Jesus in the Middle of Nowhere - Part 1
Tenth-grade me thought I finally had it all. An amazing school. Great best friends. General likability. Engaging after-school activities. My own bedroom. Time to relax. We lived in Virginia, in a nice little house near the city, so there was always fun stuff to go and do. It was awesome. I loved it there.
Oh yes…my life was finally starting to take shape the way I wanted it to. Unbeknownst to me, my parents were about to take all that and toss it out the window.
One day after school, they sat my little sister and I down in the living room and informed us that we were moving. Moving. MOVING?? We had only ever moved once in my lifetime, and that was basically just a move across town from an apartment to a house. Then I was five. Now I was 15. This was different. This was awful. I was just getting my life together! I enjoyed school, and had been hanging out with the same friends for years. I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Turns out, I could and I would. Whether I liked it or not…and I certainly didn’t.
The summer after my tenth grade year, we packed up a huge truck and moved. To South Carolina. I mean, really? THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. I could not wrap my head around why on earth my parents would drag me out to some dink little town we had never heard of before. For what? My dad’s job? Whatever...
The little town we moved to was less than half the size of my home town. There was practically nothing to do. Ever. And, even the events that did occasionally take place were usually…“less than sophisticated.” Backwoods, to put it bluntly. I was (and still am) a city girl. I was not impressed.
That August, my sister and I started our new academic journey at the tiny Christian school in the area. Not long after that, we found our church.
When I first started attending our new LCMS church, it was a bit of a different experience. Our old church was a very small WELS congregation where I was the only kid my age. All the other kids there were either at least 2 years older than me, or at least 2 years younger. I didn’t have “friends” there. They were just the kids I went to church with. We didn’t have a youth group. There weren’t enough of us to justify one. Plus, we had no youth minister of any kind. Our church was too small. I had never experienced that sort of thing except by visiting my friends’ churches and youth groups. I didn’t have much of an idea about what youth group was even supposed to be.
Needless to say, I was surprised by our new church. It was considerably bigger than my last church. AND, there were actually teens my age. That was just shocking. Because of the “non-denominational” Christian school I attended in Virginia, and the minute size of my Lutheran church there, I had basically come to the conclusion that all other teenagers were either Baptists or Presbyterians. All of them.
But, my new church proved me wrong. There were 17 other kids my age there. I couldn’t believe it. That’s not really that big as far as youth groups go, but still, I was impressed.
Now, they didn’t really have a formal “youth group” either. There were enough people at this church to require two services, so there would be early service, then Sunday school, then late service. The set up was a little foreign to me, but I liked that there was a separate Sunday School class just for the teens. They even had their own room downstairs! After getting the low-down from the Pastor, I was actually kind of excited to see what they would be talking about.
After a few weeks of attending this youth Sunday school class…I realized something that was more than disappointing: They didn’t really talk about anything in this so-called “teen class.” At least, not anything important. I wasn’t learning anything new about the Bible that I didn’t already know from school. I wasn’t learning how to apply anything I knew to real-life situations. All they did was fill up an hour with “fluff” and discuss the latest high school football games. They didn’t even have a youth pastor. There were just a couple of older gentlemen leading the class. They seemed more like really nice grampas than teachers. I wasn’t sure what to think…I just knew I didn’t really like it.
So, eventually, one of my friends at school (who was determined to get me out of my apathetic slump) invited me to go to youth group with him at his church. He was a Wesleyan, which I hadn’t even really heard of before. I was skeptical, but I agreed to go along with him. The first time I went, I was met with such a crazy amount of encouragement and acceptance by the teens and the youth pastor alike, that I wanted to go back as soon as I could.
The more I went, the more I learned. I was challenged. I made new friends. I even joined their youth band and helped lead worship. It was amazing. There was something different about these people…I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.
After attending this youth group for about 9 months or so, I finally figured it out. I was sitting in youth group during the worship session, and it hit me. These teens belonged to something. Something bigger than themselves. And they wanted to be there. Why? Because they had a relationship with Jesus. They had something I didn’t.
I had been a “Christian” my whole life, but it never felt complete. I just did everything I thought I was supposed to do because that was just “what you did.” I followed the rules, mostly. But it didn’t mean anything to me. Not really. I never understood how to make it personal.
The people at this Wesleyan church showed me what I had been missing out on my whole life, just through being a youth group. A real, genuine group of Christian kids who actually wanted to live for The Lord. My mind was blown.
That night, Jesus grabbed a hold of my heart, and He was not letting go. Something in me shifted - I wasn’t the same.
I came home that night brimming with excitement. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents what had happened to me. I sat them both down in the kitchen and apologized for being such a brat about moving and for being such a pain to live with since the move. Then I just laid out my new-found perspective on my faith. I was officially a real Christian, not just a “Christian in name only.” My life was going to look different from that point on, and I had youth group to thank for that.
So, fast-forward to my senior year of high school. I was finally settled and okay with my new environment. I had made good friends, despite all my efforts at the beginning to avoid doing so. I only had one year of high school left. My teachers were pretty great. I was applying for colleges and working to get scholarships. My spiritual life was growing strong. I felt so put-together for the first time in a long while. Yup…my life was finally starting to come together again.
Then I went to church one Wednesday evening for a Lenten service. As I got out of the car with my mom and started walking toward the building, one of our current “youth leaders” (the “nice grampas" I was telling you about earlier) stopped me in the parking lot. He came up, gave me a hug and said, “Congratulations!” Puzzled, I said…”For what?”
Then he proceeded to tell me that I had been elected youth group president while I was out sick the week before.
Youth Group President. What?? We barely even had a youth group, let alone a legitimate president. I had no idea we even voted on that sort of thing. It just happened. What was I supposed to do? Then I remembered what youth group at the Wesleyan Church had meant to me, and I thought, “Why can’t we have that here? We need that.”
I took a minute to absorb the shock, then I looked at this nice old man and said, “Well, if they’re gonna make me president, I’m gonna run with it. There are some things here that need to change, and I suppose now I can make that happen.”
And, that’s exactly what I did.