yorocko.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\nI don\u2019t know who said, \u201cDon\u2019t try to be interesting\u2014be interested instead,\u201d and I\u2019m certain the advice\u2019s author was not addressing youth ministry when she said it, but I have adopted it as my working definition for our work: be interested.<\/p>\n
We are interested in teenagers, because we have learned that you can\u2019t love what doesn\u2019t interest you. Their schoolwork, their relationships, their drama, their social media habits, their family dynamics, their ADHD, their impulse control issues: we take an interest in all of it. Youth ministers take a posture of curiosity toward these often maddening behaviors and dynamics because we are looking for the image of God in there. We\u2019re not trying to manage or coerce or even guide. We want more than anything for these middle schoolers and high schoolers to feel interesting. We want them to know we are with them, not because we are paid to be but because we want to be. Because . . . them.<\/p>\n
How is interest measured?<\/p>\n
In questions. \u201cWhat\u2019s the big deal with Snapchat?\u201d<\/p>\n
In quiet observation, like that of a museum-goer perched on a bench taking in a Monet.<\/p>\n
In laughter\u2014fart jokes are valuable currency for adolescent community.<\/p>\n
In tears shed together and in private for the pain teenagers bear, sometimes quietly, sometimes with great flair.<\/p>\n
Youth ministry is interest-taking in adolescents. It is also interest-taking in all the things with which we have to be interested in life, our \u201cattention collections,\u201d as David Dark calls them. We do youth ministry well when we let teenagers in our nerdy obsessions with comic books, social justice, theology, \u201cScandal,\u201d and the mid 90\u2019s Scottish rock band Del Amitri. We take care here for boundaries; my interest in \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d ought not be indulged in the presence of 8th graders. In fact, my relationship with those 8th graders makes me think carefully about that interest, and all my interests.<\/p>\n
The highest praise a teen ever paid me was to tell his mother that I was the coolest uncool person he knew. He knew I had interests, and he thought that was cool, even if my interests were decidedly uncool.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re interested, in public, in front of young people, in the things we\u2019re interested in.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re supremely interested in teenagers themselves.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Please welcome Rocky Supinger to the PYM blogging team.\u00a0Rocky is the Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. He has served churches in California and Missouri, and blogs at yorocko.com.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know who said, \u201cDon\u2019t try to be interesting\u2014be interested instead,\u201d and I\u2019m certain the advice\u2019s author was not addressing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2745,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Please welcome Rocky Supinger <\/b>to the PYM blogging team.\u00a0Rocky is the Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. He has served churches in California and Missouri, and blogs at yorocko.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n