Category: Family

Reflections on Youth Ministry and Dropping My Son Off at College

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This blog post, by me, originally appeared on the Download Youth Ministry blog.

A few weeks ago my wife Heather and I drove away from the university campus we had just left our second son at, tears on both our faces, making the long drive home. Weren’t we just changing his diapers? Our football lineman was once so small.

I’m so thankful to be a youth pastor.

My wife and I jumped into full time ministry 21 years ago as newlyweds. We had our first of four sons three days before our first anniversary. The youth group called him “Cletus the Fetus.” Heather wasn’t as impressed as I was with their baby naming skills. Having my own children move through our student ministry has been an eye-opening and perspective changing experience for me. For a brief moment, all four of them were in our youth group at the same time – now we’re down to just two as the older two have graduated and moved on. Here a just a few reasons I love student ministry as a father and why I think it was so critical for my son we just left at a college too far away:

  • My son loves the church. I couldn’t say the same when I was a teen. In fact, it was right around his age that I swore off faith altogether. I was a pastor’s kid who hated what I had seen and experienced. My wife and I have always had as one of our barometers for health whether our kids like our church – not just the children’s ministry or the student ministry, but the church as a whole.
  • My son has a crew of loving Christian adults in his life. Mama Lin (Willie), Ed, and Figgy (Mike) spent the last seven years as his small group leader, showing up to events, visiting him at his job, and listening to all his stories. Those three men created an environment that built trust, loyalty, and incredible spiritual growth with a group of – what seemed at first to be challenging – Christian young men. There’s Kim, Carl, Melissa, and so many more who also serve in our student ministry. The best part? I got to choose them. I’m the youth pastor. Why do I put so much care into who is a part of our student ministry? How often do we get the opportunity to choose the adults who influence our children?
  • My son knows how to serve, to lead, to study scripture, to have accountability, to find other believers. He’s not perfect. I’m sure there are going to be moments in his college experience I would rather not know about. But I got to plan the seven years of his student ministry; it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and staying in one place for all these years meant I got to see it through from beginning to end. I have seen my son lead worship, I’ve launched him off the blob, I’ve done street evangelism with him in Costa Rica, we’ve fed the homeless together on the border with Mexico, I’ve wrestled and beat him many times … and been beaten by him a few times in recent months.

Youth ministry is a gift. We get to be present during the most transformative time in peoples’ lives. Everything is bigger, everything is exploding, everything is new. And we get to be there. We get to see children go from concrete thinkers emulating their parents to teens processing and making their faith their own. My house is quieter than I would like now, but I feel good about where my son is at, literally and figuratively. I couldn’t imagine not having been his youth pastor!

2022 Student Missions Reports

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Yesterday was our annual student missions report Sunday! This year we had 91 students and adults participate in our three trips. The highlight for Heather and I, though, was our three sons in the video above. Zach shared about his experience on the Niagara Falls trip (YouthWorks), Noah shared about his experience on the Blue […]

Twenty Years

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Twenty years. It goes by fast.

In March, 2001, I became a full time youth pastor.

Heather and I had been married for a handful of months and had just found out we were expecting our first child. He would end up being two days old at our first anniversary – definitively NOT part of our five year plan, but we like him so it turn out okay. My youth group at the time thought they had input in naming him and seemed to think “Cletus the Fetus” was a legitimate option. We politely declined. You’re welcome, Micah. Now he’s in college and some of those teens have kids closing in on youth group age. It goes by fast.

We have four sons total. There was a brief window last summer where they were all in the youth group at the same time; our youngest moved up to sixth grade, our oldest hadn’t left for college yet. Having my own kids in the group is amazing. I like to joke with other youth pastors that it’s like having my own brutally honest focus group.

I feel like I should be listing all of the things I’ve learned over the years. Honestly, though, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. I’m still learning, I’m still figuring it out, I’m still wrapping my mind around what youth ministry is.

As a parent of teens now, I have to confess that young youth pastor me would have driven current me crazy. Lousy communication, last minute notice about events, a little too confident at times. I had a lot to learn.

But there’s also an incredible nostalgia that comes with watching the old videos from those days and looking at the photos. It was such an exciting, new time.

Probably the biggest difference now is perspective. Youth ministry is a long game. I think I used to believe too much rode on each meeting, I took it too personally when kids were kids and broke the rules, I thought too much hinged on me. It’s really about being a stable, consistent presence, gently pointing young people to God, showing grace, not panicking over things that may seem huge in the moment but in reality fade away quickly. I love that I still love doing it.

Youth ministry is a marathon, not a sprint.

But it does go by fast.

