There's More to EVERY Kid

YL Leader Survival Guide, Chapter 5

It's been really fun for me to write about my experiences and takeaways from being a Young Life leader/church leader for the past six years.

I've been realizing, though, that I represent only a fraction of people who are/have been leaders. And I'd love to know about the issues, struggles, and takeaways that everyone else has experienced, because I want to be able to create something beneficial for the people interested.

So if you want to send me a message about something you'd like to see someone talk about or a certain situation you've dealt with or are dealing with and have no idea what to do, I'd love to hear about it. Who knows, maybe I'll write about it...

There's a little place on the right hand side of the page that says "Tell me what you're thinking." Feel free to do what it says and shoot me an email.........

There's More to EVERY Kid

You are going to encounter plenty of land mines in your ministry journey. Ask any leader who's been at it for longer than a few months... it happens. Some such land mines will probably involve situations involving specific guys or girls who may do one or more of the following:

-  make you feel like you are lamer than their math teacher

-  say no more than 5 words to you out of shyness, arrogance, or lack of social skills

-  say nasty things about you behind your back

-  make up a stupid nickname for you and refuse to let it die even though it doesn't even make sense

-  treat you exactly like they treat their parents

Obviously, there are plenty more. And they can do plenty of damage to your self esteem and your blood pressure. Not my blood pressure, though. Mine is always rock solid every time I go to the doctor. I get compliments aplenty for my blood pressure.

Here's what you need to realize though. The outside you see, the front that you experience when you're with your high school friends, that doesn't tell their whole story in the least bit. All it tells is the result. You see where they are, not where they came from.

You might feel differently if you knew where they came from.

A good friend of mine who leads Young Life told me a story about a kid who gave him this really annoying and slightly awkward nickname. Every time the kid would yell it across the hallway, my friend would think to himself, "Who does this kid think he is? Do I really just have to take this?" He heard it over and over again, week in and week out. On the outside, this guy just wanted to exert control over someone for his own enjoyment...

But on the inside, there was something else going on. He found out later that his high school friend had gone through something that nobody should ever have to go through. He had walked in on a parent who had committed suicide.


There's more to every story. There's more to every single person.


When we interact with someone, we experience only the tip of the iceberg of the human heart. We have no idea what is below until we go deep enough to see for ourselves... until we go down to find out where that person has been. And once we do, we normally get a clearer view of why things are the way they are. For instance, it seems natural for a kid who experienced trauma completely out of his control to begin grasping for control anywhere he can find it. Without Christ, what other choice does he have?

Add on the pressure of high school, and you've got a recipe for emotional disaster.


Sometimes I forget how intense high school was. Here's a picture I found that helps me remember:





                                           

(Taken from www.postsecret.com)

Scott Cash said it best in a concert at Windy Gap a month ago, when he said,  "Some people wish they were young again. I don't. I'd never go back to high school. The pressure is unbearable." It was followed by a chorus of amens from the girls at the concert. The guys were probably too embarrassed. Gotta look hard.

When you are dealing with ministry situations that are frustrating you, remember these three things:

High School is a breeding ground for pain, isolation, and insecurity. All human beings on this planet, ESPECIALLY ones who have gone through the American public school system, have emotional baggage. If not from their family, from their friends. If not from their friends, from their lack of friends. I often forget the depths that I came out of in my own life, where I was riddled with self esteem issues and had no confidence in myself after a few hurtful school experiences. I had a hard time understanding the deep need of my high school friends when I first became a leader until I remembered what I'd gone through.

You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. "Don't eat that, you don't know where it's been!" Don't summarize the entirety of a person into a few frustrating experiences, because you don't know where he/she has been. Who knows what has happened to the people that we meet in the high school? All we know is that the world is a miserably broken place, and that world is their dwelling place. Don't judge a book by its cover, especially because...

Every person is made with a beautiful Original Design. This is the most important one. When you allow yourself to believe that someone is "just" mean or "just" annoying, you are both condemning that person in your mind and simplifying him/her to remain less than God's original intent for them. I'm guilty of this. Our friends weren't made to remain the twisted versions of their "true selves" that we see today, just as you and I have a greater future as God brings us further into our own Original Design. Learn to see them for the way they were always meant to be.


