Burying the Lead

Students can be incredibly hard to reach. I mean really reach. They’ll be your friend. They’ll talk to you. They’ll even let you develop a perception that you’ve reached them on a deep level…but you haven’t.

My truck was in the shop recently and a colleague picked me up and gave me a ride to the office. En route we drove by a large high school. In talking about it we both instinctively said, “I do NOT miss high school!” Honestly, it was pretty awful. Middle school wasn’t much better. High school is hard, so in order to protect themselves students build up various levels of walls to keep the big scary world out.

As youth ministers we have to climb over the monumental fact that we’re not students with them. We’re not their peers. As much as why try to be “relevant” or “on their level,” at the end of the day we’re still just another adult vying for their attention and claiming the authority to speak into their lives. Once you work, and invest in the relationship, and lose hours at lock-ins and online playing CoD, and sitting in the bleachers cheering at football games, there are still just some areas that won’t let you through. There are just some gates you can’t get past.

And then, usually you have no idea that it’s coming, a student will come up to you and share something spiritually amazing that’s happened in their lives…and they thank you, sometimes you hug, sometimes there are tears. You really have to treasure those moments. And I do. I write about them in my journal. I have a file for things that students hand to me. I even keep scrapbooks of ministries I’ve worked with in the past. All of those things are an important part of keeping your sanity in ministry.

All of that being said, I kind of always thought those moments were amazing, but just an unexplainable mystery of the greatness of God. I mean, how we can get over the disparity of our stations in life, somehow sneak past their defenses and then find amazing rewards…and, maybe I’m burying the lead here, then I read this:

Isaiah 45:2-3

I will go before you
    and will level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
    and cut through bars of iron.
³ I will give you hidden treasures,
    riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who summons you by name.