Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a recurring post that examines personal and pastoral events of Sunday. 

 Today’s topic: Veggie Tales.

My church has never had a dedicated high school gathering on Sunday morning before worship. What it does have is a dynamic married couple who, for close to 40 years, have taught a combined junior high and high school class in the hour before worship. It’s honestly one of the best things about my church.

Last year we decided to fully include new 6th graders into all of our youth activities, rather than make them wait until the 7th grade, which is when middle school starts in the public schools. As a result, a small contingent of the high school students in that Sunday morning class began showing signs of frustration with the, shall we say, less advanced maturity of their younger peers. I reached out to these students and asked if they would like to have their own gathering on Sunday morning–high schoolers only. They said yes they would, so I recruited a few teachers and sent them off.

This morning I think that send off officially sank. After a promising start last fall, it struggled in the winter and spring with too little support for the teachers. By the time we regrouped for the current school year, many students didn’t come back, and most of the new high schoolers didn’t want to leave the junior high class with the married couple. The teachers I’d recruited were frustrated, and with good reason.

I tried one last thing: a high school Bible study in my office with the three or four high schoolers who were interested. Today was week three of that. Week one had two students, week two only one, and today, well, none.

Several high school students actually showed up for Sunday school. And when I saw them I simply told them where I would be at the start of the hour, and that they were welcome to come join me but that I wouldn’t coerce them. Well, to a person they chose to join the junior high class. I found out later why: Veggie Tales.

Initially I’m miffed about this. That my high school students can’t resist the allure of animated Bible stories meant for young children makes me think I’ve failed in some bigger way. Either the Bible study I’m proposing is hopelessly boring, or the work I’ve done with these students since they were sixth graders has not increased their Biblical literacy or spiritual maturity one bit.

But I suspect there’s something else going on here, something I don’t want to fight, and so I’m gladly conceding defeat. The married couple are amazing, amazing people, and that any of our students of any age get to sit at their feet is a gift I’ll not block. Further, they like having high schoolers and junior high schoolers together, even when that involves a six year stretch of grade levels. They’re the experts, and I should get out of the way.

I’m adding this whole episode to my career’s growing chronicle of things that were working just fine and had worked fine for years before I arrived but that I somehow thought I could improve and so inserted myself only to threaten or wreck a good thing.

I’m also adding it to the long list of reasons I believe Veggie Tales are from the devil.