Moving Forward

Sunday morning.

The 5th graders are overwhelmingly full of words and giggles today, barely making it through names and plans for the day in time to play an outside game.

But, we talk about the soon coming move to middle school ministry in the midst of it, these words and stories that fold over top of and around each other like a tangle of Christmas lights. Talk about camp and high school ministry trips and 8th graders moving up and trips to the hospital to have an appendix removed. All in this intertwined world of siblings and families and layers of connection that make a sizable church not so large after all.

"You should be a 6th grade leader!"

We talk about it in the way that 5th grade classes always do, these ones bonus certain that, since 8th grade siblings are moving up, I am the free floating leader, who they might be able to steal if they just wish hard enough.

But, they're also okay with the idea of another leader, in the same way that this crew is rambunctiously casual about just about everything. They want to be together, and they want to be moving - and talking. Anything else is pretty firmly optional.

So we run up and down the hill until they are breathless and sweating. Skid and slip and laugh, and will the sunshine to stay. Just stay.

Transition to middle school, where one of the boys is diligently attentive in making sure that all of the 8th graders are invited to the picnic. Where another one plops down in front of us on the floor in the careful in and out that will be his standard for the day. Close enough for long enough to determine who is going to be present for the next step. And, then, far enough away to keep the emotions coming off of all of them from overwhelming him completely.

Because, it isn't their last week, but it is the start of their goodbye, and these ones have never shared the 5th graders' nonchalance.

"Are you moving up with us?"

A third one stands a hair's breadth from my elbow during music, as if we've momentarily forgotten all of the years of growing up that they've done in between. Falling back on this familiar question with it's echoes of their much smaller selves. They're grown up young today, all swagger and sunglasses, brightly colored leis and elementary school parachute games. Old questions and habits that we've somehow carved deep and wide and certain.

They picnic in the afternoon, create new stories and wrap each other in new ones. Listen as leaders call them out for their compassion, for their differences and their somehow constant unity. These kids love well, passionately, consistently. Stronger together than they could ever be apart.

Wander in the shallows of the river. Skip rocks. Climb trees. Discover thorns.

Play volleyball. Lie in hammocks. Give nicknames. Wrestle with the frozen t-shirts that they are handed for a game.

Eat hamburgers. (There are a lot of hamburgers this weekend.) Unscramble letters. Pile into cars to take pictures and show up for a preview of the high school youth group.

Half the boys are missing by the time we settle onto the red dot carpet to to start, herded back in by their high school accompaniment and a teenaged middle school leader who knew to count heads and go looking. Because, there is a Grace to middle school leaders. An always-know-where-your-kids-are Protection that tracks them, even when they are out of sight, and keeps an accounting of each and every head.

And, they look at us a little sideways when My Redeemer Lives devolves into linked elbows and spinning bodies, as if these larger humans have somehow, inexplicably lost their minds. But, join in - sort of, kind of, mostly - one of the boys finally dropping to the floor in protest the third time through the chorus.

There is a megaphone during music and goofy games that involve shaving cream in the grass and Cheetos thrown at faces. And, when they get into the globs of it leftover afterwards and chase each other through the field, it isn't anything that the already-in-high-schoolers haven't been doing while the game was going on.

So, the bathrooms, and the kitchen, every sink, mirror, towel in the building are being used to wipe shaving cream out of ears and hair and noses. Pulsing with that sort of oddly off kilter life that is our high schoolers trying to make other people feel welcome in a space that they are suddenly less comfortable in themselves.

Noisy. Vibrant. Grace Filled and Uncertain.

They have three weeks left to grow into this place. Three weeks for this place to grow to make itself ready for them.

Neither side of the equation is quite certain of itself yet, but they'll get their feet under them soon enough. And, youth pastor or no youth pastor, it is going to be a powerful year.