Finished Contemplative Youth Ministry
April 11, 2009
I just finished Mark Yaconelli‘s book Contemplative Youth Ministy yesterday, and the overall theme or feeling it left me with was letting God’s Spirit be my true guide in this youth ministry thing.
I think it has shown me how I definitely did NOT make that my first step when I started volunteering with middle schoolers 4 years ago. When I started volunteering, I just hit the ground running. I showed up on Sunday mornings and I followed the lead of my leaders, I made my interactions with youth all about keeping them entertained and tried so hard to make them like me. I eventually ended up becoming the point leader for the middle schoolers, and my mentality never changed. I just felt more pressure to keep students showing up every Sunday or to a monthly event. I felt like I had to be everyone’s friend. I had no idea what it meant to actually try to “go deep” in a relationship with a student, no idea what spiritual formation looked like for a 7th grade boy. I thought that activity would make up for lack of experience.
By the time I moved into the position I am in now as the 6th-12th grade director, I felt tired and rundown from doing the same thing, the same routine, Sunday after Sunday, and not feeling like real growth towards Jesus was happening. I feel like I should’ve read this book within the first month of volunteering so that I could set my mind right on seeking God’s guidance. I was guiding myself through youth ministry, instead of letting God’s Spirit show me the way.
I didn’t take regular time to pray for God’s guidance. I didn’t take time to pray individually for the growth of students. I didn’t take time to pray about who God wanted me to build a friendship with. I was all about “showing up, taking care of business, and hoping that somewhere in that mix, the students would end up liking God.”
This book has made me wish that I would have prayed more for…well…everything. It makes me wish that I was less concerned about the quantity of relationships I was building and more about the quality of relationships I was building. I tried to be friends with every student, and in the end, was not a true friend to any of them. There are ZERO of the middle school students that are still around in the high school ministry that I had in the first two years that I volunteered. I think that’s because I cared more about “getting things right” vs. caring deeply about students and allowing myself to emotionally connect and attach to them.
I’m very glad and very thankful that God has shown me a deeper, more meaningful way of doing things. I don’t know or hang out with every student that walks into Shoal Creek, but I have my guys. My four or five middle school students, and my four or five high school students that I’m close to. They’re the ones that I pray with and talk with and confess together with. They are the ones that I feel God wants me to spiritually adopt. When I’m with them, I forget about what else is happening in the ministry at that moment. I forget that we have too few leaders, I forget that I have an event that needs to be planned later that night. I forget everything except for the privelage I am receiving, which is access to see inside of my guys’ world.
“People, not programs.” I think I just read that again on Walt Mueller’s blog, but I’ve heard it elsewhere. I think that’s the movement happening inside of me right now with the youth at Shoal Creek. I think that’s what I’ll be bleeding more than anything else in this next ministry cycle at Shoal Creek. We’ve got the programs, now we need the beating and bleeding hearts of PEOPLE–caring, loving and investing people–to take it to the next level.
That’s the feeling that Mark Yaconelli left me with when I put down his book. Spirit-led People.