Grad dinner

Last night, I attended the dinner at the church for all the grads. It's something the church has done long before I arrived. While I've done tons of these dinners for youth groupers, I must admit that St. Andy's does it well. The food was good, decorations and gifts were cool and generally speaking, is a classy event that I think any grad would enjoy.

What really impressed me last night was that there was a huge sense that it was the whole community that had raised these teens. The group that was there had really seen these kids grow up and each family had a genuine part in another's family. It wasn't an artificial "it takes a village" feeling but a real sincere atmosphere of celebrating each other's success.

I've been doing youth ministry for a long time. Sometimes I think too long. The thing about it isn't that I don't enjoy teens. I probably value the ministry more now than I did 20 years ago when I first got started. The thing is that I'm not sure HOW to do it effectively anymore. I've done it a certain way my whole life. I've read about 'relational' ministry or about 'EPIC' or postmodern church ministries. And I like it all.

But something has been changing in my view of youth ministry and I'm not sure how or when it will be there. Something about last night was really RIGHT though. The church had been the church.