I’m a crier. If something emotional is going on you will find me sniffling and wiping my eyes and trying to pull myself together. Emotional things might be – worship, testimonies, baptisms, watching a touching moment between a leader and a student, and those pet food commercials where a guy comes home from the war and his dog is really happy to see him.
I also cry by proxy. If you’re crying, I’m crying. I wasn’t always like this. Before I started working in student ministry I was much tougher. Maybe I would get a little misty when Bambi’s mom died, or tear up when George figured things out in It’s a Wonderful Life, but that about covered it.
Working in student ministry changed all that for me. I found very quickly that if I wanted to connect with kids and leaders, I had to be vulnerable and raw with them. This kind of openness carries a price tag. Suddenly the pain that a student feels over a rift with a friend becomes my pain, the struggle a leader was having connecting with her small group becomes my struggle. At this point, it’s widely known that if you’re sad, you just need to find me and we will be sad together.
Often we’re tempted to hit students with truth when they are emotionally vulnerable but sometimes the greatest gift we can give is crying with them. Empathy opens the way to discipleship.
The good news is that I get to experience the opposite end of the spectrum as well. When my people have something to celebrate they seek me out and we have one big slamming happy fest. It’s just important to understand that you can’t have one without the other. If you’re the guy who loves to celebrate with everyone but is suspiciously absent when students need to talk through some tough issues, you’re also the guy that no one really trusts. Wading into messy issues requires you to get…well, messy.
A few nights ago was our last high school meeting of the season. A group of girls I’ve been close with since 6th grade graduated and won’t be back next year. We cried. A lot. We stopped crying, took some pictures and then we cried some more. Photoshop will take care of all that smeared mascara right? Sure, I could have saved myself some grief if I had kept them at arms length, but I would have missed out on some of my favorite moments in ministry. It’s a fair trade.
Christina Thelen has been involved in student ministry for 7 years. That’s 49 dog years. For the last 4 years she has served as the Department Coordinator of LifeLine–the student ministry of Ada Bible Church.