In one of my first jobs in youth ministry, I had a parent come to me in a very raw state. She was very upset because her 14 year old son had just declared that he was an atheist and he didn't want to have anything to do with God or the church. Would I, she pleaded, accept him at Youth Group and help him to change his mind? I replied that he was welcome anytime to come to youth group. That's just about all I can promise.
Being young in youth ministry, I was weirdly convinced that if I said all the right things and moved my hands the right way...if I did everything right, this kid would find Jesus have a full on, stop the press, conversion experience.
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Spoiler alert: he didn't. There were times when he wasn't quite so angry with the church. There were times when he thought he might have experienced something spiritual. There were times when hope overrode cynicism. But as for the magical, fluffy conversion experience I had hoped for, not happening. Of course, mom was not pleased with me, believing I had some magical Jesus Homeboy powers to cure doubt and magically transform teenagers into...well, something without hormones, a bad attitude, and body odor.
This experience (and there have been many others like it) have been good reminders about what it is we actually do in youth ministry: my job is to help teenagers recognize that they are hungry: hungry for spiritual growth, hungry for God's unconditional love, and hungry to be a part of the communion of saints, the church universal.
Recognizing Hunger Pains
My husband often recounts that the thing he remembers most about being a teenage boy is that he was always hungry. It didn't matter if it were carrot sticks, plain cheese pizza, a bag of peanuts, or even a stack of rice cakes, if there was food sitting on the counter, he was going to eat it. He might even eat 4 pork chops and a pound of mashed potatoes, but he would still have room for ice cream later. Being a teenager is characterized by this constant feeling of never been full, never being completely satisfied.
And it's not just food that our youth are hungry for. They are hungry for acceptance from their peers, independence from their parents, popularity at school, and athletic success. They are hungry to be the center of attention while simultaneously fitting into the crowd; they are hungry for parents who love and coddle them but give them independence and leeway; they are hungry to be noticed for how cool and able they are, but not to be noticed because they are different.
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In these and other ways, teenagers are often hungry for things they can't identify or define. They are hungry to be a part of our faith community, but they are reluctant to be the ace Sunday School student or to appear too vanilla. They are hungry for the love of God, but they are full of questions and doubts. They are hungry for acceptance from our congregation, but they want to be seen as more than children. My job and the job of our wonderful, talented, dedicated youth leaders is to empower and enable youth to figure out that they are hungry and then what exactly they are hungry for.
Last year, I heard a story of some of our middle school boys on the way home from youth group. One boy said he loved youth group, but he hated the small group time and wished we could play games the whole time. The other boys in the car looked at him incredulously, "Dude, are you serious? Small group time is my favorite! We can just be ourselves and talk about real things." This is just such a wonderful example: our youth will tell us they are hungry for the best game of dodgeball or ski trips or Scarowinds, but they are really hungry for a place where "we can just be ourselves and talk about real things." Sometimes, they don't even realize they are hungry for it until they are given a taste of what they are missing.
When "hungry" turns to "hangry"
We've all seen the Snickers commercials; we know that "hangry" is what happens when you get extra cranky because your are very hungry. My husband is well-acquainted with someone is known to be hangry anytime she goes 4 hours without food or one week without ice cream (*ahem...me*). We know well that babies cry when they are hungry and toddlers throw tantrums and teenagers are just plain mean, and some of us adults, well, we can just be bears when we are deprived our mid-afternoon snack.
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Of course it's also true that we can be spiritually "hangry." On the first day of Confirmation several years ago, I had a student, a very dedicated student, come to my office after the first class and say, "I am going to quit Confirmation; I don't believe in any of this crap." I told her it was fine that she had doubts and wasn't so sure, but I encouraged her to keep coming and keep asking the questions because if she quit now, she might never get answers. Then when it was closer to Confirmation, we would make a decision together about whether or not she was ready to join the church. She came to class for the next 16 weeks with a premeditated list of questions that were really accusations about God, about the Bible, and about church. She was hangry: she was not only hungry for spiritual understanding, she was angry that life had, in 15 years, given her unsatisfactory answers or ignored her questions. She didn't ask God for explanations, she demanded it.
I'm sure all of us who interact with teenagers regularly can attest to the constant chorus of hangry demands:
I don't want to go to church; it's boring.
I'm not reading the Bible because it sounds like silly stories.
I think I'm an atheist because I'm really disgusted by the corruption of the Catholic Church.
I am a Christian, but I don't talk about it because I don't want to be like those people at school, the ones who are always trying to get everyone saved.
I love Montreat; I just hate church.
