Do you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from when you were a kid? As you read along, you became the protagonist and decided what would happen every time you turned the page.
There are a few ways to choose your own adventure. Some readers stick religiously to a course of action, making consistent decisions across the pages to achieve the most logical conclusion. The wild ones run haphazardly across the story, creating an epic literary mad libs to see how serious the book’s creators were about this choosing your own adventure. Then there’s me: the flipper. A classic sign of a soon-to-be perfectionist and miniature control freak, I used to flip back and forth between the pages to review my options before selecting my favorite. If things started going wonky, I would go back and try again until it ended the way I wanted.
These books were popular for a reason: participatory entertainment. They gave kids a real experience of being in charge of their identity, choices and destiny—the Minecraft of the 1980s. The inventors of these cultural artifacts understood that people need to participate creatively in the world around them.
This is the way we become people. Identity formation is a lifelong choose-your-own adventure, where we get to try out different versions of ourselves until we narrow the plot to the one that feels most like us, whatever combination will give us (hopefully) our happy ending. We can’t forget the best part—we are the ones who get to choose who we want to be.
I know we hang out with students a lot, so don’t take that too far. Just because you might want to be a monocled, chuck-wearing unicorn named Dr. Pepper doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll become…though that would be awesome.
Really, though, we become what we desire.
We Are What We Want
Identity is way more practical than we make it out to be. Many Christians have chosen an identity adventure that stays very internal, where who they are relies entirely on what they believe, think or feel in their souls. This perspective is partly responsible for the compartmentalized way so many teenagers interact with their faith: They can act differently in every context, as long as they tell themselves (and their parents and pastors) they believe what they’re supposed to believe. For all intents and purposes, the part of us that matters, the part of us that can be identified, is how we are in the world. Our everyday habits, relationships, decisions, work and play shape who we are and point to our most fundamental desires. These desires reveal our truest identities.
Teenagers’ experiences of identity formation are wild; the pages of their choose-your-own adventures are tattered, a different selfie staring back at them from every page. Developmentally, they’re still learning how to articulate their roles and their experiences, searching for their own voices in a sea of voices telling them what to do, as well as how and when—or else.
Think about one of your students. What does he or she want? What does he or she care about most that guides his or her decision-making process?
Maybe she is incredibly driven and chooses the next step in her journey based on what will get her into the best college. Odds are good she doesn’t desire the stress, homework or loneliness—but the desire that drives her to academic success is forming her into a particular sort of person. Maybe she dresses a certain way that makes her uncomfortable but begets the attention she’s always wanted. Or maybe he plays soccer because he longs for his father’s approval…or he loves playing the drums because they’re awesome and make him feel powerful and in tune with the beat of his own heart.
They all are becoming who they’re going to be. We’re the sum of all our desires.
As youth pastors, it’s our job to pay attention and constantly wonder what the deep desire is behind the observable behavior. This is how we show our students we love them: by paying attention and honoring them with our curiosity.
We are the only ones who don’t have to want anything from them. Have you ever thought of that? Every other adult in their lives needs them to score a goal, play the music correctly, get the grade, and do the dishes. We get to be adults who care about them and remind them this adventure is theirs and who they become is up to them. So what do they want?
What students want—whether they possess it, long for it, are terrified by it, deny it, pursue it, or give up on it—impacts their relationships, dictates their actions, forms their character, and shapes their beliefs. We are made in the image of our desires.
Imago Desire
God made us this way. In the creation story, we get this picture of a God who desires. God didn’t need us, but existed perfectly in community as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Out of desire, God created the heavens and earth and everything in it, and then created humankind in His own image and likeness to reflect His personality, posture and purposes in the newly created world. To be made imago dei is also to be made imago desire—made in the image of the One who desires. Wanting is in the fiber of our being, whether we are gloriously whole, tragically broken or somewhere in between. Good news to teenagers is to understand they are made good, their desires are good, and they can find God in the midst of the things they already love, wherever they find goodness, truth, beauty, love and life. When they mess up or sin, those are good desires expressed in unhealthy, broken ways. It doesn’t change the fact they are good and adored by God.
