Every kid is an at risk kid. Every student is an at-risk student.

I heard that from a mentor, once. Let me clarify a bit: I learned early on from a another pastor I admire that anyone of us is 1-2 bad decisions away from catastrophe. He was talking about work, and that 1-2 bad decisions (by you or another) can leave you with no job.

But let’s apply that to kids and students in our world. When you think about it, everything can change so quickly. Even in an instant. And every child and every student I know is 1-2 bad decisions away from deep brokenness, risky behavior, unspeakable tragedy, and huge pain. It might be something he or she does – but it  might instead be something a peer or parent or authority figure does that turns their world upside down. (Yes, I have been thinking a lot about the massacre in FL and the awful, increasing tally of incidents like it).

• And while that sometimes throws us into quesitoning what we do in ministry, this thinking clarifies things for me immensely. The gospel and the community that embodies it absolutely matters.
• It matters that we know and trust Jesus as our life and walk humbly with God.
• It matters that we know that God’s grace tells us who we really are and brings us to belong to his family.
• It matters that we have the courage to do justice and love mercy.
• It matters that we have the ability to befriend others with the grace of Jesus and walk with others in our mutual weakness and point to Jesus who is strong for us.
• It matters that we know a God who loves us deeply and will never leave us – so we can love our wives and husbands deeply and never leave them.
• It matters that we as a church pour our time and energy and heart into ministry to those 20 and under – and the parents and adults and extended families who lovingly lead them - so that they have the best chance at sitting front row and watching a God (who is making all things new) save, strengthen, and equip them for every good work he calls them to do in the middle of their ordinary lives.

I want to be absolutely committed to that work.
It matters.

I think a lot about praying in public: particularly in services of worship. There is much to say on the subject, but today my thoughts are on communnion. Whether you call it the Eucharist, Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, it is probably my favorite part of worship together.

Here’s a short prayer of consecration I’ve used in the past. Like many of my prayers, it’s cobbled together from a handful of old sources, Scripture, and my own thoughts. This one draws on some old Puritans.

grace and peace – Andy
—

Father God, today you graciously invite us to your table. You set before us a plate of simple fare: the bread and the cup. There are hungry people here, poor, tired, some weary, some heartsick, some longing, all in need of your grace.

We pray that you would take these elements and set them aside from their common use. By your grace, use them now for your purpose to share your own life and love with us.

Give us the eyes to see you present here by your Spirit. Help us grasp the height, breath and depth of your great love for us in the sacrifice of your son Jesus on the cross.

And as this bread and cup feeds our body, so may your Spirit feel our souls – until that day when we hunger and thirst no more because we sit down with you, Jesus, at your heavenly feast.

We pray this today in the light and strength of your name, our Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

You’ve done this. You open up a file or flip through the pages of a curriculum script for the week. You start to think – how am I ever going to do that? You know it’s one thing to get a tool out of a box; it’s another to figure out how to use it in the best way.

At New Hope, we use the XP3 curriculum (put out by ReTHINK) for both our midweek middle and high school programs. That means a basic 3-step process for any series:

1. We read through the whole package and make some decisions about whether to tailor its focus/theme, how many sessions we’ll do (sometimes we stretch it or subtract), whether to retitle them, and how to incorporate the “XP” (experiential piece).
2. Since the same person speaks at both environments, one person primarily reworks the content for each week.
3. We target the content first to high schoolers, then edit it for middle schoolers, and then condense and rewrite the questions for our small group leaders (we shoot for only 6 questions).

Let’s circle back and look at #2. The thing I love about XP3 stuff – its thoroughness, detail, and communication flow – also presents its biggest challenge: how to take all this material and own it to contextualize it for your church environment and the students you get to love. Here’s how I handled the first session of the “Guardrails” series.

