There was a moment during worship yesterday that made a mark in my memory that is going to last. There is a baptism happening, a baby, and two teenage twins are leaning over the side balcony to see. The side balconies in our sanctuary run about a quarter of the way back, beginning above the chancel. These two are in the balcony above the baptismal font. They could fall into it from where they’re standing.

Everyone in the room is watching the baptism, as they should be. It’s a watershed moment: an identity is being imparted–beloved child of God. Yet I can’t take my eyes off the two eighth graders. Their baptismal identity was confirmed in this space just weeks ago, and now here they are taking part in the church’s work of naming that reality for someone else, saying “yes” we will nurture and care for this child, a total stranger to them, yet now a sibling in Christ.

It’s their faces, both of them. They’re eager to be here, to be part of this.

This is why youth should be in worship.

Friday night may the a youth ministry opportunity hiding in plain sight. I’ve spent most of my career religiously avoiding programming on weeknights, as both students and parents in the contexts I’ve worked have affirmed repeatedly that there is just too much going on, what with school work, band practice, soccer, and all the rest, not to mention time families want to spend together.

So it’s been Sunday. It has also, though, been Friday and Saturday with some regularity, right? What else is a retreat? What else is a lock in?

Somebody asked why we don’t invite students to gather on Friday nights, and I didn’t have a good answer.

If you’re not inviting youth into decision-making roles, you’re missing out. The two students on our Committee on Youth Ministry practically drove our meeting last night. We came away energized by an idea for a new experiment that was proposed by one student and meaningfully shaped by the other. I was kind of magic.

Students’ schedules and relative inexperience with participating in decision-making with adults means that sticking a youth on committee is not, by itself, a recipe for meaningful engagement. In fact, I attribute last night’s magic to there being two students in the room, not just one; it’s a rare group of adults who know how to draw out the confidence of the lone teenager at the table. They draw it out of one another, though.

What else? The agenda isn’t particularly youth-friendly, only clear and specific. Maybe just pay attention to how students are reacting to what’s being discussed and invite them to express themselves. One committee member last night pointed out that a youth member was putting off strong non-verbal cues at one point and made sure the rest of us noticed, stopped talking, and then listened.

The adults in the room have to want input from young people, not merely tolerate it.

I wrote a post yesterday and only today realized it never published. It was about gathering a team for youth ministry, how the interpersonal work of listening to students and accompanying them during adolescence is only part of the work, how you also have to build leaders, both staff and volunteer.

It was the single best blog post I’ve ever written, and now it’s gone forever.

It was a setup. My church is hiring a Youth Discipleship Coordinator, and I want you to tell people. It’s a full-time gig that gets to work with me on jr. high and sr. high youth ministry, both what is and what can be. Email me and I’ll send you the job description and application instructions.

The 8th graders in my Confirmation program, in fact all the students in my congregation, do not struggle with the relationship of the church’s faith in things like creation and resurrection to the contemporary scientific worldview in a way that can addressed in a single lesson, or even two. It’s also true for their parents. It’s true for all of us: the Bible and scientific reality seem at odds, and we move from ignorance of that fact to anxiety about it to uneasy acceptance to resolution. For some the resolution is within the church. For others resolution is a rejection of faith and all it asserts.

Nobody has resolved this by the 8th grade, though. So our time on it is spent exploring a range of possible postures, from opposition to integration. We don’t dictate one. Most never knew anything but conflict was an option, so it’s a useful enough lesson.

But it’s so not enough.

Maybe some element of the scientific needs to be integrated into every Confirmation discussion. Maybe it’s a lens through which to view all the subjects more than a subject unto itself.

 

Planning well saves energy. This is particularly true on mission trips. Decision fatigue is real.

What’s the plan for dinner?

Are we assigning van seats or can students choose their own?

Should we set up beds or do the orientation first?

Devotions before or after free time?

What time is lights out?

What do we do if somebody loses their water bottle?

The strain of thinking about and deciding upon those questions, one after another, in the first several hours of your trip, will put you at a mental and emotional energy deficit right away.

Think about them before you leave, then. You’ll be glad you did.

I talked for a long time yesterday with someone who is very active in a nonprofit that runs an art exhibition for high school artists. He described the organization’s work as a “scout” for artists. Colleges pay to see the exhibit each year. It turns out art schools need what the nonprofit makes as much as the artists do.

My friend became enrolled in the nonprofit before he’d met anyone in it or even seen their exhibit. He just heard about it, and on the strength of their guiding idea, he took a day off work to attend a planning meeting. He’s a teacher, and he thought, “I want this idea to exist for my students.” Now, four years later, he’s in charge of a major piece of its operation. It’s almost like he was on board before he’d even started.

What’s the big idea behind what we’re doing in the church, in youth ministry? How do we share it in a way that makes people like my friend say, “I want that to exist for people I care about?” How do we invite people to become enrolled in our mission?

People aren’t blank slates who need convincing that a mission is worth their commitment. Most of us are already enrolled in a mission. Convince us, then, that, by joining you in the things you care about, we advance the things we care about.

Retreats have come to play a significant role in the youth ministry I’m tending. My students are committed to multiple worthy pursuits that claim large blocks of their time during the week, so scheduling gatherings with them on, say, Wednesday nights, is a non-starter. Retreats though? Retreats seem to have found some traction. This year we did six of them.

I like that none of them are the same. Each retreat creates its own unique community just for that weekend. Multiple retreats means multiple points of entry for students into the life of the church. It seems to work, at least for now.

But hold on a minute. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, revered pastor, theologian, and martyr, has a corrective to all of the retreats. Check out this sentence from Life Together, which I’m reading as part of my planning week.

“Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober [brotherly] fellowship of everyday life.”

The “sound, sober . . . fellowship of everyday life.” Gulp.

First, stimulating the glow of fellowship with young people who largely don’t know one another isn’t all that easy. I mean, it’s not rocket science, but it takes intention and sound strategic planning.

Second, “fatal?”

It’s landing, this mid-20th century European rebuke of a reliance upon retreats to grow Christian community. It’s making me wonder just how much of the energy, the “glow,” of these weekends, produces growth in durable community for the participants. Even if it was, how would I know? The community kind of ends with the retreat.

Time to think of ways to build more continuity between retreats and the “everyday life” of students.

Planning doesn’t happen if you don’t commit time to it, and if you don’t commit time to planning your work will get planned on the fly. That might work for some people for some time, but it eventually leads to exhaustion. Also, it’s hard to do creative, transformative work on the fly over and over again.

So it’s planning week: four days to read, draft calendars, write, and edit curriculum for the next program year. I’ve never done a planning week before. I’m entering it with a mix of anticipation and dread; I’ll be pleased to come out the other end of it with concrete plans in hand, but I’ll enter mission-trip-and-wedding-season an anxious mess if I don’t.

Wish me luck.

Our session examines Confirmation students at its meeting tonight. This is always a beneficial exercise for Elders and youth alike, and it works best if it’s given clear focus: the conversation is about “the meaning and responsibilities of membership” (Book of Order).

One of the things I suggest Elders do is share with students their own experience of church membership. What is different about your life because you’re a church member? What was your experience of professing faith, and what does membership mean to you?

It’s good for young people to hear that kind of reflection from adults, and it’s good for adults to do it.