Standing in the kitchen, I was looking out the back door as a horde of three, four, and five year olds were playing in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Dump trucks had been turned into carriages, the boys were climbing a small tree, and the youngest kids were simply running around and laughing at everyone else. In the house, adults were laughing, talking, eating, and generally acting like 30ish year old friends do at a dinner party. The unique part was that I had never been in this particular house before, we were four hours from home, and many of the people in the room hadn’t seen each other for ten, eleven, even 12 years.
Of the people hanging out at the house, over half of them had one thing in common. They had all grown up in my youth group at my previous church. Some of the couples had even met during their time in the youth group. Over the previous couple of months, several of them had run into each other on Facebook, after one of the girls, or lady now, had posted old pictures from camp and tagged everyone in them. One thing lead to another, someone suggested a reunion, another agreed to host it, and a few weeks later, here we were, all standing around, laughing, catching up, eating, and talking about everyone’s kids.
It’s kind of surreal to see your students as adults in their early 30’s, with kids of their own. It’s one of the advantages to staying in youth ministry for the long haul. My wife and I are currently at 20 years in ministry. This dinner party was definitely a gift from God for us.
The kids in that room, at least they are still kids to me, represented so much of our love, worries, fears, hopes, prayers, time, efforts, and wondering. There were stories about camps, road trips, lessons learned, rough situations we had worked through together, and what God had done since they left and started lives of their own. It was, honestly, pretty amazing. Students who we knew would do well, had. They were sharing how they were serving God, loving their families, and a few had even come back to the same church and were now leading ministries there. Other students who we were a bit more worried about in high school had grown up to claim their faith for their own, and were serving in ministries in churches all over the place. Of course, some of the students who came were now adults, still dealing with some of the same issues they faced a decade earlier. But they were still in progress, and God was still calling them to trust Him.
The whole party was a reminder of who God is, how loving and faithful He is, and that the whole idea our ministries are really His ministries. I know, I know, that is not a new or original idea. But when God lovingly reminds us that the work is His, as are our students, it is so encouraging and freeing. If you are in youth ministry very long, you will face challenges with students, families, and heartbreaks. You will have students you are convinced God is working in, students you are sure you are failing in having an impact on, and students that you simply cannot tell where they are. You will have great days where you can feel the kingdom breaking through, and days where you’ll feel yourself breaking down. But if I know anything from my time in that kitchen, it’s that Jesus wants you to know how proud He is of you; that when He tells you not to worry, He really means it; and every aspect of your ministry is in His strong hands.
Standing in that kitchen, I watched my student’s kids playing in the backyard, and got very excited. What will God do in their lives? I can’t wait to see.
