My Real Job Description

High School Ministries is all about embracing the unique season of life that a teenager lives in. They’re faced with having to try on adulthood; they’re becoming responsible for their own decisions, schedules and futures. They push for this development and can’t wait for the next steps. Teenagers always want to be on their own and see what comes next. But at the same time, they still long to be kids. They want to be carefree and play. This is the beautifully bizarre mix of a high school student’s world; they’re trapped between childhood and adulthood.

This sense of being “stuck” provides tremendous opportunity to connect with high school students. My ministry gets to step into this “stuck” world and help them develop mature, thoughtful, adult faith. I get to help them navigate the difficult questions that have no easy answers, and they get to do that in a place where they feel known and loved enough to admit that they don’t know what to think. At the same time, I get to help them play. They get space to remember that in some ways, they don’t need to be adults quite yet. Just as this space is safe for them to wrestle with faith, it is safe for them to be themselves and they are free to play. In this way, they build deep relationships with each other and with more seasoned people who feel responsible for our teenagers’ development.

As I reflect on the joys and difficulties of working with teenagers, I often think of the words Eddie Gibbs said at my church a few years ago. He said, “It is the responsibility of the spiritually mature to make sacrifices for the development of the immature.” I hesitate to put myself into the “mature” category or high school students into the “immature” one, but I know this: it has been a joy to sacrifice in order to have the opportunity to stand with them in their in-between world.