Reaching out…

My wife Jessica grew up in Boise, ID and was searching for what life to the fullest really meant. She was not my wife at the time as she was in High School and that would have been creepy, with that established…. She was trying to figure out what real life meant and a couple of her friends told her about Young Life and invited her along. Pretty soon she was on the bus to Woodleaf camp in California, where she decided that she needed something new. She needed to let the God of the universe take the wheel of her life for a little bit to see if God might be able to shed a little light on life to the fullest.

Meanwhile while I was in High School, I was president of my church youth group and super excited about all things connected to the “United Methodist Church”. I had been to camp and convocation and was interested in being involved at the state level. There was Young Life at my school, but I didn’t really know it. Apparently there were a lot of people that were going to club and camp. I hadn’t been, I was invited once, I remember getting the flier from Ryan Schiro. It was a far side cartoon.  I didn’t go because I didn’t know what Young Life was. With some afterthought, I think that it had something to do with my perception of WHO was going. Meaning, the people that I thought I saw going to Young Life Club were also the people I thought were partying on the weekends, and disrespecting women, the weak, and the poor. Generally, I saw my peers being selfish and broken and hurting others. The interesting thing is that I was doing a lot of the same thing.

I sort of consider this to be my “Saul” stage of life. I was so sure that I was right that I was oblivious to my own sin and the sin of judging my classmates. All I could see was their shortcomings, and was blind to the glaring errors in my own life. The reality of Young Life is that these are the people that you want at club. It is the sick that need the doctor, not the healthy.

My wife – then a high school student still – started attending campaigners and was connecting in real ways with her friends, she was learning from the likes of Steve Bottimer and Tom and Donna Swauanson, andy Mr Fout. She was learning what it meant to be a woman and a child of God at the same time. That summer she went to Malibu Club in Canada where she served on work crew and experienced even greater growth. In the process she decided that she wanted to attend Seattle Pacfic University.

Meanwhile life got harder for me. I struggled with esteem issues always comparing myself to everyone else. Am I taller, funnier, more likely to survive a fall from a high elevation, more daring, more charismatic, a better Christian, smarter. It is safe to say that the answer to all of these questions in my head was “Yes, you are”. However it wasn’t a true/real answer. It was the answer that I wanted to hear and I knew that I, based on sheer grit alone, would somehow be able to experience a fall from a high elevation better than my peers. Ahhhh, ambition. I was wearing my accomplishments like medals. If you didn’t know about them I would tell you. If you did know about them, I would remind you of them. By the grace of God, I saw the brochure for Seattle Pacific University at our church and decided that I would attend school there. This was primarily because Sherman Snow, the son of my previous pastor was in the guidebook, and I had always thought that he was a pretty funny guy. I also reasoned that if it worked for him, then it would definitely work for me, too.

When Jessica got to SPU she quickly connected with people who were involved in Young Life. One of those people was Chad Marshall, a friend from work crew. He was a year older then her but was volunteering in Everett at Mariner High School. This is something that Jessica was super excited about. She jumped right in driving the 30-45 minutes each Monday night with the consortium of other SPU students who were also volunteer leaders. She didn’t have a lot of time to give, but the time that she had she freely gave. It came at a cost. On Monday nights she was going to Club. On Friday, it was football games or basketball games. On Sutunday it was campaigners. She had a lot going on, but somehow was able to balance the schedule.

I was also just starting at SPU, my freshman year I got paired up with amazing guys who have spurred me on to become the person that I am still in the process of becoming. We had so much fun, pushing the boundaries on what it meant to be a Christian man, but also having a great time. Most of them new about my High School accomplishments, and those that didn’t learned of my college accomplishments lined up in the trophy case. By the middle of my Sophomore year in college, it seemed like there had to be more. I was having a great time outwardly and for that matter inwardly, but there was still something missing. I felt a call to step out of my comfort zone and serve. So I decided I would volunteer at one of the local church’s middle school youth groups. My friend Drew Goodmanson and I volunteered at Seattle First Covenant for about two hours a week, mostly just hanging out with some of the kids there. It was good. It was safe.

Now Jessica and I had been spending a lot of time together since early in our freshman year. She liked me and I liked her. We dated. I really liked dating a girl that I thought was beautiful inside and out. And somehow, by the grace of God, she kept me around.

Somewhere about our Junior year of college, I went and saw a counselor, for what I thought were some trivial issues. Instead of addressing those issues, he jumped on my trophy case and started to bang away at the castles that I had been building. This hurt. It hurt deeply, By losing my trophy case it meant that I was no longer defined by what I did. Instead my worth began to be defined wholely and purely by the transforming power of Jesus Christ. There weren’t enough mission trips for me to go on, or youth group rallies that could add more value to me. In the eyes of the creator of the universe I was valuable merely because I was his child. I was hurt and I was broken. And I was helpless to fix it on my own.

Sure enough, a few weeks later I was on a late night coffee run with this cute girl, Jessica ( yep, same girl that I married ). I mentioned that I felt like God had placed a desire in my heart for the wrestling team at Kamiak High School. Soon I came to visit the Kamiak High School club, and I stumbled upon realization that God is after all people, not just the ones I deem worthy. My heart was opened to lost people, hurt people, broken people. In the period of a couple of weeks I went from a “Saul” to a “Paul”. For the first time in my life I understood the heart of the Apostle Paul, my namesake.

Ahh… but with this new found awareness didn’t limit itself to the future. It also shed light on my past, and that light was convicting. That light meant I had to confess that I had missed a lot of opportunities. It meant that there were adults just like me, praying for my high school friends, longing to meet them longing to share the transforming power of Jesus Christ with my High School as part of Young Life. And my unique position at the High School could have been a great asset to them. That awareness cut to my core as I realized that I had missed out on being a part of it.

I ran into Steve Blacksmith, then the area director at my high school, at camp one, year and we remembered who was in my class, what they were doing now, etc… etc… I apologized, and he accepted it, probably more to make the “crazy guy” go away than to really engage in the whole thing. But please take this next bit as a shameless plug for Young Life leaders everywhere. Young Life leaders lead because they were called to go into the schools and love on High School students.They use the help that God places before them, and they are grateful for it, but don’t expect it. They are responding to God’s call on their life, not to their own desire to “Take over a school,” and any help that comes is like manna raining down from above. The reason that Steve was so free to forgive is because he was responding to that call on his life, not on his own personal desire to “win,” it was his journey and my journey crossed into his for a brief moment.

Here is the beautiful thing about living without a trophy case. Jesus Christ died on the Cross for me just as much as he died on the cross for the kids that I have pleasure of working with. That forgiveness extends to me, too. I don’t have to worry about my trophy case being full because now there is only one trophy in my case, and it belongs to Jesus Christ. This trophy proclaims to the world that I am his and he is mine. I have won the prize. I am a child of God. That is more freeing than any number of accomplishments and achievements I could have ever attained on my own. Thanks be to God, the beginner and finisher of my faith.

We volunteered for a total of seven years in Mukilteo, in the beginning it was helping out with club and trying to figure out how to run a campaigner group ( small group biblestudy ) and ended with us anchoring the Young Life to the community of Mukilteo.

One day at family camp for our church Calvary Chapel of Lake Stevens ( then Everett ), I felt the call to go on Young Life staff on the Olympic Peninsula. Our family packed up and moved to Port Townsend, in 2003, with a 2 year old and 3 month old. We have loved the time in Port Townsend, getting the opportunity to engage with kids right where they are at. We have gotten to experience a lifetime of incredible-ness. Added once to the size of our family and about to add a second time.