Loving God

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

To love God is “the first and greatest commandment,” so one would think that this is would be, alongside loving others, the most important priority we have in youth ministry.

But what does it actually mean?

When I met Christ, and was starting to grow in my understanding of what that actually looked like, I remember singing songs and even memorizing verses about loving God. And, frankly, I don’t remember feeling very comforted by much of it.

I wanted to love God, but I didn’t know how. I loved my parents (especially in retrospect), and I (kind of) loved my siblings. But that was sort of under the radar of the “supposed to” kind of love I was learning about in church.

What I did know is I loved my dog, I loved to play drums and basketball. I loved the feeling I got when a girl paid attention to me, or when a coach noticed that I had done something right for a change. I also loved driving fast with John Tuttle (and, truth be told, I loved my friend John, but, again, it wasn’t something I thought about… it just felt good to hang out).

But “love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind?” Although I wasn’t that great at English, I knew that this was something it was my job to do.

As I’ve gotten older I have a little more understanding of what love is and means and looks like (I’ve been married to my only love for 31 years, and that’s been a great theological laboratory). And I also have come to recognize that my loving God is actually as organic and natural as breathing, as we seek to know and trust Jesus. It is not so much about me and us loving him, but that he has first loved me, and us. Perhaps we need to help kids to see this, and to learn what it means to rest in this truth.

I am so glad we’re talking about loving God in this issue of Youthworker Journal (coming out in January, 2012). I hope you will be, too.

SLP daily blog -final days

The Student Leadership Project (or SLP), the 8 year Lilly Endowment-funded partnership of Young Life and Fuller Seminary. 37 high school rising seniors from across the country, hand-picked, personally chosen and nominated for leadership gifts and calling.

Tuesday, Day Nine
Last night was one of the highlights of the entire SLP experience. After our day of rest and play, and conversation and reflection, we gathered for our last Young Life club where we sang with such gusto the camp staff came sneaking into the back trying to get a glimpse at the “choir”. Our crescendo moment came when several of our African-American student leaders taught us the song We are blessed that they had learned at a YL urban camp the year before. We sang and sang like it was our last night on earth. Following club, we ended our last night in the southern California mountains with an old-fashioned camp fire and “Say so” gathering where most of our community shared what God had been doing in their lives since they had arrived. There was laughter, and tears, but mostly sober expressions of honesty and pain and hope and gratitude. A powerful reminder of why we do this program: kids need a safe place to be real, to go deep, and to bring the package of where they have been and who they are to the Lord. In community, where there is love and faith, hope reigns.

Tuesday was our last time in the mountains, and after breakfast and devotional reflections and prayer triads, the student leaders filled out their end-of-experience surveys (that we use as a pre- and post-test instrument to get one slice of outcome data as we seek to improve our work). Following this, one of our young women shared an original song, others taught us a song, we heard from a leader (most of the in-room leaders had shared their story at our gatherings along the way), and received a wrap-up message on going home from Dr. Cliff Anderson.

Late Tuesday afternoon we returned to Pasadena for our last night. Beginning with a banquet meal at Twin Palms, we finished our night with an interactive worship/community time where we first reflected on Hebrews 11, sang a few songs, and then had the opportunity for the next hour and a half to move in and out of five “stations”: communion (or “community meal” for some of the traditions represented), private confession with a symbolic cleansing of their hands, the lighting of a candle of dedication and the giving of a personal blessing, being sent out with the anointing of oil, and an art station where the student leaders could express themselves through a variety of artistic modes. This lasted deep into the night, and following our closing song at 12:20 or so, we took the next 45 minutes to clean up and say our goodbyes.

On Wednesday, the Day Ten of this report, but actually our eleventh day together, the SLP student leaders and staff headed home to begin the next phase of the project: to carry on in mostly virtual community while being mentored and cared for along the next five years. We hope to see each and every one take at least one Fuller class, but our greatest goal is that they would know what it means to follow Christ and live for him, leaning forward into his kingdom, and trust him to lead, shape, forgive, and guide them along the journey. That’s SLP, 2009.

SLP daily blog Day Eight

The Student Leadership Project (or SLP), the 8 year Lilly Endowment-funded partnership of Young Life and Fuller Seminary. 37 high school rising seniors from across the country, hand-picked, personally chosen and nominated for leadership gifts and calling.

