Youth ministry is an incredible mix of fun and gut-wrenching drama. In the same Sunday morning we get to talk to a trustee mad about another oddly-colored stain in the youth room carpet (who’s idea was carpet in a youth room anyway!) and a mother in tears because her thirteen year old is wanting to come to church again.
We know that it is better to not explain the game that caused the stain to the trustee or the new girlfriend to the mother because we have, in the words of the Matrix, been down that road. We know where it ends.
We live a life where we get to see the Holy Spirit consume the heart of a teen before our eyes at camp. We have the honor of guiding them through the healing pain of repentance and see the way God uses them as cities on a hill. We get to do all of this while eating more pizza than is healthy and getting free wardrobe updates via camp t-shirts.
It is in honor of this life that I have rewritten the popular 12 Days of Christmas as a celebration of the good bad and gross of Youth Ministry. Enjoy!
You know the tune… Sing it out: