In the Silly String Fight

 In the Silly String Fight

            I’ve been finding it very difficult to blog lately.  The move to Yakima, WA has been a good one, though it is taking me longer to adjust than I originally thought it would.  Overall, I am enjoying Yakima more than Helena, mostly because I feel like I have something to do here.  I enjoyed training, but after a few weeks I knew that I was going to learn most of my ministry skills doing ministry rather than just talking about it.

            I thoroughly enjoyed the first retreats and youth groups that my team led.  Working with my team and youth ministers in the area who all have to same passion for evangelization has been a tremendous blessing.  I was happy with the area and the community and really felt that I was going to enjoy every minute of working with the youth.  It has been a month since then, which means I will be able to give a more realistic account of how I feel about what I do.

            I recently had a conversation with one of the many ex-Reach members that live in the Yakima area about life on a Reach team.  Each new member comes in with some expectation of what team life is going to be like through what they have seen at Reach retreats (or in my case, NET retreats) they attended in middle/high school.  They might know people who were on teams previous years and heard accounts of what their life was like on team.  But the truth is, every person, every living situation, every group of kids we encounter, is so different each year, that everybody’s preconceived expectations are wrong.  What this conversation exposed to me was that maybe 5% of our time is spent actually with the youth.  The other 95% is spent planning, praying, and keeping sane.  Sanity is sometimes hard to find amidst singing songs about dead moose and farting crickets.  Middle school kids are weird.

And I think that’s not what I expected… the weirdness.  We play games, we sing songs, and we have balloon fights.  Last Friday my team attended a middle school lock-in where we played Rock Band, Cops and Robbers, Sardines, and whatever came to mind.  Sometimes I just got lost in it all.  Aren’t I here to spread the Gospel?  Because that’s what my training was mostly about.

I understand it- the need for insanity.  There’s really no point in asking any middle schooler a serious “God” question if you haven’t had a pillow fight with them first.  It surprises me how quickly a youth group can go from upbeat and exciting with some game to utter restlessness as soon as they feel the vibe of something religious beginning to start.  And when the only words you can get out of a discussion are questions about when we’re going to play another game, you know that any point you are trying to make is lost, no matter how awesome it is.

            It’s hard.  Sometimes I feel like I’m some kind of babysitting service.  A place parents can drop off their kids one evening a week to get them out of the house.  I know that I am doing good work and that I’m working hard to improve the skills I need.  I know that the silly time we have with kids is valuable for them to feel more comfortable and connected with us and each other.  But still I wonder if I am doing things right, if I could be doing more, or if I am missing some of the little joys of ministry that would assure me I wasn’t wasting my time.

            The other day I drove by this man on the sidewalk waving a sign to point the direction and advertise for a business.  I always feel bad for those people.  That has to be a terrible job.  Standing there all day as cars constantly drive by you, never knowing if anyone is actually reading the sign or turning to the business because of your work.  Most of the time, those people look miserable to me, which is probably why I think this would be a terrible job.  But not this guy.  He had huge headphones on, was waving to individual cars, and smiling as he jammed and danced to whatever song he was listening to.  As I waited at a red light, I couldn’t help but wave and smile back.  I didn’t follow the direction of his sign, but I still remember him and how much joy he seemed to have with his job.

            I drove by him again six hours later, and he was still just as excited as he was earlier.  Again, I didn’t follow his sign, but I had a strong desire to shake his hand.  He took that job that seemed so pointless to me and made it something beyond the mundane.  It probably crossed his mind that his work might not be the best.  I doubt he dreamed of being a sign holder when he grew up.  But he definitely made the most of the situation.

            Now I know my job is not worthless.  I like to think that it has more benefit than the job of sign holding.  This first month of ministry has been a lot of silliness, a lot of what looks to be a waste of time.  But now that the initial confrontation is over, I see how valuable that time was.  With a solid relationship formed, talking about God is a lot less lame, and actually exciting, especially if those fun, silly activities still continue.  I can see the benefits of those times now in my small groups during our weekly youth nights.  At first, I could never get any of them to tell me more about themselves than how old they were, how many siblings they had, and what their favorite class was.  This week one girl shared with me her troubles with one of her friends.  It’s moments like that when I’m thankful that we were able to build up to that level of trust just by seeing each other once a week for month.  Moments like that also remind me to not take myself too seriously.  The mind of a middle schooler is not serious most of the time.  In order to meet them on their level, we too need to not be so serious.  Sometimes the best place for them to find God is in a silly string fight.