So next time you are wanting to punch a kid in the face... I'm not NECESSARILY saying DON'T punch them... well maybe I am. I don't know. What I do know is that all bets are off at 2:30 AM in the cabin at Windy Gap. But what I am really saying is this: there's more to that kid than you think.

Regardless of how you deal with frustrating situations, just be mindful of what is going on. There are people all around you who are trying everything they can to cope with pain and fear and self esteem issues and the cutthroat way high school is. They are devoid of Love. They need it, and you can give it. Sometimes love can be looking past things, and sometimes love can be confronting things. The similarity between them is that in both cases, you're staying around. Love your friends with a biblical love.


1 Corinthians 13:4-7 - "Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."


Side Note: Remember you can email me on the right hand side of the page about anything you want discussed at some point. I'd enjoy hearing about it!

What Causes Leader Territorialism?

YL Leader Survival Guide, Chapter 4

Here's a healthy thing to consider: have you ever gotten confused about who actually needs who in your relationships with your high school friends?

A while ago, I had a leader from a church tell me a peculiar story. She went to visit some of her high school friends in the lunch room. She was overjoyed to be met with excitement and hugs from the girls she knew. Then one of the girls said, "Hey, do you know our Young Life leader?"

"No, I don't, hey, it's good to meet you!"

"Oh, hey," the leader replied, then gave her the why are you talking to my girls look, and walked off.

The high school girls were a little bit confused. "Did you see that? What was that all about?" they asked the church leader.

"Ehh... I'm not sure," she replied. She felt a little strange and sad, like some sort of competition had just been started, where just seconds ago she was elated about the idea of a new counterpart in ministry. She wanted a ministry partner, and instead got a turf war.

What causes us to say "Get off my turf!" as opposed to "Yes! Reinforcements!" in these situations?

While there are definitely healthy reasons to spread out, I think our own neediness far too often plays a big role in saying the former.

Young Life leaders (and other student ministry leaders) are some of the bravest people on the planet in my mind. They charge into cafeterias, student sections of the bleachers, and other minimally attended sporting events, laying their pride on the line at every juncture necessary to weasel their way into the seemingly closed systems of high school friend groups.

But when a person, no matter how strong, puts his/her heart on the line like that to give his/her friends a chance to hear about Jesus, the sad truth is that there are simply a lot of ways insecurity can creep in. Self conscious thoughts about how funny we are(n't), how hard it is for us to carry a lunch room conversation, and whether we are good enough to even be doing this in the first place begin to plague our time around our high school friends. We start looking at other leaders, wishing we were like them. We compound our problems by lusting after other leaders' "success stories" and trying to find a way to become more like them.

All too often, these insecurities will cause something strange to occur. We start using our high school friends as a measuring stick for our worth. We let interactions with high schoolers determine how cool/funny/interesting/worthy we think we are in life (Didn't we get enough of this in high school? We've already paid our dues, friends...).We develop this desire to be desired, this need to be needed, this want to be wanted around. And when we need that, we become as needy of feeling important to our Young Life kids as they are of our leadership and guidance. This often leads to leader territorialism.

But let's just call it what it really is: a form of codependency. 

When we have the need to feel needed by the people we minister to, it often leads to leader codependency. We find a group that satisfies both our need of personal approval and our need to feel successful (due to our investment), and we just latch onto it as an energy source. We become understandably hostile when our security blanket of feeling important is in danger of being stripped away by someone else. "They're going to take my place!"

Here's something embarrassing: Leader codependency is also why some of the leaders I knew, including me at one point, refused to go after anyone but the popular kids. Because it was like a second chance to be popular in high school. It was another way way we could bolster our insecurities about our deep selves by having other people endorse us by wanting to be around us. It's one thing to pursue a kid because you connect with them. But I distinctly remember finding high schoolers similar to the people I wish thought I was cool in high school and trying to make them think I was cool as a Young Life leader. Dang, that's a hard one to admit to the public. And thankfully, it was just a phase. the healing truth came about eventually...

What do we do about it, though?

Check your security blanket. Is it something it was never meant to be? If God sent someone to take your place, would you lose the only thing that makes you feel worth anything? We weren't made to be fueled by the approval of others. It's never satisfied us in the past and it won't satisfy us now. I know from experience that when I let the enemy redefine success as "whether I'm beloved enough by those I minister to," my entire ministry not only becomes solely about me, it becomes a desperate grasp for approval that just doesn't fill me like it advertises it will. It is unsurprisingly a recipe for ineffective ministry... A healthy leader is able to give without needing from high schoolers.