Monday, Day Eight
As we look to wrap up our SLP 09 experience, our morning was filled with exploring what it means to follow Christ when we so often fail, get discouraged, and sometimes even slip away. Our search brought us into the book of Galatians, and especially the fifth chapter, where Paul reminds us that it is faith, or trust in God, that when coupled with waiting on the Spirit produces the “righteousness for which we hope.” Typically Christians focus on trying to “be righteous” by being good and worthy and consistent to the rules and norms we’ve been taught. It is so easy to live as though God were folding his arms waiting for us to “get with” the demands of the Gospel. But Paul turns that thinking upside down when we read Galatians 5:5. Our job is to trust and wait, his job is to change us into the men and women we are called to be. And the outcome? There is only one that concerns our Father: love (Galatians 5:6, “…the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”).

With rapt attention and personal reflection, our student leaders and staff community wrestled with the specific areas or issues where we do not, or at least struggle with, trust Christ. This now defines the journey we are all on as leaders: hearing and heeding the call of the Holy Spirit who draws our attention to whatever would steal our abandoned trust in the lion of Judah, our king. Working through what I call “regular spiritual disciplines” as followers of Christ (worship, prayer, scripture, community, giving and justice) and other “proven” historical spiritual disciplines of the people of God, like fasting, contemplation, solitude, etc., we are more readily aligned with the Spirit who is at work within us.

Heady concepts for high school rising seniors, but our student leaders really wanted to know what it could mean to learn how to lean into the kingdom of God versus wallowing in the muck of guilt from the past or the bandage of failure and discouragement in the present. Our student leaders are preparing to go home, and to enter into a whole new way of living for Jesus Christ and serving him and his kingdom. Today they’ve gotten the teaching, reflected on the scripture, and this afternoon and evening now present the opportunity to work through it all in community.

SLP daily blog Day Six

The Student Leadership Project (or SLP), the 8 year Lilly Endowment-funded partnership of Young Life and Fuller Seminary. 37 high school rising seniors from across the country, hand-picked, personally chosen and nominated for leadership gifts and calling.
Saturday, Day Six

Being in the mountains brings a whole new experience for our student leaders. Many have not spent much or any time in the mountains, and with towering pines and beautiful vistas all around us, spending time learning about and then practicing some of the ancient practices of the people of God (sometimes called “spiritual disciplines”), a fresh appreciation for God and his creation is beginning to emerge.

Our kids are now moving beyond superficial relationships into true friendships based on intimacy and trust. It is a beautiful thing to see, especially up here in the mountains where we have a special place just to ourselves. Guys and girls talking about their lives and stories and faith journeys. Students from different family backgrounds, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic communities are moving well beyond the stereotypes they have been taught to seeing each other as brothers and sisters before God.

SLP daily blog Day Five

The Student Leadership Project (or SLP), the 8 year Lilly Endowment-funded partnership of Young Life and Fuller Seminary. 37 high school rising seniors from across the country, hand-picked, personally chosen and nominated for leadership gifts and calling.

Friday, Day Five
Last night we headed into the heart of Westwood, CA to attend the Los Angeles Film Festival to see a documentary of youth and community empowerment called After the Storm. John and Ed Priddy, committed Christian who are filmmakers and good friends of Fuller Seminary, were key producers of the making of this film about a New York actor and producer who wanted to make a difference for people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by using local kids to star in an off-Broadway musical. Our student leaders met a few of the kids from the documentary and then toured a bit of Westwood (along with the throngs there for a Michael Jackson vigil). Check the film out at: http://www.priddybrothers.com/films/afterthestorm/.

Today after devotions and prayer triads we spent time teaching and discussing spiritual gifts and calling, then hit In-N-Out on the way to a secluded section of Thousand Pines Camp near Lake Arrowhead. Tonight we are playing wild games then gathering for a Young Life club meeting with testimony and message from Shelley Sadler, Special Assistant to the President of Young Life.

Student Leadership Project (SLP) - Day Two

The Student Leadership Project (or SLP), the 8 year Lilly Endowment-funded partnership of Young Life and Fuller Seminary. 37 high school rising seniors from across the country, hand-picked, personally chosen and nominated for leadership gifts and calling.

Tuesday, Day Two
The way kids are coming together after just one full day has been among the most profound we’ve seen. This is a very sharp and committed group of student leaders. Today we had a quiet time on the life of Mary, took some fun pictures for the website, and went into teaching on how the invention and development of “adolescence” has done a number on today’s kids. Helping the student leaders to see that God has created, redeemed and called them to live as chosen representatives of his kingdom, to recognize, nurture and embrace the power that comes with that calling, and to live in authentic community is the journey they’ve been on for years. Identity, autonomy and belonging is the quest of every adolescent (and adult!), and it is the same journey of faith that Christ is leading them through.

This afternoon we are serving at an inner city LA multi-ethnic church and finishing up with dinner and a Young Life club.