In youth ministry it is easy to get into the habit of sticking with what works, especially someone like me: I am afraid of change. My room in highschool never got rearranged. When my sister moved out to go to college, I had an opportunity to move into a bigger room – her room. I didn’t take it. My younger brother did.
But one of the greatest things I’ve done was one of the biggest acts of change in my life: I moved 600 miles from home to go to college. One of the hardest. But one of the greatest.
At youth, I got used to every week being the same – our youth event comes each week, and each week I speak. I got used to putting together talks. I got used to being “the face.” I got used to it all. And so did the kids. But this month has been incredible. We did something out of the ordinary. The month’s series was called “The Beauty in Story.” Every week a new adult volunteer would approach that scary stage with their story in hand. There they shared. They shared their life. And life is messy.
When God created the heavens and the earth, the bible tells us there was disorder – chaos. He spoke into creation an order among the chaos. When we look at our lives, it’s easy to notice the disorder – the chaos. It’s messy. But there is order created because of chaos existing in the first place. The lessons learned, the redemption, the healing – that’s the beauty in story. That’s God creating order in our chaos. So it’s still happening. Turns out that’s at the core of who He is.
For the kids listening, they were able to see a possiblity of order being created among their chaos. Turns out that telling our story may not need to be so scary after all.
I’ve seen so much fruit come of ordinary adults doing extraordinary things – but there’s the room for improvement. It’s too bad that sharing our story has become some extraordinary action, some special act that only some can do. But our world has made it hard with the lie it has bought into – that people will be repelled because of your story. The truth is the opposite. The truth is that those listening are drawn in. In the dark, shine bright your order-being-created-into-chaos. Like flies to a lamp in the deep of night, people come. They see that they aren’t so lost after all. They see that it is possible for beauty to come of it.
I’ve seen student/adult relationships go deeper than they’ve ever gone before, and you want to know the most humbling thing?
I had nothing to do with it.
Tell your story and watch God have everything to do with it.
