Yesterday in worship, Dan preached from the inspirational text of Jeremiah 29:
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
In his sermon, Dan mentioned that here in the south, we might translate this verse, "For surely I know the plans I have for y'all, says the Lord, plans for y'all's welfare and not for harm, to give all y'all a future with hope."
Where I am from, we might translate the verse, "For surely I know the plans I have for yinz, says the Lord, plans for yinz's welfare, n'at, and not for harm, to give yinz guys a future with hope."
Yinz is the colloquial form of you plural in the Pittsburgh area and it's making a comeback. When I was young, my parents never allowed us to say yinz. Of course the our midwestern accents permitted lots of Pittsburgh phrases, but people who said "Yinz" were considered "Yinzers" and that was just lazy, low-class talk. This type of talk would be associated with the low-income, scruffy neighborhoods of our town.
Nowadays, everyone says yinz. My own brother texted me last night and asked, "Yinz watchin' the debate?" Fellow Pittsburghers proudly refer to themselves as Yinzers, and those of us who have moved away from our beloved city make up the vast "Yinzer Nation," our beloved name for Pittsburgh sports fans who live in diaspora around the country. Yesterday, as the Steelers (or Stillers, as you might hear in the Burgh) trampled over the Jets, my social media accounts were full of hashtags around the country: #yinzernation #herewego #stillers.
Being a native of Pittsburgh is somewhat different than being a native of a lot of other places; in fact it's almost like being a New Yorker or a Bostonian: even when you leave, the pride and roots of the city never leave you. It would be incredibly shameful to move to a new city and stop rooting for the Steelers or the Pirates or the Penguins. In fact, Charlotte was a city Alex and I felt we could move for the simple reason that there was no baseball team to rival our Bucs, the Panthers and Steelers play in two different divisions so there would not be a rivalry, hockey isn't super centralized, and Pittsburgh has no basketball team, so we can without guilt root for the Hornets. Pittsburgh fans are brutal and intense. In college, one of my close friends and roommates was from Baltimore and thoughtlessly brought a Baltimore Ravens sign to a Steeler party. She left crying because the boys had ripped it in half and taken turns stomping on it and shouting.
But being a Pittsburgh native means you always have a friend no matter where you are. Years ago, Alex and I vacationed in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where we met and befriended a yinzer bartender who gave us free food and chatted with us for half the day. My family makes it a point to go to Steeler bars all over the country. As I was planning for the High School Beach Trip, I contacted a man on VRBO about his property. While he normally doesn't rent the property to student groups, he decided to trust us because he was a fellow yinzer, and well, yinzers trust yinzers. Yinzers believe in hard work, in honesty, in competition, and in respect. We are a city founded on blue-collar steel workers, who were tough and hard-working, but deeply rooted in their morals and their pride. To be a yinzer is more than being from Pittsburgh: it's a mantra for life that hard work pays off, honesty is the best policy, and no matter what, we have pride and hope on our side.
Kingdom of God
In a lot of ways, the Yinzer Nation is similar to how I believe the Kingdom of God works in the world today. I believe that we all share these same values, core beliefs, and origins: that Jesus Christ is Lord, that love wins, and that God alone is sovereign. We might live in very different settings or have very different opinions about how these values and beliefs might be translated into the world, but we are connected by what in fact unites us: #jesuschrist
This week, our Middle Schoolers focused on the verse, "Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth," and we talked about how sometimes things that aren't necessarily right are funny or easy to join in on. We talked about how sometimes the truth and the way of love is not the funnest route, but it is the right path. We talked about various settings in school, in sports, and in our homes that we can be the light of God in a weary world. Essentially we talked about how we can contribute to the yinzer nation, to the Kingdom of God in the world.
Our High Schoolers focused on the verse, "Contribute to the needs of the saints," and we brainstormed ways that we could contribute to the "needs of the saints" in our church, in our community of Fort Mill, and in our world. We learned that even as teenagers, there are real ways of making a difference in the world around us, and we came up with realistic goals for the ways that we can contribute to these needs each week. In essence, the youth were asked to imagine the scope of the Kingdom of God in our church, in our community, and in our world, and invited to participate in that Kingdom in some way, knowing that each small contribution makes an enormous difference.
So what happens next?
Both our Middle and High School Youth Groups receive Challenge cards each week that challenge our youth to live differently in a particular way throughout the coming week. Our Middle Schoolers were challenged to think before they join in the wrongdoing; our High Schoolers were challenged to find ways they can specifically contribute to the needs of our community. Here are some ways you can help:
#1: Believe
It sounds really simple, but all too often I think we fail to truly take to heart Psalm 27.13: I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Let's be honest: I watched the debate last night, and I watch the Today Show every morning. This world that surrounds us? It can be pretty darn difficult to believe the goodness of the Lord will be showing up at all, let alone being confident in that belief. And yet that is what God has called us to believe, that is what Christ is compelling us to notice. Our world may be very quick and eager to point out the things that bring us down and tear us apart, but we worship a God who is much bigger and much more undeniably present than that.
#2: Encourage
As I've blogged about many times, our youth are bombarded with pressure upon pressure to succeed in an earthly sense. Of course, we do not want our children to grow up and be jobless or faithless or poor. But far more importantly, we have to intentionally focus our youth to grow up and to genuinely be good people, to be people who love and care for others, to be people who are honest and fair, to be people who have concern for all life. This meme struck me this week:
#3: Notice, Be Proud
As a child, I often was noticed for my academic abilities or my intelligence, and occasionally also for my large appetite. I learned from a young age that I could cultivate positive attention for these things much more readily than I could by being nice. Rarely do we compliment and notice our students for the good and positive and kind things they are doing, but we reprimand and draw attention to the things they've done wrong or the ways they are inconveniencing us. The best thing we can do is notice what our kids are doing and love them love them love them. I'm convinced that I work with the best group of youth imaginable (Yes, I say that about every group I work with, but I mean it...I love teenagers), and they bring something really fresh, loving, and empathetic to our community. I get a lot of joy from being around our teenagers, and I hope you do too.
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