Our senior high student ministry, Fusion, kicked off this past Wednesday night. Most days, I love what I do, and I had been looking forward to this night for the last half of the summer.
Let me tell you a youth pastor story that isn’t true. After spending a solid 10 minutes or so (but each moment was prayerful), God spoke to me and said, “Tim, my favorite son, I want you to tell my students that I love slightly less then you because you’re such a good Christian and youth pastor, that they must experience a reawakening.”
In my best King James heavenly language, I spoketh forth and replied, “Yea Lord, thy servant heareth thee.” I went to explain that I was ready to share a series on Jesus being awesome. I had a whole bunch of passages from Paul that I was ready to use. (Didn’t really want to use the Gospels since it gets soo complicated and who wants to study the text? Don’t want them me or them to think too much, you know). Anyway, I digress.
I guess I write that because I have an extra 5 minutes to share my angst with my impression of how youth ministry has been done years ago (and still is in some places). Indeed, I did pray, meditate, etc. on what we should discuss this fall. Most of our students have been raised in the church. Many of them feel lonely in their faith while walking through their high schools, they complain of feeling somewhat sheltered, and generally, they know God is good but admit to being frustrated from the clichés, the need for discipline, their failure, their youth pastor, their parents, the self-righteous kids on the other couch, and about 248 other teen-age related reasons. I feel we as believers, as a Church, specifically ours in Montvale, are in need of a season of “Renaissance”. Though I typically conjure up feminine and other related ideas of that time period, after some time, I’ve come to appreciate it’s meanings, “a new beginning” and “rebirth” (among a few). Yes, I need a “renaissance”.
My hope is that others connect to this too.
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