We had a bunch of friends over for a putluck after church today. As is usual, I hear the lamentations of “I don’t know how you can get along with all of those teenagers” and “you must be crazy to be a youth pastor and like it.”
Honestly, I don’t get that. I just plain love being around students and absorbing our whole lives with them. Here’s something that people don’t always see… I learn as much from them that they learn from me. I consider myself lucky to spend my life with “stupid teenagers.”
Here is a note I got from a 12th grader in response to asking to get the NI team together one more time. She really revealed in me something I was thinking but hadn’t articulated yet.
You are going to hate me.
NI is beaten to death. Some people are being histronic and sentimental, trying to stretch their importance as much as they can for as long as they can. It’s time to move on. We can look at NI as a special time for us where we were spiritually stretched. But there’s a difference between appreciating and learning from the experience, and trying to relive the experience (over and over again). NI, for me right now, is like a piece of gum that started out tasting good but now tastes bitter and tough.
There’s ministry to do in Romeo. Why don’t we take what we learned, stop alienating the rest of the youth group that hasn’t been on a mission trip (stop using NI lingo), get some more people involved (dissolve the NI clique) and reach out to people who need to be reached?
(Telling people at school about how cute the wee Northern Irish kids were does not qualify as outreach. It does qualify, in the mind of the listener, as bragging. Somehow, people don’t respond to well to that.)
NI was great. You know what would be greater? If we got over our own spiritual superiority and began doing God’s work again.
Damn, that’s good stuff.
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