It can be easy to feel like the mom from the first story I shared: it hurts to hear that our kids have questions about their faith; it makes us cringe to hear them declare that they hate church. Even more, it fills us with fear and failure when they declare that they no longer want to follow Jesus Christ. Each week, however, I encourage myself and I encourage all of you to hear these gripes less as a negative diatribe and more as an exclamation of spiritual hanger. It can feel sometimes like spiritual hanger is like a cloud over our heads that won't go away, but it can also lead to real spiritual growth. My hangry Confirmation Student not only was confirmed and joined the church, but she also taught Sunday School all through high school and continues to practice her faith in college. In my own life, I believe I can cite the times when I was most spiritually hangry, the times when I was filled simultaneously with a sense of frustration and longing, as the times when God was really working a new and good work within me. After seminary, I continued to work part time at church I loved and felt called to and part time at Michael's craft store, as opportunity after opportunity for ordained ministry seemed to fall apart or be utterly not right. I began to question my call: was I really called to ordained ministry? Was I called to youth ministry? Maybe I should go into public relations or something where I could earn a decent living and do ministry on the side. My call to Unity came at the perfect time; each time I visited or interviewed with Unity I was reminded, re-energized, and reinvigorated with my sense of call in pastoral ministry. In the past year plus, I have walked through the door more than 350 times, and I have felt that same renewed sense of call every time I come here. I know, however, that I would not appreciate how perfect and right this call is had I not been allowed to become spiritually hangry for it.
Hangry? Don't eat a snickers.
Of course, the TV will tell us that we can get rid of our hanger by eating a Snickers.
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Let's look at the facts however. A Snickers bar contains 250 calories, 12 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 27 grams of sugar, and 120 mg of sodium. With the exception of peanuts, almost nothing contained in a Snickers bar has any dietary nutritional value (and a lot of the ingredients are unpronounceable). With the large number of sugar, Snickers bars leave the snacker hungry not long after consuming; they aren't filling, and just lead you to crave junk food even more. I think we can all agree that when it comes to a snack, a Snickers might taste good at the time, but it's not exactly the best long-term curb-hunger decision.
The same is essentially true of our spiritual hanger as well. I have two degrees in religious studies, and I love theology, philosophy, ethics, and sociology. I could probably come up with some kind of complex answer to most of the questions that are posed to me by teenagers that may or may not be satisfactory. But there are some answers they need to find themselves. There are some mysteries we can't solve in our faith. And there are some times when we have handed out snickers when we have youth who need a balanced diet.
A few years ago, a child I know went with his parents to a special animal exhibit at the zoo. He, at the age of 5, was able to see turkeys and roosters up close for the first time. He asked the zoo person, "How come the turkeys have those red things hanging from their necks?" The zoo person, red and obviously flustered said, "Because God made them that way!" The little boy stared at the zoo person and said, "Um, okay, but why?"
While it is of course true that God made these animals with unique features, there are also scientific or interesting ways that we know why God made those animals that way or chose to give them particular gifts or functions. For example, spiders spin webs because God gave them the capacity to do so AND because they are able to catch their food with the webs and control the insect population. Sometimes we are afraid of giving kids complicated answers because we are afraid they'll only ask more questions or they'll begin to doubt in God. But actually the opposite is true. When we fail to give our youth answers or address questions honestly, we are essentially saying that the church today isn't relative, and that their questions don't count. We are saying that teenagers can't be trusted to ask questions and God might be too weak to stand where our questions are blowing.
And of course there are times when no amount of spiritual food can fully quench our spiritual hunger. I went to Mexico in college where I worked with orphans at multiple orphanages. I left with this sense of "why does anyone have to suffer like this?" and "why was I so lucky to live in America and have parents?" I will never have the answers to those questions until I meet Jesus face-to-face, but over time as I've learned to understand God, I have moved from hangry to hungry. I have learned to be at peace with my questions not by denying that they exist but by acknowledging that there is more to the world than what I can observe, there is more to God than what I have experienced. Sometimes, letting our teenagers be a little hangry is more healthy for them than force-feeding them unhealthy, simple Snickers.
So...living with hangry kids
I wish that faith for teenagers were as easy as handing out Snickers bars on Halloween, but it just isn't. I wish that I could give our youth all the answers and save them from questions and anger, doubts and frustration, but I can't. I wish that our youth didn't have to develop such hanger issues, but often they do, and it's that hanger that leads them to a deep, rich, and lasting faith throughout their lives. I challenge us to recognize the hunger in our youth, so that we might work together to meet their real hunger needs rather than quick fixes.
