It's one of the "older" kids who vocalizes it, one of the sophomores who have put in enough hours that they finally feel at home here.
One of the Haiti boys who speaks truth at our tiny evening youth group.
Under twenty kids. Eleven leaders.
The numbers don't matter. But, they do. In this church of thousands, there is a quiet purpose to the smallness of this thing, a reason that this steady dozen get themselves here week after week after week. These twenty are no accident.
And, I think that he begins to speak it out.
He talks about brokenness. Not in the way that adults in the Church are using it now, as a buzzword for sin and depravity, but distinctly the way that a high schooler would.
Brokenness: pain, fear, the unknown that whispers a need to cut into flesh, to abuse your own body. Brokenness as a wound needing to be healed, a hurt that can be soothed, a pain the shouldn't be but is, that one day will no longer be.
Brokenness, not as sin, but as a symptom of it.
He talks about the church as a hospital. As a place to come each week to begin to heal.
This is what they understand this place to be.
What it will turn out to be depends on any number of variables, a terrifying ratio of which are in the hands of those of us over the age of twenty. But, for now, this is their hospital.
This is where they trust themselves to limp in each week and find a measure of safety, of security, of sameness and rest.
This is where they expect to do the hard work of helping to heal others and of stepping back and allowing themselves to be healed.
Because, like most high schoolers, they understand themselves to be broken.
They feel the emotions in their souls that refuse to be silent, and they know that they need a place where they can be at peace.
They mean it the same way that every generation of teenagers has meant it, each with their own vocabulary and set of shared understandings. But, they also mean it differently.
Not very differently, but enough.
Because, he means it in the way that they have spent the last year discovering, the way that they found on winter retreat and on summer ministry trips.
Not as a place to hide, but as a place to be changed, a place to become strong enough to change their world. And, if we can find the self control to leave that alone, to walk with them and let their understanding shape what we see and how we explain, I think that it has the power to become, to continue to be, a very powerful thing.
This is what they understand this place to be.
What it will turn out to be depends on any number of variables, a terrifying ratio of which are in the hands of those of us over the age of twenty. But, for now, this is their hospital.
This is where they trust themselves to limp in each week and find a measure of safety, of security, of sameness and rest.
This is where they expect to do the hard work of helping to heal others and of stepping back and allowing themselves to be healed.
Because, like most high schoolers, they understand themselves to be broken.
They feel the emotions in their souls that refuse to be silent, and they know that they need a place where they can be at peace.
They mean it the same way that every generation of teenagers has meant it, each with their own vocabulary and set of shared understandings. But, they also mean it differently.
Not very differently, but enough.
Because, he means it in the way that they have spent the last year discovering, the way that they found on winter retreat and on summer ministry trips.
Not as a place to hide, but as a place to be changed, a place to become strong enough to change their world. And, if we can find the self control to leave that alone, to walk with them and let their understanding shape what we see and how we explain, I think that it has the power to become, to continue to be, a very powerful thing.
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