Planting seeds of hope with youth ministry

Youth ministry, for me, has been one surprise after another.  Even being involved in youth ministry in the first place was a surprise; I was asked one Sunday by a couple of the moms of St James if I'd be willing to lead the youth group because "we think you'd be really good at it."  Now, I'm probably too easily swayed by flattery, but I also think I heard the Spirit calling in those moms.  

I feel that the two places where I hear God speak to me most often are through books and through the words of other people.  I've learned from my good friend Dr. Shanon Sterringer (a truly Spirit-filled person in her own right) that if you pay attention, "God moments" happen constantly.  I know I experience those God moments in abundance when I'm with my youth group.

Recently, we had an overnight lock-in at St James for the youth to celebrate the end of the school year.  It was mostly an opportunity to hang out together and have fun - playing games, making art, and eating pizza.  The following morning we walked to the local coffee shop and sat and talked for a while.  Somehow the conversation turned to climate change, and I could hear the anxiety that the kids felt over what's happening in our environment today.  I also heard frustration at the way that many adults have handled the issue.  I decided, as we talked, that we should do something as a group to help our own little patch of creation.  So, at some point this summer, we plan to have a beach clean-up day, and we want to collect plastic bottles to make ecobricks that can be used to build things.

Do I think that cleaning up one beach on the shore of the smallest of the Great Lakes is going to make a huge difference in climate change? No.  But I think that it's important for us as a group to combat the fear and the tendency to despair at current conditions by doing something, no matter how small.  Maybe I need the reminder myself just as much, if not more, than the kids do.

"You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes."  That's a quote from 15-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.  Greta is the same age as some of the girls in my youth group.  When I hear these kids talk about the future, and about how they want to make a difference, they fill me with hope.  They themselves may not feel hopeful much of the time, and I don't blame them.  The world they stand to inherit seems to become more of a hopeless mess every day.  But they are standing up and speaking out.  They are working hard in school now so that they can get to a place in adulthood where they can make changes.  

I think "gen Z" has a lot more compassion than they get credit for.  When a young person is bullied so badly that they feel they have no alternative but to die by suicide, I often hear comments about how cruel kids can be.  What you hear less often is about the kids who try to help, the ones who reach out to those who are hurting.  I know I'll never forget hearing about the kids who decorated the locker of 13-year-old Autumn Issa, a victim of relentless bullying and suicide, only to have the memorial taken down by the administration a day later because it looked like they were "condoning bad behavior."  

The "bad behavior" in this case was the bullying, and the adults who did nothing to stop it.  Suicide is NOT a bad behavior.  It is a response to pain and despair.  Maybe we need to look at the reasons why such young people are deciding, in greater numbers than ever, that they have nothing to live for.  Maybe we need to seriously look at the world they're going to get, and start giving them reasons to have hope.  Why should we expect children to be nice to each other on social media when we often don't hold adults (including our current president) to the same standard?  Why should we expect them to clean up all the messes of the previous generations and not complain about it?

I thought, when I first started doing youth ministry, that I had to have all kinds of ideas for activities, lesson plans, and service projects.  Instead I've found that more often than not, what I really needed to do was sit back and listen.  Maybe I should have realized this from my home life, since I have a 14 year old sister living with me who always wants to "hang out", but never seems to have any particular activity in mind.  Mostly, what she wants to do with me is drive around, listen to music and talk.  I'm learning to get over my frustration at not having some kind of concrete plans and instead just going with the flow.  That seems to be how the Spirit likes to work.

Now, don't get me wrong; I still make plans with youth group.  We plan lots of projects, and I really do want to instill a sense of spirituality and closeness to God in them somehow with the things that we do.  But I think right now, even just the fact that they like showing up and being together is a great sign.  My youth group wants to continue meeting over the summer, even though other groups that meet during Christian Education hour are on break for the season.  I was told recently by one parishoner how much she enjoyed hearing so much laughter at church again.  There's a sense of joy coming from these kids that's starting to affect others around them.  We may not have many young people in our church, but the ones we do have are actually enjoying being there.  

Over the past few years, as the news seems to get worse and worse, I've thought to myself that what we need, somehow, is an "epidemic of hope".  I think that phrase first came to me when I heard the story of the "hundredth monkey phenomenon".  The story goes that a group of monkeys being studied in Japan in the 1950s learned to wash their food, and once a certain number of them learned the trait (100), it began to spread to other groups of monkeys on other islands that had never interacted with the original group.  Although the "critical mass" theory behind it has been debunked, the original study of monkeys that it was based on did have an interesting result: 

"The monkeys referred to are indeed remarkable. They are Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), which line in wild troops on several islands in Japan. They have been under observation for years. During 1952 and 1953 the primatologists began "provisioning" the troops - providing them with such foods as sweet potatoes and wheat. The food was left in open areas, often on beaches. As a result of this new economy, the monkeys developed several innovative forms of behavior. One of these was invented in 1953 by an 18-month-old female that the observers named "Imo." Imo was a member of the troop on Koshima island. She discovered that sand and grit could be removed from the sweet potatoes by washing them in a stream or in the ocean. Imo's playmates and her mother learned this trick from Imo, and it soon spread to other members of the troop. Unlike most food customs, this innovation was learned by older monkeys from younger ones. In most other matters the children learn from their parents." (Ron Amundson, Skeptical Inquirer).

I think the better metaphor then, is not an "epidemic" but "planting a seed".  We can plant seeds of hope, which require patience and work on our part in order for them to grow to fruition.  And, like in the case of the macaques, maybe if the younger generation starts doing it, the older ones will learn from them.  

God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals.  Help them to take failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance for a new start.  Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation: through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  ~ Prayer for Young Persons, BCP 829.