An invitation to belong
I vividly remember my first night of programming at my church. It was the fall of 2008, just weeks after both the school year and my job had begun.
I was a 28 year old youth worker with 7 years experience who, going into that evening, strongly believed that I knew what I was doing and that in my infinite wisdom, I had planned the perfect program.
Until, that is, kids started arriving.
Within minutes, despite my best efforts to stop it, the seniors began to thwart my plan for the night and dominate the room’s space, making it unwelcome and even hostile for anyone not connected to them.
I felt that hostility as an adult.
Knowing that broke my heart because I knew that while I’d be back, the freshmen wouldn’t be. Not with that atmosphere.
That experience has continued to shaped much of my current ministry and in the last three years, changing this environment has been one of my top priorities. As a result, our ministry has become more and more welcoming to people each year.
Despite this, there’s still a disconnect between our junior high and high school students. We still lose a LOT of students when they enter high school and graduate from confirmation. Regrettably, many of the students we lose are ones that never even give our high school ministry a chance. Some avoid it because they believe it’s still unwelcoming. Others literally don’t even know a high school ministry exists at our church.
For these reasons, this year my church has taken a number of steps to more proactively connect our confirmands with our high school students. Our efforts culminated last night when our high school ministry hosted an orientation for those students who’ll be freshmen next year.
From the get-go, last night was not about the high school kids. It was about our incoming freshmen. It was about getting to know them and about making them feel welcome so that they’ll return in the fall. And last night, my high school students did this exceedingly well.
They listened – intently – as incoming freshmen shared about themselves. They stepped out of their comfort zones to welcome new people – some of whom were very different from them. They stopped focusing on themselves and instead focused entirely on a new group of students. They became awkward so that the newbies didn’t have to. And they led in a way that I’m not sure I’ve seen these kids lead before. Last night, my students led – not from a position of power but as servants, out of love.
I saw this time and time again last night, including at the very end of the night when one of my students shared about how she came as a freshmen to check things out but had such an awful first night (her first night was also my first night) that she didn’t really want to come back. A friend forced her too and she quickly got hooked. Today, our ministry is an important part of her life because it’s here that she found God. It’s also here that she’s formed real friendships with people, friendships that are so deep that she finds them difficult to describe to others. She went on to say that what she’s experienced in our high school ministry has been true communion – community with Christ at its center.
As this student talked, you felt as though she wasn’t describing an exclusive community. That instead, she was inviting you to join it; To come and experience what she’s experienced.
Hers was a powerful story that became an even more powerful invitation to belong – an invitation that I’m pretty sure the high school students have never before issued to the younger students at my church.
As I listened I couldn’t help but think about how far these students have come in three years and about how much our ministry’s atmosphere has changed as a result. In fact, it’s changed so much that I’m pretty sure that if the original seniors from my very first night returned, they wouldn’t recognize it.
Yet, I suspect that even they would now be welcomed.
