Dear Young Life Leaders,

I don’t really know how to begin this, except to say thank you for being who you are. You see, Young Life isn’t really about what you do. Yes, it’s wonderful when you can show up to every game or practice…it’s awesome when you can spend long hours talking over coffee or just hanging out at the beach…and we all know it’s great when you can be there for a kid who needs a listening ear or a helping hand.

All of those things are awesome, but it’s who you are that shapes kids views of Christ. There’s an old Christian anthem “they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love…” and that’s how kids see Jesus in us…by our love. We don’t have time to bend over backward all the time for every kid; we can’t be replacement parents or friends. Ah, but Jesus has given us an amazing gift….we can love kids.

We talk about it a lot in Young Life….loving kids, no matter who they are or where they’re at. But, the truth of the matter is, some kids are more loveable to us than others. We “click” with some kids and roll our eyes at the antics of others. Somehow, we’re thrown into a room full of kids once a week and are given the opportunity to show Christ’s love to them.
We do it through crazy games and songs and heartfelt messages. We do it before and after club, when we’re out doing contact work and when we’re seeking to reconnect with kids who have walked away. We try and compress the gigantic, life-changing power of the gospel into brief messages and short conversations and we hope and pray that God will finish the work we’ve tried to help along.

But, friends, I want to remind you that being a Young Life leader is a privilege. Not only was the life changing work God completed in your life a gift at some point, but who you are today and tomorrow is His gift as well. Jesus said “love one another as I have loved you.” (ref) Every moment we switch into “Young Life leader mode” we’re getting another opportunity to love the kids around us…to love one another. It’s a bit overwhelming to try and love the whole world (the guy at the checkout counter seems a tad removed from my every day existence) but we get to model that love to a few kids.
I hate to break it to you, but God doesn’t need you to save the souls of kids in Orange County. If he chose, the rocks would cry out and sing a song so beautiful the world would have no choice but to listen. But instead, God gives us the honor of being part of the work of redemption. We get to stumble through songs at Club and struggle over the right words for club talks. We get to be a part of a very messy clean up of a very messy world.

This school year you will be tired. You will get sick of kids, sick of leaders, sick of trying to raise money and maybe even sick of God’s call to love those around you. But no matter what you do, no matter how you feel, I want you to know who you are. You are a child of the king, adopted into a family of believers, a great cloud of witnesses who are cheering you onto a lifetime of love. In Philippians, Paul talks a lot about joy in every situation, but one of my favorite verses is about plain old life.
Brothers, I don’t consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what’s behind and straining toward what is ahead….I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus


Friends, there’s a party going on in heaven…no matter how hard it gets, I want to make sure I can bring my high-school and jr. high friends with me, because I want to see them through Jesus’ eyes—through the eyes of a man who loved even though he knew everything that was wrong in the world, through the eyes of a God who created us to be the perfect versions of ourselves, and through the eyes of the one who looks on me and calls me His own.

Audience of One,
Katrina