(Drew Hill-Alongside pg 16)
Recently I’ve had conversations with different friends about how God is working in the student ministry and just how cool it is to get a front row seat to it all. The above quote is from a book I finished last week that centers on discipleship and parenting teenagers. While I’m not a parent, I am, much to the surprise of some of the students old enough to be most of their parents with the exception of the seniors. I do however spend several hours a week with teenagers- more specifically a group of sophmore boys that have at this point planned my future wedding and greatly enjoy teasing me about girls among other things.
But before I get to those boys and the main point of this blog, let me back up a little way. Alright, a long way, sixteen years to be exact. I started serving in student ministry as soon as I graduated high school. Like C.S. Lewis I was a reluctant convert. When I started helping with students I actually didn’t have any desire to be around the students themselves. I started helping solely because that is where my best friends went after we graduated. I was asked to learn to run sound and took the opportunity to have another couple of hours a week with my best friends. I learned some fun things along the way, but my introduction to student ministry began without a desire to work with the students. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that I didn’t even like the students as a whole, especially not the middle school students that I was helping with. The girls were giggly and loud and the boys were just crazy. These were the same type of students I would skip church to avoid on Wednesday nights when I knew beforehand we would be combined for the night when I was in High School.
I look back now and laugh at the eighteen-year old that would do his best to avoid the students as much as possible and just how little he knew of God and how He worked. I told you I was a reluctant convert. What I didn’t understand yet was that God has a unique way of putting you in places that He wants you, even if you don’t want to be there because He knows where you need to be. It wouldn’t take long before I was standing in front of those same students with a microphone in hand, shaking like a leaf in the wind, teaching. I’ve learned that being uncomfortable is a great way to grow closer to God because I have to rely on Him to do things that I wouldn’t choose to do myself.
I’ve seen a lot of students come through the doors at Bayside. Seeing them drive for the first time never fails to make me feel old, although nothing compares to seeing some of those same students that I started out with in Middle School get married and have kids of their own.
Again, God puts you where you are supposed to be. That has been readily apparent with this group of boys I have now. See, I wasn’t supposed to be with them. I was with an entirely different group and got moved “until we can find someone else” and then I never left. I’ve known a few of them for years before they reached Middle School, and even the few I didn’t I got to know them so it wasn’t like sitting with strangers. But if you know anything about teenagers you can’t expect them to talk to people they don’t know, at least not with any depth. These boys didn’t really have a problem with me but it was because I already knew them so we weren’t starting from scratch. I started being one of their small group leaders when they were in eighth grade. That is important because until I got put with those boys I didn’t plan on leaving Middle School ministry. You know those same boys that drove me nuts at eighteen became some of my favorite people in the world for their wildness and the way they saw the world. In fact, the current group of senior boys was not happy with me when they became freshmen because I didn’t move to High School with them. I would have told you then it was just because I liked the younger age and watching them find themselves without the drama of jobs and driving and girlfriends. It was simpler. It was easier. I just had no idea that my boys would wind up being the catalyst that would see me moving from a fourteen-year long streak of Middle School ministry to High School as they moved up.
Here’s the thing, having the relationships that I had beforehand helped with the transition from one group to another. I started this with the above quote because student ministry as a whole is centered around relationships. If you don’t have relationships you’ve got nothing. The longer I've done this and the more intentional I’ve become with students the better those relationships have become. The result is boys that have no problems sharing things when they happen or teasing me. The reason seeing God move like He has recently is a big deal to me is because it is happening with my boys. One of them got baptized this last Sunday. Another is getting baptized in a few weeks. Those are huge things. But you don’t get those big moments without the relationship.
It is great to get to the mountains with students. But to get to that point you also have to go through the mundane. Not every interaction is going to be a big thing. The vast majority of them are like that, just simple and ordinary daily life things. When they learn you don’t run away because they are talking about how they played in a recent game or over a movie they saw or about a video game, everything changes. The mountains happen because even the small things, as mundane as they are to you, matter.
There is absolutely nothing like discipling students. Watching as they make connections between scripture and their own lives, seeing them take ownership of their faith as they grow up, it really is one of the best things in the world. None of it has gotten old after all these years. Last fall I was talking with a friend of mine while we were on the Fall Retreat he happens be one of the guys that was involved in students when I was a student. And I made the comment that I hope that the way these students see me now gives them a desire to do the same thing after they graduate and come back to student ministry to lead a small group and make disciples because they learn the important of investing in younger guys like he was for me. I wasn’t told at eighteen when I was asked to help in student ministry just how much I would change because of my involvement, or all of the things I would learn while doing it. Now I happily tell people there is nothing like it, but usually I stop there. While it is rewarding, and I wouldn’t want to serve anywhere else some things are best discovered on your own.
So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.- 1 Thessalonians 2:8
The best verse I’ve ever found to describe student ministry. Intentional. Deliberate. Day in and day out, being there.
