This installment of Faith Lab is coming out a little bit late because I have been dragging this week. When the seasons change and the pressure shifts I feel like garbage. It seems like everything has taken 3 times as long.
But, as I was reading in bed last night with rolled up tissues stuck in my nostrils, I thought about how ridiculous I looked. Along those same lines I thought about the way that I would never go out in public with Kleenex shoved in my nose. We take great care to look put together and in good spirits.
But in ministry, especially in student ministry, we need to allow our young people to catch glimpse of us (the real us). To build relational bonds we have to be willing to risk and show our soft spots to our students.
Last week we talked about mission and vision. If we are truly going to journey together toward deeper discipleship we, youth workers, must not just journey through tough times with our students. We have to be willing to take them on the journey through the valleys that we go through at times too.
This doesn’t mean we don’t filter what we share at times, but it does mean that we allow our students to see us when we are not all that put together. And more than that, we have to be willing to tell them that we are not 100%. The truth is they will most likely know anyway, and we get a lot of credibility by naming it to them.
When you share some time with students next, be willing to take a small risk and be a little vulnerable.
