Interesting Title huh? Well, I was reminded of it again this morning. Yes, there is a depressing side of youth work... And I'm not talking about the fact that Box beat me in ping pong again this week. That wasnt really depressing... It was fun! I had a blast losing to him.
With the formalities out of the way.. let me explain what Im talking about. Articles about youth work/workers put the average time that a youth leader spends at a particular church's youth group is 18 months. Personally, I think its a bit longer...maybe 3-4 years. In a Jr High setting 3 years is 2 full classes and 2 partial. Thats not bad. You get them through 7th and 8th grade...and they go on to the highschool group. While the 8th grade graduation Sunday was always a bit on the sad side.. I dont think this is the most depressing part...
In college, I was a short lived volunteer for Wild Life (The Jr high version of Young Life). But, back then .. college life was too important to me to be able to really build up relationships in the group. So, like I said, it was short lived. However, after I married Caty (The secondary Education teacher to-be). When we moved to Texas in Feb 1994, I talked to her about doing the Jr High group at the new church. She was all for it... So March of 1994, we became volunteer leaders. And the streak begun. Yes, it has been a long time, but thats not the depressing part either.
Having been doing this since 1994, I have a pretty .... unique take on Jr Highers. Simply because I had to, I could tell you all kinds of things about the Power Rangers (A cheap ripoff of the much better VOLTRON!). Hey, it was a big thing 10 years ago! Now, things are different ...and like computers.... everything really does change quite often. But, thats not the depressing part either.
What IS the depressing part? I know thats what you are asking... or at least my one reader (Hi Mom!) is asking by now. (Im sure you are baited now... I think thats some sort of speaking idea. Bait them in on the edge of their seats to make em listen! :) ) Well, I'm going to tell you... But, I have to tell you by what made me think of it this morning.
Needless to say, after almost 13 years of playing with Jr Highers, you tend to form ALOT of relationships. Its wierd to have "Jr Highers" with kids the same age as Marion. But, they do grow up .. go to high school...and college... and yeah..even get married. *Ugh I'm old!* My first youth group we worked with at Westlake Bible Church... when we started in 1994... on a Wednesday Night, we had 5 leaders... and 2 kids. It was in the process of ramping up with a great guy (Who I happen to have grown up with in Arizona) named David Sunukjian. Small World. He was there for 4 or 5 years... and was an awesome speaker like his dad, the Senior Pastor. Then he went off to seminary out in California (after he married one of the youth leaders.... Youth work does have its up-sides too!) Anyway, we grew to about 10 leaders (We were a pretty close group!) and about 80 Jr Highers. For two years, I had one group of guys that eventually became known as the RSS. Roger's Secret Service... it was said that they would take a bullet for me! LOL! I taught them to play Foosball and we played alot of Doom II Deathmatch at midnight. There are some stories there that are probably left for another blog. There were also quite a few gals that liked to hang out with me (I dunno why). One of my closest gals actually married one of my closest guys last December. (Happy One Year!) I've even been through one Jr Higher (that I was actually friends with long before Jr high cause she had older siblings) that died when she was 13.
What can I say.. I ramble. Anyway... so today I was getting on the computer and I pulled up my browser. I pulled down my favorites list... and saw one of my old Jr highers "MySpace" links. I havent talked to her in a couple of months... so I went there to get caught up in what she is doing. Sure enough, shes updated it since I last went there. Its amazing how much of a person's life goes by in two months when shes 18.
So now you know what the depressing part of Youth work is... Its a revolving door of friendships. Thats not as easy as it sounds like. Just imagine... the people you hang out with change completely every 2 years. The closest ones do stick around longer. Which can be good. The last time one of the RSS was in town, we did play a days worth of AOE II and some Doom II .. just for old times sake. But, for every one that keeps up with ya, 10 or more drop off.
I cant wait to get to Heaven and find out what they all went off and did.
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3 comments:
Ohh great my keyboard's getting wet... It must have been cool to be apart of Westlake during its earlier years. I've found myself thinking about that place a lot lately and along with it I get a wide array of emotional reactions. I often think about those long since fractured friendships, even the ones that never were. Sigh, nothing like nostalgia.
Man, that must be rough. I kind of know how you feel because that's sort of what it's like planting churches. You plant a church and make a whole bunch of really great, solid friends and then you move on and retain about 2 of those friendships.
yeah, life stinks sometimes. At least you have a bunch of people as nutso as you are all the time, which doesn't always happen to me. I read your blog. Comment.
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