I was thinking about writing a youth ministry story today,
and a former youth member popped in my head, Matthew Robertson. I realized there were tons of stories that
Matthew was apart of. I decided to tell
three short ones, and these three story sum up
our relationship very well.
My first week on the job
When I first got the job at Christ Church I spent a lot of
time building relationships with the youth.
One of the principles I learned working with Younglife is that you have
to earn the right to be heard. The
main way you do this is by spending time with youth you don’t know. I must say, no matter how old you get,
building relationships with people you don’t know is tough, awkward, and
difficult. Some of the youth and I were
going to grab lunch downtown after the church service. Matthew was walking about five paces in front
of me when I heard him say, “I just think it sucks that Rachel (the last youth
director) left, and now we are stuck with this old fat guy". So my wife read this first story and told me that it seemed mean. I love this story, not because Matthew said something that hurt my feelings. I love this story because by the time Matthew graduated we were as close as we could be. He was one of the students in my program, but he was also one of my closest friends. We had our own inside jokes, our own secret handshake, and some really great times.
The Mission Trip
We were on an Inner City Mission Trip in Atlanta, GA. Our lodging was a state park where we were camping
out. I told everyone to hurry and get
a shower because we had a tight schedule. Matthew just kept hanging out and talking to everyone. Finally when we were about to start our Bible
study Matthew grabbed his soap, shampoo, and clothes and ran to the shower
leaving all of us to wait on him. After
a couple minutes I headed to the shower house to tell him to hurry. When I realized he was taking his time I
stole his clothes and left him only a dress to wear back to camp. When he made it back to the camp everybody
laughed. Matthew was never embarrassed, not even for a
second. Instead he made
us uncomfortable us by wearing the dress for the rest of the night. During the evenings Bible study I was forced to listen
to him answer serious questions about faith and God while wearing the dress.
Maybe this story is heading down the sarcastic path as well. Simply put, Matthew's faith was sincere and real, and he looked as good as possible in the dress.
The Ski Trip
We were on our ski trip.
A group of guys including Matthew and I had agreed to start off the day
skiing together. When it was time to
meet Matthew was not there. I went to
check on him and found him still in bed, asleep.
After asking, begging, pleading, and squirting him with water to get him
up didn’t work I decided to go a different route. First I took the mattress from the other bed
and threw it on top of him. Then I threw
all of the blankets on top of that. Next
I added the pillows from the couch, the chairs from the kitchen table, the
kitchen table, the microwave, Pot and pans, silverware, his luggage, his roommate’s luggage, and literally
everything in the entire room. I left
him there and went skiing with the guys.
I learned later that someone had to dig him out of the stuff so he could
get up.
I'm not even sorry about this story. This was awesome!
I miss my bro!
Ma'Holla!
Joey
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