To be completely honest… I have never been into youth ministry.
I wasn't really into youth ministry when I WAS a youth. Of course, I went to youth group, I loved mission trips, and I had GREAT youth ministers. But most youth ministry focuses heavily on being social, doing things as a group, and I wasn't really into that. I also disliked feeling like programs, lessons, etc. were "targeted for my age group"--the best times I had as a youth were the times when I went to retreats and the preachers didn't talk down to us, or went on mission trips and used power tools, or had a small group Bible study on Micah. Essentially, when I wasn't being treated like a kid.
I never attended a Montreat youth conference, though I've more than made up for that with the number I worked while on summer staff there. If I'd had, I would have been the kid that LOVED worship and keynote and never went to the recreational events, the "fun activities" planned for afternoon and evening times. Indeed, when I was at Montreat as a Worship and Music youth conferee, I skipped the "Fun and Games" class on my schedule, and stayed at home, or out by the lake, while my parents went to the evening Talent show.
In the last two weeks, I was plunged into the deep end of youth ministry. I spent those weeks at Montreat--NOT as summer staff, however. I was a small group leader.
Here's the breakdown of how Montreat Youth Conferences work:
You come with a group of youth and adult chaperones from your home church, generally living together in either a hotel or a house. We call this group your "back home group" and the chaperones are the "back home leaders".
You attend two main events in Anderson Auditorium (the Aud) each day. The morning event is keynote, which is a longer message about the topics of the day (that correspond to the larger theme of the week). It starts off with the recreation (rec) leaders leading energizers (the strangest tradition of the Presbyterian church ever which involves everyone bursting into synchronized dances), the music leaders leading music, and then segways into the keynote itself. In the evening, you attend worship in the Aud.
In the evening, after worship, and in the afternoon, around 3:30, are recreation events which are themed, fun activities.
But a good chunk of your day is spent in small group, which means just after keynote, and just after lunch (before afternoon rec). You are randomly assigned to a small group, and, unless your back home group is really big, you generally are not in small group with anyone you came to Montreat with. So the idea is to put you into a group with people you don't know so that you can meet new people and discuss the ideas being presented through the conference with people who have different opinions and experiences than you. Small group is part games/activities, part discussion, part Bible study, and small group leaders are volunteers who come down for however many weeks they can/want to. Many small group leaders are teachers, or pastors, or retired pastors, or youth ministers, or church workers… and then there's, like… me. Also someone who did it with me who was a lawyer. Additionally, I was one of the back home leaders for the few individually registered youth (who didn't come with a group) for the first week. So I suddenly went from having next to nothing to do with youth ministry to being an authority figure helping to ensure high schoolers learned a little more about God and also went to bed on time.
It was at times overwhelming, at times terrifying, but always and overall thrilling, rewarding, and eye-opening. It was exhausting in the best way, and I learned so much and hope to do it again next summer.
I learned SO MUCH from the youth who were in my groups, and I'm sure I'll be telling stories about them for years to come. But right now, there's one specific story I want to share about how I grew up a bit in these weeks.
I don't think anyone here has a hard time guessing my political stance. I am quite liberal, politically and theologically, and have been living in a happy liberal artistic bubble for the past six years in New York City. And I said to myself before I went down to Montreat that I wanted to show a gospel of inclusion, of God loving everyone. I didn't have to get deep into the politics of it, but that was my message.
My small group for week 1 was a very intellectual one. They asked a lot of questions about church history and theology, and I was kept afloat completely because of the suggested reading I am doing for seminary right now. In one session, we got onto the subject of the New Covenant and why is it Christians don't follow the laws written in the Old Testament about eating pork, etc? This opened the door a bit to the larger question of Biblical validity, which we didn't get to in the small group session, but afterwards one of the youth came up to me and asked one of those incredibly smart, ultimately unanswerable questions, about how much of the Bible we should keep and how much we don't particularly pay attention to anymore, and how do we know what to do? We talked briefly about homosexuality, as an example of the issue nowadays--most Christians have decided to leave the Leviticus scriptures out of the argument, but keep the Pauline passages in play. We've now also said, for the most part, that women are okay to lead in church, but Paul was against that as well. How do we figure this out?
And another example he asked about, specifically, was about "needing to be a Christian to go to heaven," that Christ said, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through me," which is traditionally interpreted as, "Christianity is the only way to heaven," and he said, "It says that, and I know a lot of people who ignore that because they have non-Christian friends and it makes them uncomfortable, but can we really do that?"
And standing there, I wanted to say, "No, the passage doesn't necessarily mean that, if you put it in conversation with parts of 1 John." Standing there, I thought, "I don't believe that, I cannot reconcile that belief with the image of God throughout the scriptures as a loving one." Standing there, I even thought, "Post-death salvation isn't the point, we need to work together towards the kingdom on Earth." I had all the answers I'd learned in that liberal bubble, and then I realized that I could not, in good conscience, say any of them. I couldn't proselytize.
So I explained a bit of the other viewpoint, saying, "The argument on the other side of that text is that if God is love, that really means no one comes to the Father but through love." But then I paused and said something to the effect of, "But no matter what, there is no easy answer to these questions. The important thing is that we continue to ask the questions, and continue to engage and talk with others who don't necessarily think the same way as us."
And you know? There was a part of me that said, "No! Convert him to your way of seeing things! Get him on our side!" Because that's so often how we see it, on both sides of things, liberal or conservative. But as long as well continue to see things as an us vs. them situation, the more divided and extreme the world is going to get. Can we be big enough to release the idea that no one has to "win", but instead we can learn from and challenge each other? I know there are things in the Bible that I prefer to ignore because it's inconvenient, and if I don't listen long enough for someone to remind me to grapple with them, it's my own loss.
The youth I met over the past two weeks were some of the most open-minded people I have ever encountered, because they truly listen to all viewpoints. My response was inspired by them and I hope to live into it.
