So I am taking my youth group from Peace Haven to Passport Youth Camp at Wingate University next week and we are very excited! All 6 of us! That’s right…6 total. Only five will be there at a time. My female chaperones are swapping out mid-week because neither can spend the entire week.
You are probably asking yourself, “Wait…5 at at time? Counting him and a female chaperone? That means only 3 kids are going from their group! HOW SAD!” OK, the last part is me but that is the subject of this post. When I tell people I am a youth minister or that I am taking some kids to camp, their immediate response is usually, “How many youth do you have/how many are going?” My response is always the same: the most youth kids we have at PHBC is 4. And you know what? I like it that way. We had a youth group yard sale fundraiser to raise money for camp about a month ago and a woman asked me that question: how many are going to camp? I told her and she got a concerned scowl on her face and apologized. ”I’m sorry…that is a small number.” I told her that I like all of our kids and am grateful for each of them.
What I WANTED to say was that I felt sorry for her because she had been raised to believe that bigger is always better. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry her entire life was defined by how much or how many. I also wanted to tell her that I was sorry she never got to be a part of something as intimate and relationship based as my current youth group. I am not saying that we are super awesome or different from any group out there, but we know one another very well. I am closer with these 4 kids than I have been with any other group and do you know why? Because I don’t have to play cattle wrangler when we are together. They listen to me and I listen to them.
This “question” happens more than I like to realize. A week or so ago at a social gathering, I told someone I knew about going to camp and he asked (SURPRISE!) “How many people are you taking to camp?” When I told him, he smugly said, “Well you make my 30 kids not sound so bad.” My relationship with this person can be tenuous at times but he didn’t mean any harm. In fact, I doubt he had a second thought about but I understand his position. Two years ago before I took this job, I would have been hesitant/fearful to work with a group this small…for the very reasons I am hesitant to do it now. The people at Peace Haven understand that I am doing all that I can and that 4 kids is wayyyyyy better than 0, but it still gets to me sometimes.
Yet as I progress through Divinity School and in my time here at PHBC, I am reminded of one of my philosophies of youth ministry: 1 or 2 kids ready and willing to listen is better then 30 who just want to hang-out or play video games. I live and die by this phrase. I structure everything in my work around it and don’t get me wrong, 30 kids would be great, but only if they were ready and willing to participate in an actual discussion and not play grab-butt all night.
This is more of a rant than anything else, but there is a point: bigger doesn’t always mean better. More is sometimes less and less is often more. Often kids in groups of 50+ members barely know one another, or cliques form, or high school style feuds evolve that require multiple sessions of group counseling to squelch. You folks can have all that. I will take my kids any day of the week over that mess. I am always open to more and bigger groups, but not simply for the purpose of having more. If we are going to grow, we are going to GROW spiritually and then maybe numerically; if that doesn’t happen, I won’t sweat it. I will love each kid in my group no matter if they are 3 of 4 or 4 of 400. That is my purpose as a youth minister and I am constantly doing my best to fulfill that.
Jonathan, you are wise beyond your years!