Growing up in church, I knew I was supposed to desire God, and this desire was supposed to shape everything else in my life. I was given a particular narrative for how identity in Christ looked—what a good Christian did and didn’t do or believe. The story my church offered me wasn’t so much a Choose Your Own Adventure, but a Choose Jesus’ Adventure or WWJA(dventure)?
The question that gnawed at me, which I couldn’t articulate then, was, “What about me?” If Paul said it’s no longer I that live, but Christ in me (
When we talk with our students about finding their identity in Christ, maybe we need to emphasize what we mean by Christ. Jesus wasn’t an identity archetype. He was completely His particular, specific self: a Middle Eastern Jewish man living in Roman-occupied Palestine in the first century. In the midst of that context, Jesus embodied what it meant to be a whole human being, a unique person attuned to the goodness, beauty, truth, life and love of the kingdom amid its unfolding. Jesus showed God to the world in a way no one else ever has, can or will. Likewise, our students are made to reveal God to the world in ways that never have been done before. This is what it means to be made in the image of God—to pay attention to our desires and let all the ways we are glorious and broken lead us on an adventure toward wholeness.
Choose Your Own Adventure
How does this look in real life? I ask myself that all the time, because I don’t know. I can offer you a particular posture and way of being that might invite your students to become whole, desiring human beings who are following in the way of Jesus.
1. Get cozy with our desires.
The most meaningful part of our ministry to students is who we are. They will remember how they experienced us and what kind of people we are long after they have forgotten our talks and teaching. The work of becoming and following God in the midst of what we desire means we have to be people who acknowledge what we want. It takes practice to see desire as good, especially if we’ve always been told we are inherently bad. Frankly, desire can be really painful. We know the ache of unrequited desire, and it’s common for us to shelve our desires when they seem too unlikely. Yet if we can face the question, “What makes me feel most whole, most fully alive?” we begin to model the abundant life Jesus desires on behalf of our students.
2. Follow our students.
Sometimes it feels as if we have to be experts in all things teenager. This is stressful for non-teens. I’ve realized it’s a lot easier and more fun to let my students lead the way. I ask them what they care about, and it takes us to the most holy places. They get to make connections between who they’re becoming and who God is in ways I never could imagine on my own. What we say doesn’t matter unless it matters to them. Our job is to follow along as they try on different identities and to keep pointing out where God is present no matter what identity they want for themselves.
3. Become a Co-conSpiritor.
Repeatedly throughout the story of God and humanity, the Spirit calls women and men to be the whole, desiring people they were created to be so they can join God in the work of the kingdom. At the very beginning, God breathed the Spirit into our lungs and called us good. Somewhere in the middle, the Spirit came down from heaven as a dove to affirm, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” The Spirit reminds us who we are, helps us see the kingdom of God in our midst, invites our good desires to collaborate with God, and comforts us when we are reminded how broken creation is. When I remember the Spirit, I also remember that forming students isn’t my job. Instead, I get to be present with them faithfully as we all find ways of encountering God’s presence. We get to look around the world with our students, affirming their desires for all that is good, true, beautiful, life-giving and loving, and then help them connect those things with the reality of God.
May we embrace our particular identities in Christ as we become whole human beings made in the image of God. May we remember we are good, and may our good desires lead us into God’s presence with our students. Let us be attentive to the wild movements of God’s Spirit and seek the kingdom as we choose our own adventures.
Morgan Schmidt is the founder of Youth Collective, a collaborative student ministry initiative that is likely to achieve world peace. The author of Woo: Awakening Teenagers’ Desire to Follow in the Way of Jesus, she is passionate about cultivating teenagers’ desires to be whole people who help make earth more like heaven. Morgan received her M.Div. from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, but does not remember any Greek. She loves living in Seattle with her husband, Ian, and golden retriever, Buddy.
