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Team,
You may have noticed that there’s really no formal summer calendar (outside of the Denver trip and senior/college aged boundary waters trip). That’s mostly intentional. Two week long trips involve a lot of planning and require a lot of time from us who lead. Also, (here’s a personal confession because I’ve not always recognized this) our students lives are over programmed, over planned, and BUSY. I’d love for this summer to be a chance to not simply add activities for them to sign up for, spend money on, and commit time to. So are we going to sit and do nothing all summer? Not at all. Yes the summer is relaxed, especially for you who commit so faithfully by volunteering your time on a weekly basis. So take extra time to relax, be the best parent, sibling, friend, child of God you can. But the summer offers so much potential for us to engage our students in different ways.
[begin parenthetical ramble]
Here’s one thing that I’ve taken from the Willow Creek conference I attended a couple weeks ago—and I’m excited to begin sharing some of the wisdom and inspiration gained with you. One amazing thing about God is that he pursues us, and relentlessly at that. I should know because this is so utterly and completely true in my own life. Our ministry to students should model God’s pursuit (desire, longing!) of them. For us (and I’m still wrapping my brain around this) I think this means that we should spend our God given energy and passion on meeting them where they’re at. And, as we’ve noticed, sometimes “where they’re at” is not AT youth group. We’re all a member of God’s family whether we show up or not…and I think we need to think in those terms when it comes to our student ministry. (If you feel I’m being critical, I am. But only in so far as I’m speaking as much or more to myself as I am to you). All this to say, let’s find ways together that engage our students, even if (or perhaps especially if) they’re butts are not in the bean bags on a weekly basis.
[end parenthetical ramble]
So where, was I?…right, the summer. The summer is a great chance to practice meeting kids on their turf because we’re not meeting formally on a weekly basis. Practically I mean things like showing up at their games or events, playing disc golf (or the related game called: “search for my lost disc golf disc in the woods near the fairway”) with them, taking them to Dairy Queen or a Twins game, shopping with them (that’d be a fun one!), playing video games with them, calling them, texting them, writing them notes—real ones; the kind you get in the mail, facebooking them…etc. I’d love this to be a ‘Summer of Small Moments” with our kids.
It gets messy because we immediately want to figure out how to do this efficiently and effectively. (Isn’t that what it means to program?). I’d love your feedback, ideas, suggestions on how we do this well. That is very needed. But it’s likely going to feel rather unorganized, right? I guess that’s what I see, though, when I read the gospels. Jesus’ ministry wasn’t highly organized and planned out. He saw a crowd and he taught them. He came upon a blind man and he healed him. It seems the only thing he really planned on in advance was taking quiet time. I like that!
Let’s commit to pursuing our students this summer together.
