questions You Ask. I mean the responses to be short. If there is something you would like me to go more in depth on, please let me know. 

Today I am taking on two questions because they fit together too well to separate. That means the word count is a little higher but still meets the goal because I am under 500 words. 

Why do you think you are helping the community?

My gut response when I read this question was, “We don’t.” I was in a moment of frustration and mad at a couple of people I work with, and that blocked my ability to think clearly. That’s why I waited to respond to this question. 

I think we make a difference. It’s hard, though, to quantify the work that we do. William Bruce Cameron once said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

I think this is true with any organization that works with people. We can give you numbers of involvement, but that doesn’t equate to difference made, that’s just the people involved. We may not know the impact we have had until way into the future, or maybe not even until the other side of resurrection. 

So the most honest answer is, I think so and I hope so.

Is there any proof that you are helping the community?

As I mentioned above, it’s difficult to quantify the work we do in a meaningful way. Here are some numbers and a couple of pieces of anecdotal evidence… 

During the 2019-2020 school year, we had over different 300 students involved in our weekly programs. Over 150 on a weekly basis. We had 2 dozen active volunteers. We took nearly 200 people on trips from Spring Break to Spring Break. Those are only the numbers we can track. We also substitute teach, coach sports, work with various committees and support and encourage many youth workers. The reach of our work is farther than we really understand. 

Twice in the last 6 years I have met with students that were on the verge of suicide and we were able to assist them in finding the help they needed. One is now a graduate of Purdue and doing incredible work. The other is a member of the US Airforce and serving our country. 

There are many other stories, but I limited my word count. 

To answer both questions succinctly… I hope and believe. Maybe? 

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The Abandoned Generations

“The young have not arrogantly turned their backs on the adult world. Rather, they have been forced by a personal sense of abandonment to band together and create their own world – separate, semisecret, and vastly different from the world around them.”   –Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0

Every day you wake up… You are told that you are weak. You are told you are selfish. You are told that you need to grow up – yet few if any are willing to guide you in the process. There is a point you begin to withdraw and the rift between you and the people speaking to you grows wider. For those in the Millennial and iGen generations this is the sense of abandonment they live in daily. 

Every generation thinks the one that follows their’s is somehow worse. Our great-grandparents said it, our grandparents said, our parents said it, we say it, and the generations after us will say it, “When I was a kid…” Though there are some significant differences between the generations. The Greatest Generation, Boomers, Busters, and Xer’s lived in a smaller more self-contained world than either Millennials or iGen. 

 For Millennials and iGen, 83% will graduate high school (NCEE). After graduation, they can join the military, go to work, go to college (we will not list the options under this heading), take a gap year, or some will even choose to become famous. Then in their romantic life, they have the high school sweetheart (statistically this will not last), a college sweetheart, a co-worker, the church singles ministry, the bar scene, various dating websites, or choosing to live single in small platonic communities. It is a different world that is terrifying and diverse and decision fatigue is real. Because it is overwhelming, those who are older can be intimidated and therefore abandon the perplexing younger generations with phrases like, “Just make a decision…, What’s your problem…, When I was your age I knew exactly what I was going to do.” All well meaning but not helpful.

The two youngest generations have been left to fend for themselves, because they are viewed as, indecisive or “overly emotional.” We want them to grow up, but we don’t offer them any help in moving toward adulthood. In some cases, parents decide to move toward being their teenagers friend, when right now teenagers need their parents to teach them how to be a “grown-up.” Your children learn how to make decisions and participate in the world by watching parents and listening to them. 

As parents step up and move from being friends to being adults in front of their kids, the rest of us need to stop running away from those younger than us. We can learn from them. 

The Apostle Paul wrote to his young mentee Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12 NIV) 

Millennials and iGen, are generations of compassion. They desire to make the world a better place. They will look past differences faster (in general) than many that came before. They have a high desire to serve. Again motivated by their sense of compassion these generations long to help people, but they do not always know how, they need adults who will come along side them and help them find healthy ways to expend this service energy. As teenagers there is a limited sense of inhibition, that gift, will allow young people to tackle projects many of us find too hard, again they need us to step in beside them and offer guidance, but if we will point the vibrance of youth in the right direction they can accomplish incredible feats. 

Adolescent researcher Chap Clark writes of, “five strategies to turn the tide of systemic abandonment,” as parents, youth workers, educators, and community leaders we would do well for, the young current and future generations, to lean into these five ideas…

  • Those who work with youth should be trained in shifting youth culture. 
  • Those who serve adolescents must work together.
  • Those who serve adolescents must understand youth and provide boundaries.
  • Parents need to be equipped and encouraged to parent the changing adolescent.
  • Communities must make sure that each student has a few adult advocates who know and care for them. 

Together we can remember and celebrate the generations that have gone before and hopefully do the same for the newest generations as well. Let us not abandon the young but  be people that help them grow.

(This was first published as an article for the Times Mail.)