On Monday and Tuesday of this past week I was in Boise, ID. Mike and I were meeting with Allelon and also with Mike Kipp from NNU. Great times…

While in Boise I met a new friend named Rickard. Rickard serves on the research team of Allelon and also cooperates with God and a few other folks to direct the Teen Center in a town outside of Boise called Eagle. The Landing Community Center is a wonderful project serving children, teens and adults through the arts, social action, giving trees, etc.
At first glance it might appear that Rickard is running an ordinary teen center. But this teen center is different. Rickard and his team go beyond the ordinary and have been able to explore missional youth ministry.

I had to ‘look again’ in order to move beyond my own presuppositions — but after a bit of time I realized that Rickard and the others are living amidst the needs of the teens and their families in Eagle. They are meeting needs for sure, but they are finding their way into the life of students in a real way.

It is one thing — a good thing, of course — to meet needs. I think it is completely another thing to consistently remove your own desires and take up residence within the suffering, pain, confusion, hurt, sickness, etc. of others. Out of a love that overflows from their love of God, Rickard and his team have been able to help students encounter and engage with God  — in not so ordinary ways.

Believing that God is continuously at work around them and that by cooperating with his activity he can help transform the lives of many teens, Rickard faithfully serves the teens of Eagle.

A prayer for today’s youth…

“…Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices, Help them to know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory or failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world my bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to him alone who, sometimes with tears in his eyes, commits himself in love to thee and his brothers. Lead them and all thy world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all men are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ’s name we ask it and for his sake. Amen.” (from The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner)