You don’t know what the story is going to do, which is the great, great value of the story. You don’t know what the protagonist is going to do, or the antagonist. You don’t know what the narrator is going to do. You don’t even know what the reader (you!) is going to do. Even if you’ve read this story before.

You. Don’t. Know.

Those unknows are the lifeblood of narrative, and they are what give stories the power to shape perceptions and character, if we can embrace the not-knowing and the needing-to-find-out as features of a narrative life and not as bugs.

Of course I’m talking about the Bible. Many of us who take the Bible seriously as a moral authority lapse into talk of God’s “plan” revealed in the Bible for salvation. That mode of relating to Scripture takes it out of the realm of story and imagination and places it under a monocle to be deciphered as a blueprint. Or, with more literary distance from the faith of adherents, you can talk about the great “themes” of the Bible–love and justice and mercy. But the Biblical authors weren’t assembling variations on a theme. They were telling inspired stories, the kind that bend and move in unpredictable ways, to the discomfort, yet ultimate benefit, of the people and communities who hear them.

When was the last time the Bible surprised you?

Back in April, several weeks into stay-at-home, I heard someone refer to the constellation of Zoom working, physical distancing, and mask wearing as “the now normal.” They were intentional with the “now”–it’s not necessarily a “new” normal, but the normal for now.

Either the now was too short or the normal was too abnormal for too many, but whatever the reason we haven’t moved since the spring. The now normal is still with us, no longer new, but also not yet normal.

I’ve designed a year of youth ministry activities to be entirely remote. Maybe I won’t need the whole year. Maybe by winter or spring something will break for the better, but I’m not planning for that presumption. I’m planning as if now will be now for the next 9-12 months.

This is no lament. I’ve found it quite energizing to plan for this. Confirmation is getting a reset. Senior High is going to kick around policy issues related to the November elections. We’ve purchased a new dating and relationships curriculum. It’s going to be a good year. Abnormal, in the new normal way, and good.

The things you need to get done every day and the people you share space and responsibility with are bumpers keeping your days from the gutter. When they’re gone, even if only for the weekend, the gutterballs add up.

Nachos for dinner.

Coffee at 9 pm.

YouTube compilations of Wiffle Ball games past midnight.

It adds up to an unsettling awareness that the things keeping me from aimless, despondent, sloth are few.

We’re weeks into a summer youth group series about waiting. We’ve explored Abraham and Sarah, Mary, Noah, Jonah, Ruth and Naomi–and that last pair has grabbed students’ imagination in a way the others haven’t.

How do I know? Every week I begin by asking students to recall the stories we’ve already covered, and they always remember Naomi (nobody ever names Ruth–it’s always Naomi). Sometimes a student recalls Abraham and Sarah, though rarely by name (“that old couple”). Noah gets invoked frequently enough. But no story has achieved the kind of recall as Ruth and Naomi, and we only read the first chapter.

I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m just taking notes.

The Confirmation curriculum I designed two years ago was an eight month unpacking of the Apostle’s Creed. What do we mean when we say “I believe?” What do we mean when we say “Almighty?” What do we mean when we say “Lord?” It was a useful structure that led students through the major questions of Christian faith.

But it left off a couple things, namely a coherent overview of the Biblical narrative and mature exposure to the life of the church beyond Sunday morning worship and Confirmation class. So I’m building a new curriculum.

This one will have three elements: 1) interaction with the core narratives of the Bible, 2) exposure to several of the church’s ministries and their leaders, and 3) a discussion of church membership, what it is and why it matters.

What about the Creed? I plan to pair the Biblical lessons with an affirmation from either the Apostle’s Creed or another resource from the Book of Confessions.

This is my favorite part of ministry planning, the part where your idea is still pure and unsullied by practical considerations like time and materials.

A student emailed me yesterday for advice about praying. That’s a rare enough occurrence, and one every pastor who works with youth is eager to answer such inquiries. This one was from a student I’ve known since I first got here but with whom I’ve had less interaction than I’ve had with several other students, due to a busy schedule of demanding commitments. Since March, however, they’ve participated regularly in Zoom youth group.

I’m not sure that email gets sent before Coronavirus and everything that’s come with it.

This tip about performing improv by someone at my church feels like the key to my life and work right now, though I’ve never done improv (nor do I plan to): act like you know what’s going on.

I haven’t really known what’s going on since March. Nobody has. For the first several weeks of stay-at-home, I was quite transparent with the people I’m in ministry with about how uncertain everything felt and how little I knew about what was going to happen next. I designed an entire youth group series around a song called “Til Further Notice” as an expression of that uncertainty.

But we are four months into this thing and many more months from being out of it. It feels like time to start acting like I know what’s going on.

We’re all still improvising, but the scene has unfolded a bit, so we actually have some information to act on. Large gatherings can be superspreader events; masks help; outside is better than inside. We will know more next week and three months from now, but we don’t have to wait for incontestable data to make important decisions.

We can’t wait. We have to act now, and act like we know what’s going on.

Zoom forces the teacher and facilitator to be concrete and specific in ways that can help clarify objectives. Unlike a plan for an in-person session, where you can count on transition time between activities and the serendipity of happenings in physical space, a plan for Zoom has to clearly identify the goal of an activity and specifically prompt its actions and responses. It feels clunky at first, but, as with all skills, this one improves with repetition.

I started having serious conversations last week with parents and students about fall youth ministry plans. Our state has progressed in reopening to the point that allows in-person meetings of 50 or fewer people, all masked, who retain six feet of physical distance and who preferably gather outside. So it seemed worth considering: could we gather youth under those conditions?

The conversations revealed persistent anxiety about reopening, even though we’ve slowly been doing it for weeks. Outbreaks in other regions of the country are scary, and the daily case count in our state started moving in the wrong direction last week, too, making any mid-July decisions about September and October feel tentative, if not foolish. The parents of my students are on top of that, for very good reason.

Talking with them also made clear that decisions about church participation will likely follow decisions about school and sports activities. If schools aren’t open, church events won’t see a lot of kids. If schools are, they might see some.

The clearest picture right now is one of continuing online youth ministry. Of course, “continuing” need not mean extending our emergency plans from the spring into the indefinite future. We can iterate on Zoom. We can make the kinds of plans we’ve never made before, not simply because the circumstances don’t permit anything else, but also because they urgently call for this.

Many of us have lamented that we weren’t trained for this. Yes we were.

I’m working on caring enough about the ideas I share to 1) spend sufficient time and energy thinking about them before I share them and 2) argue for them until I’m convinced they’re wrong or limited. I don’t want to “put an idea out there” (much less “throw an idea out there”) anymore. I want to care enough about my ideas to handle them well. Unless it’s a ball or a back handspring, you don’t throw things you care about.