1. Try to remember the great, 4-part advice under “How to find your own voice!” and pray for God’s leading here as you prepare!
2. I read through the outline structure in detail (to get an idea of the key points and flow) and then read through the whole text, starting to mark what I can skip, keep, or change.
3. Since we try to keep our midweek talks to only 15 minutes, I do a good bit of editing. In this case, I cut out about half the talk, condensed/rewrote some, and ended with something about 2000 words or 40% of the original size. Yes, I felt bad. (Here, I cut out the part of Scripture and application on drinking – and subbed in a different illustration – because we planned to add a week and focus on that issue as its own session).
4. I spend a lot of time rethinking the bottom line – trying to make it shorter, more memorable, and (if needed) closer to the Scripture. Here, “God wants you to set up some protective barriers to keep you out of the danger zone” became “God wants you to set up guardrails to keep you ON the road and OUT of danger.”
5. Once I have this, I try to write the key paragraph around it: these are the words I want to get right and repeat throughout the talk (defining guardrails and show why you, why now).
6. I usually change the first two sections of the talk to use both a personal story of mine and imagery or video that relate. I had tons of fun here showing pictures of guardrails in dangerous places and how they keep us on the road and out of danger. (HS students had this nailed, MS needed more pictures – then told me I should have talked about “bumpers” in bowling lanes instead.)
7. Write it, rehearse it, pray for the students, pray for God’s wisdom and grace, and go for it. There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t feel inadequate or wish I’d had more time to change things.

[For the record: Andy Stanley and Lane Jones’ “Communicating for a Change” is a tremendous resource for helping you think about how communicate in your own church.]

I’m away for a few days up at the C3 Conference hosted by St. George’s Institute. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks as an opportunity to learn, study, interact, and prayerfully think about the intersection between who Jesus is for us and the here and now in which we live. (Thank you, New Hope and my family, for giving me this time!)

On the plane over I finally got to finish Kenda Creasy Dean’s marvelous “Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church” (yes, it is completely worth reading and I will review it at length … later).

Toward the end, she quoted a prayer of St. Ignatius – one that I vaguely remembered, but one that today hit me with full force as perfectly capturing my mind for this weekend. Here it is:

Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.

Amen.

Part 3 – Starting: making a new beginning wherever you are.

Where do you start with all this when you are a pastor or student minister? Here’s one thing that has helped me. Tony Jones wrote see an excellent, probing book (Postmodern Youth Ministry) where he drew on Alasdair McIntyer’s discuession of “practices” (Tony defines a practice as a “holistic endeavor undertaken with a goal in mind”). He then pushed the pause button and asked us youth workers whether our “practice” of youth ministry is helping us toward the internal good and goal of becoming more like Christ.

Great question. So my advice you is steal an hour or two away from the church, sit yourself down and look yourself in the face and ask this question: is my practice of youth ministry helping grow me as a human being and a follower of Jesus Christ? (Hint: if it will help, actually go in the bathroom, close the door, look yourself in the mirror and ask the question. Or ask your best friend, spouse, or a close coworker.)

• If the answer is “no,” you have some work to do. Sadly, hardly anyone is going to provoke you to do it – so put your grown up pants on, pray for wisdom, skim those categories above, and dive in with some evaluation and wise counsel on change. Personal changes can be made on your own, but structural changes and ministry practices need to be dealt with in community. Acts 6 is a terrific encouragement here on communal discernment: there are simply no shortcuts to growth.

• If the answer is “yes,” praise God for that gift and busy yourself with what Paul says in Philippians 3:9-16. Start praying and looking for ways you can encourage and support others in this effort. Make it not just your goal – let it become the goal of your leaders and students to become conformed to the image of Christ.

• For most of us the answer is somewhere in the middle. My guess is if you have some ways you can say both yes and no: I’m convicted on a few counts even as I write this. That is perfectly alright: this is a race, and it’s about enduring to the finish. Get out a pencil and a blank sheet of paper to make some lists. What’s going well that you want to keep? What habits need to change or go entirely? What new disciplines do you need to pick up? I appreciate the correction and exhortation in 1 Timothy 4 and 6 here. Go for it.

The call of Jesus is clear: “Follow Me,” he says to you – not in addition to the work he has called us to laborers in student ministry, but in its very midst. May God draw you deeply into himself.

For the rest of the series:
Part 1 – a rule for life
Part 2 – the smash-up: spiritual formation meets student ministry

Part 2: when spiritual formation clashes with student ministry in church-world

After writing some on a rule of life, it’s a bit shameful to have to admit that such has not been the case lately. There’s an upside and a downside to that. The downside is that I’m pretty humbled to be offering anything here, since I’m all too aware of the gap between what I say and what I do (or don’t do). The upside is that I’m aware of the challenge that we pastors and youthworkers face – we as people – and I know something at this point of what I need.

