Apparently, I Stink at Talking to High School Students

Tonight, I was a guest speaker for a youth group where my buddy is the youth pastor. My friend is on vacation with his lovely wife, and he asked me to fill in. Now, I'm a high school English teacher. And I feel as though I have a very strong working relationship with my students, who are high school seniors. I thought it'd be easy, seeing as how I'm fairly versed in speaking to high school students.

Boy, was I wrong.

The kids were roaming around, talking on their cell phones, having side conversations, leaving the room, coming in and out of the auditorium, etc, etc, etc. I felt like a Substitute Teacher.

Now I don't know exactly how my friend, the Youth Pastor handles this, but it was driving me nuts. I was talking about your "Spiritual Temperature" and how you can be either hot, cold or lukewarm and at one point, this girl just gets up and takes out her cell phone and begins walking toward the double door exit. And I was like, "And maybe you're interested in hearing what God has to say to you and you're not getting up now to leave the room and talk on your cell phone. Raiders jersey. Black sweatpants."

And everyone kind of turned around, pretty surprised that I put her on blast like that.

No one else got up the rest of the message.

So that worked.

I think the main reason I failed so miserably is that I didn't know any of the kids, didn't have any relationship with them, and really they had no reason to listen to what I had to say.

Now to be fair, a few of them sought me out after my talk and told me it was good. My close friend's neice was there, and she told me she liked the sermon. But this girl is so on fire for God, you could read the Book of Leviticus aloud for three hours and she would be, "that was awesome." So she might have been just being nice.

But man, this experience really made me appreciate people who work in Youth Ministry. Teaching high school is a BREEZE compared to that. The kids don't have to, by state law, attend your events. The kids don't have to, by state law, do what you say. My wife gave me a hug afterwards and said, "Maybe that's what high school ministry is all about. Getting through to some of the kids."

If so, that is a brutal and difficult job emotionally and I applaud anyone who has the guts, courage and love to plow through the acres of disappointment that must come with the job every week and month.

So pray for folks who are working with youth. Or better yet, write them an email telling them how proud you are of their efforts to pass the torch on to the next generation.

They certainly need it.