Elevate

I pretty much can’t count the times I’ve had to ask myself, “What am I supposed to be doing to help the students I serve grow closer to God?” Like really, what am I supposed to do. I know that I’m supposed to help students in their spiritual journeys, but what does that look like and how do I put practical steps in front of me to achieve that goal?

My guess is that if you have any investment in the youth in your life, you want to help to. I’m going to be doing posts each week for the next couple months trying to give us all some practical steps for helping students in their spiritual journeys. I’m going to be using Mark Yaconelli’s book Contemplative Youth Ministry to do so. I’ve read like 80% of it so far, and now I’m at the part that it narrows down and defines our roles in helping youth in their spiritual journeys.

Yaconelli says there are three ways we can keep our students moving in the right spiritual direction. The first is noticing. Noticing is “helping youth become aware of their relationship with God.”

That means that my first task, my first priority when trying to help a student find their way to God, is to simply helps students become aware of their personal experience with God. It’s helping them to open their eyes to the God moments that are happening to them every single day. God really is all around me every day and I rarely take the time God deserves to recognize Him as the God of my life. I suck immeasurably at that. I feel like my first step in helping studetns notice God in their lives is for me to find a way to notice God more in my life.

Yaconelli goes on to say “our role is to help youth recognize the ways in which Jesus is already near, already seeking trust and friendship.”

It’s so easy for me to look at a teenager and NOT see any trace of God in their life. What I feel I normally see falls more into the categories of ADHD, attention-driven, and hopelessly irresponsible, God love ‘em. I don’t take the time to see God in their faces. I don’t take time to see God in their actions, therefore I miss ways that I can notice God already in their lives. I miss how cool and special the really are. I don’t see them as God sees them–full of potential and ready for forming.

If my primary job is to help them notice God, then I have to be willing to notice the true them first. If I can’t see them for who they are, God’s children, then I won’t be able to see God’s work currently in them. I will only be frustrated that they aren’t developing at the rate which I desire.

My goal this weekend is to notice a student, to see the real them. Before I can point them in the right direction, and before I can help them notice God in their life, I have to notice what God’s doing in their life. My goal is to understand a student well enough and pay close enough attention to what they are saying and what they are feeling that I can maybe discern what God is wanting for them in their life.

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