Student ministry in church world plunges you into the world of doing. You are constantly planning, preparing, writing talks, hanging out with students, making endless attempts at communication (calls, facebook posts, texts), with parents, leaders, busy office work, etc. The work never ends. There is always more you can do at the end of the day. And you know it matters. Lives are at stake. You can work yourself to the bone and still feel haunted by Jesus’ call in Mt. 11 to come to him – but you can’t see how his burden is light and easy when to you it seems so hard. And you have to want it.

Let me assume that you do want it: you want a close fellowship with Christ in the midst of a busy life and work in church world. When I first wrote about a rule of life, it seemed good on paper … but perfect plans on paper never survive first encounters with real life. So let me share with you a few key elements, knowing that how you or I observe them must remain flexible and may often change.

• Scripture and prayer. Indispensible. We have to begin and end here, for both what fuels us and what we have to offer others flow from the same source. My usual pattern has been to read, study and try to pray through a different gospel each month, plus taking some time in Psalms and other parts of God’s word. This year I want to read/pray the gospels again, particular seeking Jesus’ leadership through the Spirit, and read through all of Scripture. To this end, we youth workers shouldn’t hesitate to teach out of our personal learning OR let our teaching (if pre-determined) be an opportunity for our personal, prayerful learning. Calvin once called “prayer is the chief exercise of faith.” If kingdom-living is the with-God life, then prayer from a worshipping heart occupies the central place. This is probably my #1 need and desire in 2012.
• Read theology and read for fun. What? Read theology in a disciplined way? Isn’t that soul-killing, straight-jacketing academic stuff? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s amazing the way some of the older writers (who started and ended their days on their knees in the church) fuse devotion and exposition and exploration. And if you don’t get what the Trinity has to do you with your life in the Spirit, you are missing out on the great resources of the gospel. Theology is essential to student ministry because in our actions with students the very character, heart, and intention of God is meant to be on display! If you don’t believe me, be convinced by 2 Cor. 3-4 or reading Kenda Creasy Dean or Andrew Root or Christian Smith or Kara Powell). The fundamental question we are facing now is “what is God really like – and what does that mean for me? for us? for our world?” You need heavy stuff to help you with that. And read for fun. Read stuff outside ministry: fiction, biography, culture stuff – whether novels or magazines or websites or stuff related to a hobby. It keeps your mind sharp and it widens the circle of stuff you know. Plus, you’d be amazed how it works into conversation and teaching.
• Community. I had an experience this fall that drove home to me the necessity of really living and loving and ministering in community. I cannot recommend enough the words of Henri Nouwen here: ministry is always communal and mutual. For me, that means four primary things. First, with Robin (my awesome wife). Second, with close friends – honest conversations, and (if not local) solid letters/email and seeing each other during the year. Third, community within your church. I am a strong advocate for finding real spiritual friendship and community among the people with whom you minister, whether leaders, parents, friends, or even a small group. Fourth, you must have a team of leaders who you equip for ministry. Nothing is as anti-Jesus and soul-killing in student ministry than to bear the burden and shoulder the work alone.
• Body. I am more and more convinced that we live in a gnostic culture (read theology for that) and how we practice life in the body is going to be more and more a part of our Christian witness. Now the paradox is that our culture worships health and we obviously don’t want to go that far. But working yourself to the bone and neglecting you body isn’t healthy or God-honoring. Our eating, our sleeping, and our physical exercise matter if we want to run the race of the ministry that God has entrusted to us. I cook a lot and try to eat well. I exercise most weeks. Since you have to start somewhere, my minimum goals for this year are 6 hours of sleep a night and at least 10 miles of running each week.
• Sabbath. Where to begin … through a teaching series last spring I got convinced that we need to recover a practice of the sabbath. I’m no strict sabbatarian, but the practice matters and Jesus makes it clear that it was made for us. There’s a negative/abstinent dimension to this (stuff you don’t do) and a positive/engaging one (stuff you intentionally do). Figure out a way to take a day off of your work. For me that means a day off of technology, too – no facebook, twitter, phone, email, and laptop (as much as possible, they stay on the desk and powered off). Stuff I do – read for fun, try to talk with friends, exercise, cook a lot, and spend as much time as possible with my family. The tough thing for me is that the only day I can really do this is Friday – and when you are youth worker, that doesn’t always work.

Up next: pt. 3 – where do you start with all this?