As my alarm sounded at 7:30 am yesterday morning, I was face down on couch cushions in the middle of Fellowship Hall after about 1 hour and 45 minutes of sleep. It sort of felt like someone had exchanged my insides for concrete. Rising from my position required a herculean effort on my part. As I changed my clothes and directed the students on cleaning up their messes, my brain kept repeating the same desperate phrase:
you just need to make it until 1:00
you just need to make it until 1:00
At one o'clock, I could head home and curl up on the couch and nap. I've never been great at losing sleep, and the older I get, the less able I am to function on less than 5 hours of sleep. I plopped down with the students in worship at 8:45 feeling lethargic, groggy, and fogged. I felt conscious that I had brought sleepy teenagers to worship who might not really get anything out of the service, who might be too tired to really take in something new from the sermon.
If it feels this bad, why on earth do you do it?
Theories among youth directors on Lock-Ins vary greatly. Some folks structure activities from the moment students arrive until the moment students go home, leaving no room for sleep. Some folks have kids in bed by 11 pm. Some see the purpose of Lock-Ins as a time for retreat and prayer; some see the purpose as a bonding experience; still others see it as a way of making the church a safe place. Adults simply dread Lock-Ins. Whether you go to bed at 11 pm or 5 am, if you're an adult, you're not getting a ton of sleep curled up in a sleeping bag on the cold floor of your church. It's not easy, and some churches simply don't do it anymore.
And yet we here at Unity do it. We do it because these are the memories that students will take with them for a lifetime (I still have fond memories and stories of Lock-Ins when I was in high school). We do it because in the middle of the night when you're setting up camp in a church, subsisting off of pizza, mountain dew, oreos, and potato chips, there's some strange bond that occurs within the youth group that truly cannot be created anywhere else. We do it because when students sleep over at our church, suddenly this sterile, cold building becomes a second home, filled with familiarity and comfort.
I subscribe to a lot of theories, and I have particular tricks to help make a Lock-In not the worst thing in the world. Here are my top 5:
#5: Lock-In's should be approximately 14 hours in length.
I've seen and been a part of churches that had Lock-In's for 24 hours, with activities all night and all day. I can't sign up for this insanity, and I can't expect my volunteers to sign up for it either. I think a Lock-In should be about 14 hours, from 6:00pm to 8:00am, usually. This is just about the maximum I can ask of adults, and it also results in the minimal amount of body odor, which trust me, can be a major issue. Also, whether your students sleep or not, they will be cranky by lunchtime on day 2. They will be irrational and any positive experiences you want them to have will be obstructed by the overwhelming blanket of grouch that will inevitably envelop them. You don't want that because it creates negative associations with the church, and it inhibits any spiritual teaching you were trying to do.
#4: The amount of sleep should be appropriate to the age group.
And the situation. What you want is a positive memorable experience for the group. This means you never want them to get to the point of tiredness when they are cranky while they are in the church (see #5). So, if the Lock-In precedes another event, we sleep. If we're kicking their butts out at 9am before they can get sufficiently irritable, we do not sleep. Middle schoolers always get some sleep; high schoolers want the rush of staying up.
#3: Minimize the mess; do a thorough job of cleaning up.
After about 1:00am at a Lock-In, I consolidate all activities to one room or one level of the church. This helps to wind down the energy in the room (so that even if you have to be awake at 5:00 am, at least you can be dozing or staring at a wall instead of running around playing zombie apocalypse for the 500th time). In the morning, I have them clean up the space very thoroughly. This gets them moving keeping them from the crankiness, and it helps to prove to the people who clean and use the church building who are over the age of 30 that we can do fun things but still respect the building and the community.
#2: Literally, clear your schedule for the next 3 days.
While I can force myself to stay awake all night with a constant flow of coffee and mountain dew, it takes me several days to get back into a normal sleeping and waking pattern again. It's like my body is filled with lead. As I left the house on Sunday afternoon to come back to the church for Middle School Youth Group, I stood for a few minutes pressing the "lock" button on my Toyota key while staring at my apartment door, wondering why it wasn't beeping to let me know it was locked. After about 30 seconds of this, I realized I needed to lock the door with the key to the apartment. These types of mental mishaps are commonplace post-Lock-In.
#1: Acceptance
Fact is, I know this is gonna hurt real bad for me, but it's going to be amazing for my students. When I was a senior, I painted the toenails of one of the guys while he slept at a Lock-In, only to wake up the next morning to a sharpie mustache drawn across my face. To this day, I laugh about that time, and the culprit of the face art who lives in California also laughs, remembering how embarrassing it was for him to ask his sister to get the nail-polish off his toes. I'll never forget one night when it snowed in Pittsburgh and we were literally snowed in; we made snow angels and snowmen, and the entire night was impromptu fun. I'll never forget spending time in silence, reading scripture and praising God at 1:00 am at a Lock-In. No matter how tired I am for the next several days, it's worth it. No matter how off my diet I become because of the constant flow of Mountain Dew, it's worth it. No matter how difficult it is to nail down adults for the event, it's worth it. These are the types of events that kids are going to remember and which will keep them coming back for years to come. It is this type of event that leaves a lasting legacy and builds a lasting community.
So back to worship...
It was after the sermon, and I was feeling sheepishly guilty. I had tried with all my might to keep my eyes open and pay attention to the sermon, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I had missed some things. I also know that there's almost nothing worse as a preacher to look out at closed eyes and glazed looks, knowing that regardless of what you say, your words are whispering winds this morning. After the sermon, we stood to recite the Apostles Creed. I began to utter the words without looking at my bulletin, and I found that the rhythmic repetition was soothing. There was something about repeating this creed, and later about repeating the Lord's Prayer, and even singing the Doxology, that struck me on a primal level. Even as tired and empty as I was on Sunday morning, these repetitive actions that we do each week grounded me in worship. Perhaps the sermon and prayers had a smaller effect on me than they normally would have; perhaps I struggled to keep my eyes open; perhaps I felt a sense of melancholy as I would have rather been in bed. But somehow through repetition and tradition, worship was not lost on me.
When we recite our prayers, we join in the communion of saints, all the believers who came before us and all who come after us. Knowing that Christians have been reciting the Apostle's Creed since at least 400 AD. That's more that 1,600 years of people saying these words, in many languages, in many nations, in many towns and cities and buildings and communities. If the creed were only recited once per week from 400 AD until now, it would have been recited roughly 84,032 times. As I stand to recite that prayer on Sunday morning, I don't need my own strength or creativity, I don't even need to be fully awake. Rather, as my hungry, worn out spirit stands to praise God, I can rely on the 1600 years of saints reciting the creed more than 84, 032 times to carry my burden, to carry me to the cross, to carry me to Christ.
I am reminded of the paralyzed man.
3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven."
Mark 2.3-5
When we come to the well, but we are so dry we can't even lift our heads to take a drink, the family of God pours the water in our mouths. When we come to our God, but we cannot pull ourselves into the door, the family of God carries us in. When we come to God, but the world is too crowded for us to come in, the family of God makes a hole in the ceiling and lays us down at the feet of our Lord. This is the joy and beauty of traditional worship: we are always connected to the larger church, to the saints who came before us and who will come after us, to the great cloud of witnesses who hold us up when we cannot do it ourselves. When we come to worship and we are riding the struggle bus, I pray that we might allow the traditions and repetitions of our worship to meet us in our most raw and rugged selves, that we might be lifted up into the graceful presence of Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment