I used to think that most status updates and Twitter feeds were pretty insignificant. Who cares, after all, if on Friday at 5:02 you were stuck in traffic but were looking forward to the weekend?
A few weeks ago, though, I thought I’d scroll through my youth group’s status updates even if it meant swimming through a deep sea of endless “I love you”s between a boyfriend and girlfriend and reports on who’s house so-and-so were headed to.
It ended up being more difficult than I could have imagined. The annoyingly excessive PDA ended up fading into the background while the emotions, problems, and misplaced hope jumped off the screen. I hadn’t expected that.
One of my kids posted about feeling depressed several times. Another about plans to go out to a wild party. Still another constantly exposed an apparent idolatry of her boyfriend. Where had I been for all this? And why was MySpace the one to clue me in?
The truth is, the blame rests solely on me. For whatever reason, I stopped talking to my kids, stopped seeking them after class, even stopped caring when I knew they needed help. I became completely apathetic toward them. No wonder they didn’t take me up on invitations to talk whenever they needed to. No wonder I never got phone calls when something important happened.
I though I was fulfilling my responsibilities as their teacher simply by having a new class installment ready each week. I stopped caring about their specific needs for guidance and put an end to my availability for more personal teaching.
I let my ministry to 11-13 year old kids focus on just the mechanical part: investing hours in preparing class, showing up to church, giving class. I paid no attention to the actual people I was trying to reach.
Ministry shouldn’t be mechanical. Ministry shouldn’t ignore the people being ministered. I learned that lesson and now I’m trying to figure out how to better help the kids understand the gospel and all things necessary for their salvation. I think a big part of it will be spending time with them individually, explaining how Biblical principles apply even to them and the problems they face. I hope that after a while of helping them in that way, things will get better.
2 comments:
That's awesome! I work with 6-8 graders at my church. God has convicted me over and over that I must love them more than I teach them.
Lots of wisdom here in this post. It's easy to get caught up in completing lessons and checking off lists and forget to actually embrace the people. Thanks for sharing. I discovered your blog via the Christian woman bloggers network.
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