Do you remember the color of the sky behind the burning and smoking twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001? What began as a normal and beautiful day, gorgeous and cloudless blue September skies, changed forever once the planes began crashing and the buildings began to burn. I wasn’t in New York that day. I was beginning my own normal day in Michigan, meeting a youth pastor friend and mentor for breakfast when the news came on, TV volume turned up in the small town restaurant, and when all the normal tabletop conversation ceased. Normal was transformed instantly into abnormal. Life never would be quite the same after that moment. Sept. 11, 2001, was an example of the absolute worst people can be toward one another. As that day unfolded and the stories began to leak out to the rest of us watching from afar, that day also provided example after example of the best people can be: selfless and sacrificial in love for complete strangers in a moment of extreme crisis.
How many of us involved professionally in ministry have faced similar moments with the families with whom we work? A 3 a.m. phone call that jolts you out of bed leads to the local hospital where you join a shattered family in saying goodbye to a father who has just died from a sudden and totally unexpected heart attack…or a popular student athlete suffers from a similar fate after shooting the winning basket during a local basketball game…or a student is killed by a drunk driver at 5 in the afternoon on her way home from a college class…the list goes on and on.
As youth ministry professionals, people called by God to love kids and their families, as well as to love those people alongside us who also love kids and their families, these moments can be horrifically transformational. They can be the absolute worst things we ever go through together. Yet they also can become unwanted events that confirm God’s love and reshape the way God’s people share that love with one another. Terrible events can become catalysts for deep expressions of faith, hope and love that might otherwise remain buried under our normal facade of independence and narcissism.
Each of the above-mentioned scenarios have been part of my personal ministry journey during the past 25 years of working alongside students and their families. Each of these situations and many more are possible and likely for those of us called by God to this important work. How we respond in the immediate aftermath of tragedy and how we are able to help mobilize people to come around families in crisis is every bit as important as all the teaching, planning and meetings usually fill our ordinary days.
When 9/11-like moments drop out of a clear blue sky onto your calendar or onto that of someone connected to the ministry you lead, the foundation laid beforehand can make a huge difference in determining the level to which grace can be woven into a horrific event. Here are a couple of hard-won lessons I hope will offer some kind of solid foundation on which to prepare for the inevitable day when your professional or personal life transforms from normal to something else entirely.
1) Empower and Equip: Please, from the very beginning of your call to a certain ministry context (church or otherwise), do everything you can to empower and equip a team of people to share God’s grace with the students and families with whom you work. On all the normal and ordinary days, the ministry you lead will be more effective, deep and rich because of this. On that one day out of a thousand, when a phone call changes the course of your day from normal to tragic, you will have a team of people to come alongside you and the people hurting most at that moment. On a normal day, it is unhealthy to have our ministries centered wholly on us…on an abnormal day it will be disastrous! Let the people on your ministry teams be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus on the normal days, and they will excel at doing the same thing during a crisis.
2) Spirit in the Students: Don’t underestimate the faith, hope and love your students can pour into a hurting teen and his/her family and to one another when tragedy strikes. Six years ago, I received that 3 a.m. phone call and was on my way to the local ER to be with a student and his family whose father has just died of a heart attack. While I know my presence brought a certain amount of comfort, the army of students who were at our church from two local high schools (one Christian and one public) by 9 a.m. the next day was a shining example of teens ministering to one another and being Jesus to a young man whose world had just come crashing down around him. The trusted adults in the room helped create a safe place, communicated with the schools so people in both places knew what was happening, and tried to stay out of the way and let the kids mourn and care in a good and healthy way. There was plenty of time for us adults to continue that love and care in the days and years following this tragedy, which we did; but there was something fundamentally beautiful in watching the Spirit of God work in and through the teens to be God’s light in the darkness. It was a terrible day in which ordinary teens stepped up and shared God’s grace in extraordinary and beautiful ways.
3) Serve and Be Served: Remember that everything you do to set up others to faithfully and lovingly serve and care for one another someday bmight enefit you and your family. As youth pastors/workers, we are not guaranteed a bullet-proof existence in our own lives. When my teenage son did something incredibly dumb a few years ago, something that involved a trip out of the local high school in handcuffs, the same people who were involved in sharing God’s mercy and grace in previous and much more tragic circumstances for others became the hands, feet and voice of Jesus for my family, too. When my 32-year-old brother-in-law lost his battle with cancer, those same people again shared God’s mercy and grace with us. I can’t imagine walking through those two deep personal valleys without having such an amazing group of people constantly finding such authentic ways to remind my family of their love and God’s love in the midst of some really tough stuff.
4) Power in Presence: Listen more than you talk. This is likely straight out of somebody’s copy of Pastoral Counseling for Dummies…but it really makes sense. In the immediate aftermath of something horrific, there is precious little we can say that actually brings comfort. Our presence speaks incredible volumes about our love and concern for people walking through tough times. If words become necessary, a wise friend and mentor once told me that often a simple, “This really sucks” is more pastoral and compassionate than some version of “God has a plan in this.” Acknowledging the suck factor may open the door to a conversation later on about the reality of God’s plan…usually long after the immediate crisis has passed. For any of us who have been on the receiving end of a funeral visitation for a loved one (especially if it involved the death of someone special through what most of us would consider tragic circumstances rather than that of someone who has lived a long, full life), the incredible number of Christian clichés that get tossed out by well-meaning people is almost unbelievable. The power of your loving presence and a very few honest acknowledgments about how this situation really stinks will mean the world to people in crisis…in the moment and later when their heads clear.
No one wants to deal with personal tragedy and terrible things happening to good people. None of us sit around hoping for some horrific thing to happen so our teams can be tested and found to be truly faithful. Yet the reality is that we live in a world that has potential for all manner of personal and family 9/11s to occur. As God’s people, personally called to share His grace and love with students and their families, we best can serve in situations we never seek by being prepared and by doing the healthy, slow work of building up people who will come alongside us when the unthinkable does happen. I hope and pray we will be faithful in doing the long hard word of equipping the saints so we faithfully can be the best help possible to those among us who one day will face a situation nobody wants to face.
