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Transition Fail
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by Michael
Shaughnessy
In high school, Johnny
Jackson went to church every Sunday with his
family. The pastor of his church knew him by
name, although they had never really talked.
Johnny participated in his Christian youth
group every week. He was part of the
leadership team. He knew his youth leader,
Mark, well. They often met just to gab but
also to talk about how Johnny was doing with
prayer, Bible reading, and the hot issues of
the month.
Johnny had been to camp three times. It was
there, in his tenth-grade year, that he gave
his life to the Lord. His best friends were
part of the youth group, but he got along well
with almost everyone in school. He graduated
third in a class of 227.
Over the four months after he graduated he
would be stripped of every system of support
that he had for living the Christian life. Not
because he chose so—most of the supports
simply evaporated.
By the week after
his graduation he no longer had his weekly
youth group meeting. Like most youth groups,
it didn’t meet in the summer—the most
challenging season of the year for youth.
By mid-June his
youth worker, Mark, had turned his attention
to summer camp and was putting his time into
building relationships with the incoming
ninth-grade boys so he could have them on
board in September. But then Mark got
offered a full-ride scholarship for divinity
school and part-time job in Dallas. His
youth career was over. He resigned on June
25th and moved to Texas.
Johnny got his
first, well-paid summer job, doing
construction. The crew was a bit rough and
fbombed their way through the day. That
wasn’t shocking to Johnny. He’d heard it
before, but now he joined in, at least some
days, and then more days. Johnny went to a
few parties with his peers that summer. They
got drunk for the first time because now
they couldn’t get kicked off the baseball
team anymore.
Johnny still had one
more summer camp. He went as a counselor. On
the third night he acknowledged he was
becoming a backslider and repented as
genuinely as he could.
In late August he
left home to attend a small liberal arts
college in upstate New York where his father
had gone. It was a Christian college when
his dad went but the church was no longer an
integral part of the college. Johnny
arrived, thinking he would attend Sunday
services, but he just didn’t connect in the
first few weeks. His mom texted him once,
asking him if he had found the church. He
responded he had, which was true. He just
hadn’t been there yet.
At the “Fresher’s
Fair” he signed up to be part of the biggest
Christian student group on campus. He got a
text message inviting him to their first
barbecue but no one from his new peer group
was going—not that he asked them, but none
said they were going. The barbecue was only
a block off campus, but in a place he didn’t
know, with people he didn’t know. He didn’t
go.
His new peer group
was made up of the guys and girls in his
dorm, a couple of people he met in class,
and others he met through his new roommate,
a lapsed Catholic from Miami. They got along
fine but never talked about faith. In fact,
Johnny had no discussions with anyone about
his faith during the first month of college.
Johnny didn’t expect
the direct assault on his faith he
experienced in biology class. Dr. Smith made
it clear that faith had no place in science.
He would only tolerate “objective opinions.”
Two weeks into
September Johnny was living in a hostile
environment with no Christian peers, no
parental support, no pastor, no church, no
idea of when church services were, no youth
worker, no program, no role in leadership,
no charitable service, and a Bible that was
gathering dust in a box in the trunk of his
car.
And most of the church is puzzled about why
Johnny lost his faith.
| Is
Johnny (or his sister) about to
graduate from your youth group? Now is
the time to prep them for one of the
most difficult transitions of their
lives. |
|
