A few years ago I stumbled out of bed at 5:30 AM during a leadership conference for teenagers. I had risen at such a ridiculous hour because I knew that the teens I had brought with me would all soundly be sleeping until 7:30 AM, which is when the female chaperone and I would wake them up with an air horn. I pulled on a retreat t-shirt, gym shorts, and a baseball hat and wiped away the eye boogers that had developed during my three hours of sleep on my “luxury” dorm room mattress. I walked
I knew a youth minister who literally worked inside of a closet. Sure, it had been “renovated,” but it didn’t alter the fact that his ministry was based out of a “former” closet. It was the kind of closet that makes a person long for a cubicle; it still smelled like toilet bowl cleaner and that stuff you use to clean up tile floor when a kid tosses his cookies post-dodgeball game.
Maybe it’s because these games immediately evoke a reaction – be it laughter or gagging – from a sometimes apathetic and lethargic group of teenagers. Maybe it’s because we are able to relate the caramel onion to the reality of sin; it may look good but it’s actually disgusting. Or maybe it’s just because after a week of parent phone calls, late permission slips, and teens texting through an entire teaching . . . a disgusting icebreaker is our way of saying, “I win.”
I remember the day I really became a youth minister. It was a cool, fall morning in Wisconsin, and as I rolled out of bed at 11:45 AM and like a zombie walked toward my closet, my heavy eyes searched for some daily attire. I pulled out a t-shirt. “Come Alive – Retreat 2011.” And then another, “Rooted – Summer Camp 2009.” A third retreat, “Jesus is a friend of mine” – Youth Group 1997.” And then a fourth, fifth, and sixth. It had officially happened; the volume
Every four months something glorious happened at my parish. I would unsuspectingly enter the youth ministry office in the morning to find something that would radically redefine the next several months. Amidst the piles of permission forms, half-written talks, and empty boxes of pizza it appeared like a colorful beacon of hope in an otherwise dreary and cluttered office:
The Life Support Box (cue angelic choir).