Photograph by Devin Avery via Unsplash

I can tell you the moment I knew my time as youth minister was over.

I can tell you because my body and senses still remember the most minute details.

I can still feel the sun’s blister-inducing heat penetrating my fair skin as I leave the mess hall with my students.

I can still taste the tasteless, powdery, claggy eggs that pass as staple summer camp cuisine. Along with haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and a heart that devises wicked schemes, enervated prepared eggs are an abomination to the Lord.

I still hear the laughter and the murmur of the most reverent and irresponsible subject matter coming from the mouths of young adults clinging to the slipping-away solstitial season of their lives.

My nose runneth over with a concoction of pollen, AXE Body Spray, and socks that should have been washed on Monday. It’s Wednesday.

And my eyes see one of the students’ parents. He’s walking toward us, but I know he shouldn’t be there. He left yesterday when I arrived—the two of us passing the baton, tagging in and out like Hawk and Animal from the Legion of Doom. The arrangement was made because I had a two-month-old baby at home. I wanted her to grow up knowing her father, so I thought it best not to leave her sleep-lacking mother alone for a week.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I went back home, did what I needed to do, and decided to come back. I really wanted to be with you all,” he said.

“Isn’t that like a, what, a two-and-a-half-hour trip?” I say back.

“More like three,” he tells me.

The kids surround him, slapping him on the back. The far too aggressive high fives commence.

Off the lake, I feel the winds of change blowing. Even in the muggy South, the winds of change are chilly.

I have 2 more days at the camp with the kids, but I know a shift has taken place. My time as their El Capitan, their Manager of Mayhem, their Peter Pan was over.

I know this because as I trudge up a steep incline leading back to the cabin, I confess to the great cloud of witnesses I can only feel around me that I would never do what that parent just did.

Several months later, as my seminary experience concludes, I’m sitting with the Senior Pastor of the faith community I’m serving. We discuss my post-graduation plans and the possibility of making my position full-time. Another staff member, the Minister of Christian Education, is retiring. With this opening and my current responsibilities as Minister to Youth and Families, there are talks to bring me on full-time.

Numbers were crunched. Budgets adjusted. Outlines and stipulations made.

In the end, I said no.

It wasn’t because of the pay.

It wasn’t because of the required move from one city to another just down the interstate.

It wasn’t the fear of being stretched thin or becoming burned out.

It was because I knew the passion wasn’t there, my call was different, and I needed to get out of the way to let the right person do what I no longer could.

Instead, I accepted my first call as Senior Pastor (a more accurate title would be Solo Pastor) in a picturesque community nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

The perks? I no longer had to go on week-long mission or summer camp trips. No longer did I feel the pressure to compete with (and fail miserably, I might add) charismatic youth pastors and their larger, event-driven, emotionally manipulating, mega-youth groups in the same town. No more dodgeball tournaments, messy games, or disgusting food challenges that tested the gag reflex of all those in attendance. No more planning around travel sports team schedules to accommodate each youth and their family. Ministry as a circus of attraction, an overdeveloped form of consumerism, was over for me.

Little did I know that the administrative workings of “Big Steeple Church” has its own fun house filled with clowns that scare you more than make you laugh. But that, dear friends, is a horror story for another day.

Not for nothing, my stint in youth ministry was impactful. I learned to let go of others’ expectations and lean into my unconventional approaches. I learned presence and a listening ear goes a long way. I discovered the power of making a meal and eating together can transform a group of kids. I experienced firsthand what glam-rock pioneers T. Rex were singing about: You can do many things, “but you won’t fool the children of the revolution.” Nothing but stripped-down authenticity is compatible with teenagers.

If I’ve missed anything associated with youth ministry, it’s the unbridled delirium for connection. Nothing less than genuineness will do.

I’m thankful to have reacquainted myself with such hopeful feelings. In the last few weeks, two random interactions—small, yes, but the very definition of the butterfly effect—left me reeling.

The first was lunch with a recent high school graduate. Over baked potato pizza and chicken wings fried extra hard, we talked about musical preferences, ranging from Alice in Chains to The Front Bottoms, and how having a life plan at 19 probably isn’t the healthiest thing. We shared stories about our lives, spoke at length about what constitutes a good friend, and went down the rabbit hole of me explaining to him why the Nintendo Power Glove was the most incredible marketing gimmick of all time (I have said artifact resting in my church office, the magic of Christmas morning not forgotten).

In between bites, we talked about movies, where he delightfully left me in a state of catatonic shock, my mind freezing like I’d just downed a gut-buster-sized ICEE as he asked, “So, what’s your favorite film?”

How much time do you have, kid?

Before departing each other’s stimulating company, I told him that if he’d like to meet again and chat about life, I was up for it. However, some disclaimers were in order: I have some Clinical Pastoral Education, but I am not to be confused with anything close to a therapist. And while I’ve read my fair share of Baptist patron saint of all things counseling, Wayne Oates, I’d keep that to a minimum so as not to put him and me to sleep.

He muttered something about that being fine with him, and we went our separate ways—him with a list of movies to watch, me with the reminder that teenagers aren’t really that hard to talk to.

A few weeks later, I’m sitting beside two other ministers during a combined worship service. Our congregations are under one vaulted ceiling to support the efforts of a former choir director passing through the area with his impressive youth choir. He’s brought 30-odd students and chaperones from my native South to New England.

The youth were phenomenal, breathing life into hymns long sung by those in the pews with little gusto. With the service winding down and a benediction looming, I grabbed a pen and scratched out a Southern-inspired liturgy I hope Flannery O’Connor would be proud of.

Looking up to their exalted faces in the choir loft, I say words to let them know I see them—they are my people.

And to our guest choir,

May your time with each other during this trip be as sweet as the tea from Bojangles.

May your presence with one another offer the assurance of comfort like the hum of cicadas on a hot and humid Georgia summer night.

And may the light you’ve shared with us today continue to be as warm as the glow of a Waffle House sign breaking up a pitch-black sky off some future highway.

Until we meet again, may you be held in the palm of God’s hand.

Laughs and amens followed. Getting this from the descendants of Puritans is no easy feat.

After the service in the receiving parlor, I was rushed, then crowded around by students who couldn’t believe I lived without central air, Cajun filet biscuits, and Cook-Out double burger trays.

A dark-haired young man with corkscrew locks looks me dead in the eyes and asks with a seriousness usually reserved for operating surgeons, “What’s your go-to order at Waffle House?”

“Pecan waffle, coated in butter. Drowned in syrup. Order of hashbrowns-tatters, scattered and covered,” I say back with confidence.

“Next time we come up this way, I’ll bring you some.”

And by God, I believed he really meant it. The excitement on his face told no lies.

Since that holy Sunday, I have sat with hope, knowing choir directors, student pastors, and youth group volunteers are walking beside the next generation.

I’ve sat with hope, thinking about how some churches and faith communities are offering space for young people to come in, ask questions, find themselves, and be vulnerable with each other.

And dear reader, I’ve sat with hope that one day, perhaps next summer, I’ll see a young person standing at my office door with a Styrofoam box of cold waffles and hashbrowns, making good on his promise.

I do so because I have enough faith in God and in youth to believe such miracles are possible.

Maybe I’m not done ministering to youth after all. Because they are certainly not done ministering to me.