the    sides

I didn’t intend to go this far down the rabbit hole but here we are. I’ve decided to walk through the aftermath of my first meeting at Grace for a couple of reasons. First, as we form a brand new team here it’ll serve as some teaching points. Second, it’s healing. Third, the purpose of my life my be as a warning to others.

You don’t do something like this and not have some fallout…or in this case - nuclear winter. There were two more sides of the fallout to be played out and with it a cruel lesson in Southern Church Culture that everybody seem to forgot to mention in seminary.

The first side to fallout was the volunteer side. You know, it’s okay to be clueless as to how do something. That’s why we have Google. It’s okay to not be good at something - that’s why we practice. It’s even okay to be clueless, not good at something and not know it. But it’s never okay to be clueless, not good at something, not know it, AND refuse to listen to anybody else. That was exactly about to happen with our volunteer team.

As luck would have it, we had 2 meetings already planned for the next week - a student “leader” meeting and an adult volunteer meeting. The student meeting started with introductions and immediately one of the “leader” kids who got up and left on the previous Wednesday night asked “So are you now going to blow this leadership team up?” It was a fair question even if he didn’t ask it very nicely.

“Depends. Can you tell me why you exist? Who are you leading and where are you taking them? And what exactly were the criteria used to determine that the people in this room were leaders?”

And the crickets came out. I never thought a room full of teenagers could get that quiet. Finally, one adult said - “These were the only students to show up to our meetings when we asked for student leaders.”

“Let me guess, free pizza was served, right?” (Was I funny? Yes. Accurate? Yes. Was it necessary? No. Neither was it helpful.) I continued.

“Tell you what - write out your answers to those questions and I’ll see you here next Sunday to discuss your answers. Now, let’s go eat.”

“But we are here to plan stuff.”

“This week plan on answering those questions then we’ll see what we’ll plan next.”

The adult volunteer meeting in my house later that week would not be nearly as quick or as civil. Looking back - the conflict was inevitable. I had a vision for adults equipping students to lead small groups. My idea of a youth volunteer was someone who disciples teens. Wasting adult insight and experience on cooks, chaperons, and chauffeurs is exactly that - a waste. I want students to rub shoulders with someone who is crazy in love with Jesus. Sure, we will cook, chaperon, and chauffeur but that is NOT what student ministry is.

In front of me sat a room full of adults that believed student ministry was being the behavior police and staying as busy as we could. I show up and ask - tell me what students you are discipling. I not only was demanding MORE from them, I was demanding something that they (even if they wanted to) could not give. The truth of the matter was that most of them had never been discipled. I was completely turning their world upside down and we were both shocked at each other as to how clueless the other one was.

Everyone involved made mistakes. I assumed that everyone was on board for this change. After all the questionnaires, the meetings, the interviews, and them taking over a year to find a youth pastor - I assumed the elders had been walking through with parents and volunteers what they were looking for and why they were changing philosophies and direction. I assumed that they all recognized how sick their student ministry was and were eager to change that. I assumed that they all WANTED to be there and that they were called to student ministry. I assumed that the student ministry wasn’t as bad as the elders had made it out to be. They had close to a hundred kids showing up. How bad could it be? MAJOR MISTAKES on my part.

On the other hand, the volunteers refused to see their legacy for what it really was. Disrespectful students, no missions emphasis, no new believers, and no servant-leader students investing in the Kingdom into college and beyond. There were no life change stories of how God was changing and impacting their student’s lives. On top of that - MOST of the volunteers never engaged with a student - they would stand in the back of the room and visit. Most of them were the “last hold-outs” of the church split that had just happened before I got there. I would later find out that there were other holdouts in more influential places - but that’s a little later in the story.

So we unpack all of these issues in my living room. We rewind and tell our stories, our perspectives to try to get back in step. I then walk through what it means to disciple a student. I talk expectations and promises we need to make to each other. The importance of reproducing spiritual leaders and releasing teens to impact their world and how we do that together, in community.

Then the light bulb went on in one of the volunteer’s mind. “You sound just like Mark Schatzman. That’s why they hired you.”

My first thought was - “Well, duh.” Mark Schatzman was the Directional Leader. And just the year before the church went through a split because they had a staff divided. So it makes complete sense to hire people that want to go in the same direction as you. Obviously, this was a new concept to some of these people.

I did a lot of listening. I listened to their concerns and frustrations - how they didn’t WANT to change or didn’t even know if they could change. I listened (again) to all the reasons why student-led life groups wouldn’t work and how many students would walk out the door if we do this. I listened for a long time. When it was all over, the facts were this:

1. The Elders thought this was the call of God on Grace Church.
2. I thought this was the call of God of how student ministry should be done.
3. I was in the position of leadership, placed there by both calling and hiring.

The bigger question for all of us - me included - was this: did we trust God enough to at the very least give this an honest, God-honoring try AND choose to love each other and trust each other in the middle of it?

For all but about 5 of them, the answer was no.

At the time I thought - well, the good news is I don’t have to worry about a slow and steady pace of change and it can’t really get any worse.

I was wrong.