thrice-told tale, version 2
In 1981 we were sharing a house with a single friend when our daughter was born. Patrick was an invaluable extra pair of hands and emotional support as Dave and I began to adjust to life as new parents. I grew to think that a ratio of three adults to every one child was pretty ideal.
In 1998 when we volunteered to start a junior high youth group at our church we felt seriously outnumbered. I’ve often likened that age group to puppies with perpetually wagging tails…if you ask them to do something they will respond with “How much? How fast? How high?” It takes so much energy to stay ahead of them.
It also was apparent that the ministries that rely on one charismatic youth minister don’t have the long-term benefits of integrating the kids into an adult community. But how do you do that when they don’t really see the adults around them as anything but fuddy-duddies? We decided to recruit as many parents and other adults to come in as often as possible. The parents willingly volunteered to bring dinner each week and to stick around for that night to see what the kids were up to. And then some of them helped us organize two major retreats a year: riding 26 miles on a bicycle or rafting down a Class-4 river or climbing a rope course sixty feet above the ground to model and share physical and spiritual challenges with the teens.
The adults who participated in all these events agreed to attend one or two training sessions, even if their only role was to transport bikes from the church to the start of the trail. Cooks and counselors alike spent a Saturday or two confronting their own feelings about adolescent problems…the things prevalent in our culture that kids currently face, their own kids’ struggles and even the old wounds that they carried from their childhoods. An amazing community of empathy was knit together by these adults as they shared their own pains and triumphs with one another.
And they had a ton of fun. One adult who had younger children came along and helped the kids solve a particularly complicated puzzle on a rope course. The following Sunday in church a whole group of teenagers came and sat around Brook’s family during worship. Brook was amazed. “They think I’m really cool,” he exclaimed. “I’ve never been cool before!”
What these adult heroes gave to their children and their congregation’s youth was a picture of how effective and essential true community can be in the life of the church. What a gift they were to us, to the children of the church and to the adults that those children would become. As Bill Millikan of Communities in Schools said, “I’ve never seen a program turn around a life. Only relationships turn around lives.”
Love, Liz
This is Brook amazing one of our youth with his problem solving on the ropes course.
