For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. -Ephesians 1:15-17 NIV
SO HOW HAS YOUR SUMMER BEEN GOING as we move into the final stretch of August? The last couple of weeks in youth ministry at North Run could be described with words like Anaconda, Grizzly or Hyper-Sonic. If you don’t go to Kings Dominion too often, those names are various types of roller coasters. And the last couple of weeks around here have seemed like a roller coaster ride.
Roller coasters have a few dimensions that I would like to share with you today. First- you are in line and waiting with eager anticipation to just “get on.” After that you’ve taken your seat and you begin your ascent up that first tall hill and you’re thinking to yourself, “Why was I stupid enough to get on board this machine that’s going to launch me down a hill, running 60 miles an hour, with a bunch of crazy teenagers with their hands up in the air screaming for their lives?”
Why am I doing this? Why do we as the Youth Ministry of North Run load up the van and take a bunch of young, Christian believers to work camps like World Changers where 350 youth and adults converge on a small little town, like Gastonia, NC, and paint some senior adult wooden frame house or build a handicap-ramp or replace the shingles on a home? Why would any sane adult, like Margaret Taylor or Dean and June Wikowsky, want to get in that van and drive six hours to be with a bunch of screaming teenagers to work in the July heat for five days?
Why would anyone be willing to sleep on air mattresses in a high school classroom for seven nights with twelve other people crammed into your room, and wake up at 6:00 every morning? Why would any reasonable person choose to be a part of this roller coaster called youth ministry?
May I answer as a Youth Minister by sharing what one speaker at Youth EnCounter told our youth. Doug Herman, our YEC speaker, said, “God is illogical. We cannot always understand God. There is a gap between what you know and what God knows and we call that gap…mystery.” The mystery of God and His ways do not always seem logical, do they?
It is not logical to desire to accompany a bunch of teenagers on a mission trip, or to attend a weekend conference like YEC. Unless you have gone before on a trip like WorldChangers and have seen the mysterious hand of God work, and you witness how 25 work projects are completed in Roanoke or Gastonia. Not unless you have been able to worship each night with 350 other people and hear the praise that goes up to our Creator as teens and adults sing with the passion and love that only God can give.
It is only then that you as an adult can experience the exhilaration of this roller coaster called Youth Ministry. I conclude by citing the Ephesians passage we began with, “I have not stopped giving thanks for you, … I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
Please come and experience the mystery of God found in youth ministry with us as a rider on our roller coaster of life.
In Christian Love,
Kerry Smith
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