Equipping Without Burdening
Lately, I have been thinking through how to talk to children/youth about difficult things and I have come to the decision that (probably due to lack of experience) it is hard to know what to disclose. I normally err on the side of caution and perhaps I don’t say enough but I hope not to a fault.
So I kind of see my role with the youth as this. I see them now in the younger part of their lives preparing for a journey/voyage/hike and I want to give them all they will need for the trip. You know the things looking back I wish someone would have equipped me with, or the stuff that was given to me that I found most useful. The challenge for me is knowing my place and knowing how much or how little. I don’t want to over step boundaries established by parents and I don’t want to burden someone with more then they need. So again help me with boundaries.
[Update] After chatting with Broken Pastor about this, I decided to add a little bit more to my analogy of preparing for a journey. Instead of a one time packing I get to hang with the youth for a couple of years so I can give them a morsel and see how they take it and if they need more then I can give them more. It needs to be more of an ongoing relationship then a one time “here’s your stuff”. Thoughts?
Kind of another analogy, the one I’ve used for years – As some people regularly recognize, we’re in the middle of a war, a very real war, only a small portion of which we can actually see, though everyone is affected by it continually. There is no “our turf” vs. “their turf”; we don’t have “bases” – at best, we have little “safe houses”, where we can rest a little while we still hear the crack of gunfire and marching of troops just outside.
I think you’re exactly right. Our responsibility is not to teach them a few little stories and anecdotes, hand them a few “how-to” formulas, and say “Jesus loves you! Have a nice life!” We have to form long-term relationships, thinking less of the children they are today and more of the friends and co-workers that they will be in a ***very*** short time.
This is the world we are *in*. This is the world the kids and youth are *in*. We’re not going to be “sending” them out into it; they’re already there. They are experiencing the effects of living in a war zone, not just when they walk outside, but every time they get online or turn on the TV.
In physical war zones, we hear about children learning from an early age how to navigate minefields and hide from the enemy, and we hear about far worse things. If the physical war is just a mild overflow from the spiritual war, how then should we envision the effect it’s having on the children we’ve been given responsibility over? If we, as adults, saw what we knew to be tanks and enemy troops on the streets outside our homes, what, when the children ask “what are those? who are they?”, what will we tell them?
All that being said – to return to my point – I see the work we do with children and youth not as preparing to send them out, but as training them to come up along side, and to take our place on the line. We’re not drill instructors in some kind of holy boot camp – we’re doing OJT with those who will be getting our backs, holding the line with us, going out with us as brothers and sisters and co-labourers, not as we go into enemy territory, but as we walk through enemy territory every day, seeking out those we can bring over to the resistance, to know and serve our King.
That ups the urgency level a bit.
Now, to relate that to what you said…
And when it comes to the “difficult” things, I think we need to keep in mind, they are already burdened. They were born burdened, as we all are, and its only going to get worse, as it did for us all. The fact that we are called to share each other’s burdens is something I’ve been learning only now, and I wish I had learned it much sooner. Its a hard lesson, taught and learned through action, and one that only the Holy Spirit, working through us *and* them, can bring to fruition.
So, if we make these things functional, if we focus on relationships, with our brothers and sisters be they younger, older, or our own age, things like “what to say” and “how to say it” are going to happen naturally.
And, it just smacked me quite squarely in the face – Just another topic that boils down to “Relationship”. Is it just me, or does everything eventually come down to a Relationship? With God, with our spouses, with our friends, with our students, with our acquaintances, with non-Christians; Love God, love each other, bottom line. Oh yeah, Jesus said that. Maybe one day…
I really see my work with youth as coming along side them as they are processing the world they live in. A Gospel perspective is SO different than the one that they’re living every day in. As I struggle to be in the Word and apply the hope that is found only in trusting in Christ to my own heart I find that leading out of weakness is the only way I can lead with honesty.
The youth group kids I know really understand their need because they can see that there are people they don’t love well (we can usually pick and choose who we invest in-they are surrounded daily by people who they don’t want to reach out to or even speak kindly to). When we start with our own need and begin to help kids see that their only hope is Christ then we’re offering true hope. Its too easy to offer our methods to handle life-to offer our own idolatry to help them cope. Its so much harder to engage a broken world and teach kids how to approach that brokenness with the hope that only knowing the love of Christ can bring. I’m sure that I don’t do it very well-but its what I long for in my own life and seek to bring to the kids I work with.