Fill yourself with God. He dispels lies and frees us to be truly us, at our best. Spend time with Him frequently (this doesn't have to look a certain way), and allow praying and listening to Him to be your highest priority. Higher than contact work. Higher than your need to be needed by people, which comes from a beautiful place deep within us of wanting to be significant, but it's just twisted up a little bit. You'll be pleasantly surprised to find that everything you need for your deep self is part of God's personality!


Know the truth about yourself. You are valuable to God. He celebrates you at all times, and you were made to be filled by His celebration instead of the celebration of people. If you don't know why He celebrates you, figure out why, because it's true. Whether your high school friends think you're the coolest person on the planet, or whether they would rather hang out with the principal than with you, your worth just doesn't come from last week's interaction with 16 year olds. They have enough insecurities on their own plate to explain pretty much anything they do as a way to make themselves feel better instead of trying to bring you down because they think you suck. And even if they do think you suck... Why do they get to decide that? Your worth is in the fact that you were made in God's image (Genesis 1:26). How can you deny your worth when you can go home, look in the mirror and squint, and see a completely unique expression, albeit a broken expression, of the God of the universe?

For you new leaders that may be thinking, "I knew it was fine for me to just hang out with my team leader's seniors! Yayyyyy now I don't have to meet new people," don't get ahead of yourself just yet. There are two sides to this coin. The unhealthy territorialism is a need to be needed, but the healthy territorialism is a response to Matthew 9:37: "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." If you don't know how rare it is for high schoolers to have any sort of mentor in their lives telling them about what's really important, what is healthy, or anything about Jesus, then let me tell you.

It's really, really, really rare. Painfully rare.

There are too many kids that don't have a solid role model in life for four different leaders to pursue the same kid. We as YL leaders spread out for the sake of the broken world; they need us to spread out. That doesn't mean four leaders can't be friends with the same kid... just because someone already has a friend doesn't mean they don't need another friend. But just remember... "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few."

So spread out! But above all, listen to God. Allow chunks of time in your day to listen to God. If your main goal is to do exactly what God tells you, you'll be sitting pretty. You won't have to worry about whether you're in the right or wrong place.  Let your need to feel successful, a healthy need, be satisfied by the real success: you followed God's call. Let yourself be celebrated by God for this success, and be filled by that celebration!



Galatians 1:10 - "For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."


Luke 10:2-3 - "He told them, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."

Prayer Is More Necessary Than You Think

I'm going to go out on a limb right now.

I am going to commit to writing one post per week.

At least until I mess up... which given my previous level of consistency could be until... next week...

But I enjoy writing these a lot, and I think that I'm learning as I'm writing as well. Thanks for reading!

Without further ado...

YL Leader Survival Guide, Chapter 3

Prayer is the best chance we have at changing anything in this world.

Here's the problem though: we don't really always do it very often.

We've all felt what it's like to take kids to camp, tell them about Jesus, and then have those kids who just "committed their lives to Christ" pretty much run off and do the same stuff they always used to do. That is, if you've taken kids to camp, you've probably felt that. Even if you haven't, think about a time when you poured into a high schooler and then they just basically turned around and did the opposite of what you were hoping they'd do.

One of the enemy's most potent lies is making us feel like we are responsible for this happening, that we're failing our friends and failing God when our high school friends run wild and refuse salvation. It frequently leads us to thoughts like these: What have I done wrong? What can I do to fix this? How am I so terrible at this? Am I wasting God's time out here? How are other people having success and I'm not?

I want to be a voice that shouts the truth over all these lies. So listen up.

As we begin to take responsibility for the refusal of our friends to embrace the Gospel, we begin to try to fix the problem ourselves. We try harder, and harder, and harder to get them to club, and to get them to open up, and to hang out with them all the time. Those are all great, and I've seen God speak to high schoolers over and over through all those things... But without us knowing it, our priorities begin to shift. We begin to care more and more about whether our high school friends think we're cool, or open up to us, or want to hang out with us. The lie that we are responsible for saving people puts tons of undue weight on every little thing we do. And you know what? We just weren't made to shoulder that.

