About twelve years ago, we were living in the US for a year and visiting a great church there. One Sunday I noticed a notice in the church bulletin that they were looking for volunteers for middle school services on Sunday mornings they wanted to start. Being a qualified middle and high school teacher, this appealed to me so I discussed it with my husband and then decided to ‘apply’.
The youth guy was a thirty something bald guy (why are so many youth leaders bald by the way?) and we met after a church service. He asked some quick questions about me, my beliefs and my experience. Then he explained what the idea was: a middle school service every other week in one of the classrooms (the church was using a high school for the church services). A week later he handed me two Wild Truth books with lessons I could use and he told me when the services would start.
I eagerly showed up the first time and sat in the back as the youth guy tried to teach the lesson. It didn’t go very well, the kids were rowdy and unattentive, but it was the first time and I figured they just had to get used to the whole concept. The second lesson I observed as well and to be honest, I didn’t go much better. After that, I was on my own.
It was hard for me. I was teaching in another language than my mother tongue (I’m Dutch, so while we are taught English in high school, it is not ‘my’ language) which was awkward sometimes when I couldn’t find the right words. I loved the lessons, but the kids didn’t seem to like them. There were a lot of boys in the group who were sitting in the back of the classroom, making fun of me, each other and basically everything.
What was also hard, was that I didn’t know these kids. I’m good with names and I tried to remember their names as quickly as I could, but I didn’t know them. And since I was more or less teaching within a limited time frame and I didn’t see them outside of those Sunday morning hours, I didn’t get a chance to get to know them.
I saw some notices in the church bulletin that there were other activities for middle school students as well and I debated showing up there. But the youth guy hadn’t mentioned these and if I was expected or invited, surely he would have. So I didn’t go.
The services weren’t going any better and I was becoming frustrated rapidly. I tried to talk to the youth pastor, but he assured me they were great kids and that they just needed to get used to these services. There was this one kid, let’s call him Jason, who was the biggest problem and I asked the youth guy what the deal was with him. He just said to cut him some slack because he had a nasty situation at home.
Then it went really wrong. The guys were once again disturbing my lesson, Jason as their leader as usual, and when my repeated requests to pay attention weren’t noticed, I lost my patience. I told them I wasn’t taking this s*** anymore. It became real quiet and I realized I had said something wrong.
After the service had ended, it didn’t take long for the youth guy to come up to me. He told me he’d had complaints that I had use a profanity in class. I explained the whole situation to him and told him how hard it was to get the kids to pay attention. I also admitted to having used the word s***. I also told him that this is actually quite a common word in Dutch, one that’s freely used even by Christians and that means something like crap, nonsense. That’s how I had meant it.
But he wasn’t convinced and told me I had to apologize to the class next time. But not only that, he was going to send a letter to all parents stating that I had used a mild profanity, that they offered apologies and that it would never happen again. And so he did and that was all that was being said about the incident.
I was crushed. I felt that it was all my fault, that I was completely useless as a youth leader and that should quit, But what really hurt me was the accusation of having used a profanity. I was raised in a Christian home and we never, ever cursed or used any kind of profanity. We didn’t even say ‘oh my God’ or something like it, my parents were very strict about it (and rightfully so). In my book, s*** is not profanity. It may be a crude word, a word you don’t want to use in public, but it has nothing to do with profanity because it has nothing to do with God or His name. And that’s what really hurt me, that I was accused of something I didn’t do and nobody would listen to my explanations.
I did continue and served the remainder of the season, though my husband agreed to sit in the back to help keep order. The funny thing was that the boys were a lot quieter after that incident and the remaining lessons actually went fairly okay.
But when we left back home for Holland, I was convinced youth ministry was not my thing because I felt I had failed miserably.
How would you have handled this incident? Do you agree with the youth guy’s actions? What do you see when you look at the circumstances in which it all happened? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
I’ll do a sequel in the next post and discuss what I learned from this incident, because you are all dying to know how I ended up in youth ministry after all, right?
