In a good year, we would have 6-8 youth eligible for Senior High Youth Group at our small church in Ohio. Most of you reading this understand that eligible youth and “youth who show up consistently” are part of two very different, while complimentary, equations. After both having gone through a Concordia program with a billion youth ideas all built around having at least 6-10 youth available for any given event, my husband and I knew we had to shift our philosophy around youth ministry.
I became a therapist in those years as well, because the pressing mental health needs of our youth were enormous and I felt ill equipped. But a therapist does not a youth minister make. I practice therapy with youth, and I love it. That space informs me more than anywhere I have walked that our youth need consistent, loving mentors all around them, in their homes, schools, and therapy spaces, and everywhere else they trod. They need the Gospel, and most of the time, that’s not my role as a therapist. They need you, they need the church, to love them well and hard, in grace and truth, through the storms of adolescence, on to the high school years, and into young adulthood. (Footnote 7 practices – supportive adults)
Back in Ohio, we got creative. Relational was already our lens for youth ministry, or any ministry really. I can put together a life-size CandyLand game or toiletry drive and packaging project with the best of them, but of course we do it relationally. All of us who love those youth are relational. We originally started “youth night,” twice monthly gatherings in our house with the three F’s I learned from my own DCEs (footnote, Tim Roggow and Jason Glaskey) – Faith, food, and fun. We had Bible study, we ate around wacky seasonal themes, and we laughed until our bellies hurt. Our youth made life decisions and shared their heartaches and acted disconnected all in one breath, as youth are given to do. We incorporated young adult co-leaders to help us guide and grow the youth, just as we ourselves were each guided and growing as we gathered.
But even the relational-oriented version failed to work at some point. Our numbers dwindled. It was painful, and we also still had kids sitting on our kitchen floor making the decision to be pastors and church leaders. How do you discern effectiveness in those circumstances?
When we regularly began having the fear, “What if we only have one show up?” as well as, “Maybe there will be six of them, who knows?!” We introduced Youth Adventure Lunch. As all good small church youth programs do, it really began because Andrew had never been to one of our favorite restaurants and balance needed to be restored in the universe. Youth Adventure Lunch was a once-amonth, post-church dining experience around Scripture, at the most random local restaurant we could find or the cheapest fast food chain we could find, given the church budget at the time.
We did not charge them. We wanted to remove any barriers to them or their friends showing up. Every fear that said, “You will be responsible for a loaded bill of 20 middle school boys,” never came to fruition. Because in relationships there is trust, accountability, and dealing with the realness of “We each have $10 to spend,” or “I can see you want the milkshake, just do it, and remember God’s sweet love for you while you enjoy it.” Youth Adventure Lunch was sometimes impeded by schedules and other inevitable organizational stressors. When we couldn’t meet, we moved it so it worked. And sometimes, we just left it because one could show up. I also occasionally sat in my van waiting for people to show up and eventually went back inside my house and watched a show with my children instead.
My favorite adventure lunch happened only because we had to have it on Good Friday given the Basketball schedule of the local schools that year. My husband’s insistence on a truly sacred activity for the day led to a wild brainstorm where we ended up going to the Toledo Art Museum to reflect on Sacred Art and eat in their cafe. When one of the prints we had researched ahead of time wasn’t available on exhibit, a curator asked what we were looking for and then brought us into a back room with white gloves to see the pieces from the vault. We were a giddy group that Good Friday, sharing with each other and that curator the joy of Easter and of connection and of God showing up in the weirdest places.
Youth Adventure Lunch is not Antioch (Acts 11), but it is our version of relational youth ministry that also doesn’t challenge our ministry bandwidth to the point where we are exhausted, sad, and cynical. I have been all of these things in ministry, but it will not be Youth Adventure Lunches’ fault. 😉
We did large-church ministry and instituted Youth Adventure Slushies and Heidi Makes Waffles because that’s what we could afford with a large group. After the wrecking of Covid-19, we came back to small-church ministry, intentionally. My own small children are now teens and young adults. We usually have one other family, sometimes two, that want to study and learn in youth group. Blessed be the return of Youth Adventure Lunch.
In our world, as we still recover from the wrecking of Covid-19 and adjusting to changing numbers in church, most of us need both a quiet place to rest in Christ Jesus, and also youth ministry that doesn’t further ask us to bleed out for the sake of Christ Jesus. After all, Christ has suffered and died to save the world. Bleeding and dying is not my role for the Gospel, I truly believe God will let me know if He decides differently. Rather, practicing the “withness” of the Gospel, walking alongside, creating a rhythm where I can, of connection and living Hope through the words and presence of Christ in me.
Youth Adventure Lunch is only an idea, a brainstorm, a small gift maybe, but it speaks Isaiah 41:8-10 into me as I speak God’s Word into our young people. Maybe it will do the same for you:
But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham my friend,
I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
You are the Abraham and the Jacob in this sometimes barren land. Just because there are only a few, remember: that doesn’t mean that you are forgotten. God upholds, God strengthens, and God gives the strangest and the simplest of ideas in all of the starts and stops of small church youth ministry.
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