Here's the thing, guys: You can't save anyone. You can't make God's spirit move in the lives of a high schooler. You can perform exactly zero eternally significant things in high schoolers' lives without the movement of God.

This is a good thing. For real. If you've ever felt the weight of that responsibility, you know that it's not meant to rest on our shoulders. When God told you to be a YL leader, that responsibility wasn't in your job description. That's His job.

Lean in close, because I have a Young Life trade secret for you that will revolutionize the way you do ministry: Prayer is the best shot you have at bringing any lasting change to the high school friends you love. Not making sure they see you catch a football with one hand before club. Not being extra funny. And honestly, not even spending hours and hours per week hanging out with them is truly going to bring the fullness of the change you desire to see in their lives. Think about it: If the only one who can truly change hearts is God, and if The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective (James 5:16), then our main strategy has to be intercession. Because through Jesus' blood, we are righteous before God.

Wanna go to bat for your friends? Do it through prayer. Lots of prayer.

In fact, I wouldn't put it past God to not bring our friends to salvation until we start praying. He has done weirder things than that...

What if our priority was prayer even over contact work? Is that even okay?

Here's something I know about God: He loves the quiet, the unknown, the heartfelt cries of His people that nobody hears but Him. Why does He love them so much? Because that's where the real work gets done. That's where the real heavy lifting happens in the building of the Kingdom of God. When God's people commit to prayer and start throwing their weight around, that's when stuff starts to happen.

I know that some people like to say, "What even is prayer? He's just going to do what he wants anyway if it's his will, so me asking for something isn't going to make a difference."

It just doesn't feel like it's making much difference sometimes. And we can't always see the difference. And we sure don't like not being able to see the difference, do we?

Here's the thing. That is the opposite of what the Bible says about prayer. We see all over scripture places where people asked God for things, and He changed his mind. Abraham talked God down to sparing Sodom and Gomorrah if there were 10 righteous people there. Which there weren't, but he was really just wanting Lot to be spared. And God brought Lot out of the city. Job's friends had to ask Job to pray for them before God would forgive them at the end of the book of Job. Moses talked God out of destroying his people when they turned away from him. Those are just a few examples of people asking for things in the Bible.

 "But what if they hadn't asked? He would have done the same thing anyway because it was his will."

There is really no such thing as "what if." There's one way that things have happened, and there's one way that things are going to happen. You can't say "what if they didn't ask," because they did ask. That was the story. The story is that they did ask, and because they asked He decided to do it. "what if" is a moot point. Therefore, ask, knowing that what you ask God for matters to him! We truly do influence things when we pray.

Here's the other thing: You need prayer for yourself. Badly. In order to make sure you are spiritually healthy, which as it turns out is mission critical when it comes to ministry, you need to be communicating back and forth with God. We were made to need to pray. That's why we are commanded to "pray without ceasing," because it's something our spirits need. My team leader enjoyed sharing this quote frequently with our team: "If you aren't being fed, then those who are feeding off you will eat you alive." So... stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

"Prayer is to our spiritual lives as breathing is to our physical lives. If you're not breathing, you're dead. If you're not praying..." - T. M. Moore


Young Life leaders, be free from self condemnation based on visible results! Commit yourselves to praying for your high school friends, your team, and everything else God puts on your heart, believing that God acts upon your prayers. Don't listen to the voices that say you aren't doing enough. If listening to God is your main priority, in Young Life or out of Young Life, your obedience should provide peace of mind. Care for yourself well by staying connected to the Father, so that you can be a more clear picture of Christ to those you minister to. Don't be fooled into thinking that you don't need to pray about your ministry frequently, because "Ministry without prayer is the highest form of arrogance." Don't be tricked into feeling like you must shoulder more responsibility than you need to... otherwise it gets really easy to start selling God to people instead of listening, obeying, saying what God puts on your heart to say, and then letting Him do the heavy lifting of the heart, which only He can do.





James 4:2 - You do not have because you do not ask God.

Hebrews 5:7 - During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

1 Timothy 2:1-4 - First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings, be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.


Jeremiah 33:3 - Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and hidden things you do not know.

Ephesians 3:20-21 - Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.