Teenagers...

"Love is not blind but visionary: it sees into the very heart of its object, and sees the 'real self' behind and in the midst of the frailties and shortcomings of the person." -Andras Angyal

"But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" -1 Samuel 16:7

Every now and then someone will ask me when I'm going to move into "real" ministry. It's an innocent enough question, and no offense is intended. When you work in youth ministry with teenagers, it's a question that comes with the territory I suppose.

In my younger, less wise years it was a question that made my blood boil. "REAL MINISTRY, YOU SAY? ARE TEENAGERS NOT REAL PEOPLE AND IS THIS NOT REAL MINISTRY, YOU DOPE?" I would scream in an imaginary shouting match in my car as I was driving off.

Thank goodness I've become wiser. And more patient.

It's a natural question. Clearly, if someone is doing ministry with teenagers it's because they are young, full of energy, and want to be a "real" pastor once they get older and wiser. But I don't.

Why, you ask? Well aside from the incredibly lucrative salaries obviously, it's because I couldn't imagine a more life-giving, challenging, faithful call to follow in my life. It's because there is nothing lesser in doing ministry with middle schoolers and high schoolers as compared with business suits and grandparents.

This past week we took a group of 30 teenagers to Houston for a week of work with the Center for Student Missions. Throughout the week, my eyes were brought to tears watching God's touch transforming the lives of those 30 teenagers and transforming the lives of the people they met through their hands.

They sat in Hermann Park and ate lunch with homeless men and women, sharing stories of their lives with one another like old friends who hadn't spoken in years. They played with children in community housing projects whose lives hardly resembled their own, yet whose smiles were the same in every way. They drove through the city and prayed for the communities where brokenness seems most obvious and those where you'd strain your eyes to notice it.

They prayed for one another and for those they'd met during the week. They played basketball and cheered one another. They shared the ways God's love was becoming radically present in their lives and the ways they'd learned to recognize God's image in the people they'd met, even if they looked or smelled a little different.

I spent a week watching God's hands at work in and through the lives of 30 teenagers.

Life with teenagers is difficult. Just ask any of the girls I've dated since I've started about the exhaustion I live with. It's full of drama and hormones, insecurities and forgiveness, laughter and celebration, qualities that likely mark any "real" ministry.

So why teenagers? Because I have the privilege of walking with them as they are learning to navigate decision-making and relationships of consequence. I have the privilege of helping teenagers wade through the millions of messages about who they are to the voice of God calling them beloved. I have the privilege of giving them hugs and reminding them they're loved when they've messed up the weekend before. I have the privilege of calling parents and telling them how astounding their children are as they serve as role models and leaders to those younger than themselves.

I get to watch teenagers develop from sixth-graders who don't know what deodorant is into graduates who are heading into their lives as independent adults, still growing and expanding in faith. I get to see teenagers stumble and fall and embrace them as successes. I get to help teenagers walk the pitfalls of middle and high school and remind them of who they are and what they can be. I get to hear their questions of honest curiosity and their confessions of utter vulnerability and revel in the stories God is beginning in their lives.

Two weeks ago I had an initial meeting to start the process of pursuing ordination in the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church as a deacon. When asked why I'd like to pursue the deacon path as opposed to elder, my response was clear: God has made me for ministry with teenagers. I was pushed back against. "Never pigeon-hole yourself in case God has something bigger in mind," I was told.

Something bigger? Come spend a week with my students and the ministry I have the pleasure of being a part of and you'll see there's no bigger ministry in all of God's creation.

forever unfinished...