2020 Writing in Review

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2020 has had a lot of challenges … but it was a fun year for being published! I had a chapter in a book, saw sixteen curriculum resources release, and had nineteen games and other media type resources release. I should probably clarify that I did not create all of this in 2020; some of these were resources I had submitted in 2018 and 2019. It takes anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple years for things to go through the publishing process. Another fun development this year was teaming up with different family members; both Noah (Hua Mulan) and Zach (Guinea Pig Party) had ideas for games that we put together during quarantine. Heather was the brains behind the Caption Challenge and Hashtag games, both of which have been far more popular than anything I have come up with, as well as the one who came up with the idea for Insta Devos. And Micah helped me with Actin’ Sus, which will probably retain the title of best selling youth ministry resource by a McNutt until the end of time. Anyway, if you’re interested, click on them to check them out!

The Book:

Available at Download Youth Ministry:

Curriculum

                

Games & Media

                                    

Published with The Youth Cartel, now available at Download Youth Ministry:

         

Zach’s Insta Devo

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Our student ministry has been posting short devos called “Insta Devos” to our Instagram and Facebook pages. It’s been a fun way to see students interact with scripture and share their insights with one another. This week, our youngest – Zach – who is moving up into the youth group in a few weeks, did one as well! I’m super proud of him … it’s my favorite Insta Devo!

Zach, Caleb, and Micah’s Mission Reports

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This past month three of my sons went on mission trips, two of them with me. Zach, my youngest, went with me to Belize, Caleb went to Kentucky, and Micah went with me to Bolivia! It was an amazing and exhausting month. This past Sunday, all of the teens reported on the mission trips; the above video is Zach, Caleb, and Micah’s report!

Take Ninety Seconds

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I recently wrote a review of Dr. Jeremy Clark and Jerusha Clark’s book, “Your Teenager is Not Crazy: Understanding Your Teen’s Brain Can Make You a Better Parent”; you can read it here. One of the things they wrote about in the book I found particularly fascinating and find myself continuing to think about.

Essentially, they explored research by neurobiologists regarding brain chemistry, relationships, and a predictable ninety second pattern to emotions. Basically, any emotion that we feel generally will rise and fall in the space of a minute and a half “if proverbial fuel isn’t added to the fire” (Kindle location 1412). What this means is that if we have a surge of joy, it will generally settle within ninety seconds, and if we have a surge of anger, it will generally calm in ninety seconds. However, what often times happens is that we have a surge of anger, fire off a retort of some sort, triggering the same surge of anger in the recipient, who reacts in kind and the cycle continues to escalate with neither side taking the time to let their emotions settle so they can approach the disagreement in a calmer fashion.

As authors of a book for parents, their advice was simple; when parents face a situation where they are angry with their adolescent … step away for two minutes, gather their thoughts, and return to the conversation when their emotions have settled. They further suggested that over time, modeling this approach to conflict would translate to parent’s children learning to adopt it as well.

I’ve always heard advice to “count to ten,” or “take a deep breath.” It’s always made sense, but something about the neurobiology of this really intrigues me. I like that they’ve actually mapped it out, it’s a measurable, predictable cycle. The way I’m wired finds that very appealing; it’s certainly something I want to get better at doing – not just with my children, but in all relationships.

Eclipse Road Trip

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It was a little bit spur of the moment, but Heather and I decided to take a road trip to Tennessee with the boys to see the eclipse last week. It was kind of a wild ride; we left on Sunday right after church for what should have been a nine hour drive. It ended up taking twelve hours on the way down, we spent the night in Pigeon Ford, then traveled over to the Foothills Parkway to watch the eclipse … then hit the road back home not realizing between eclipse traffic, road construction, and college traffic we were starting an 18 hour drive home.

So, in case you missed it, we spent 30 hours driving round trip in about 48 hours so we could see less than two minutes of eclipse totality. And it was totally worth it.

What an amazing thing to see. I thought I knew what it would be like, but words really don’t do it justice. It is no mystery why ancient civilizations were shaken by them. Without the knowledge we have today, how could it be interpreted any way other than the gods bringing judgement or warning of doom?

I took a ton of photos; a few turned out pretty good – certainly better than my camera should have been able to do. I essentially held my eclipse glasses against the lens and snapped away. I used a Nikon Coolpix L340.

And yes, we’re already planning our 2024 solar eclipse trip.

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Noah’s Good News

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GoodNews

This past week we had another check-in with Noah’s primary doctor regarding his Localized Scleroderma. You can read my previous updates on his battle with it here; essentially it’s a disease that attacks his skin, tissue and bone structures near the skin. There hasn’t been a cure discovered yet, and while it’s a lifelong condition it typically attacks a region of the body for about eight years.

When Noah was two years old he first started showing symptoms. It took two years for doctors to finally figure out what was going on; it’s an incredibly rare condition that most don’t know to look for. The medications are powerful, and have the potential for serious side effects, which required him to have regular blood work done to keep track of how he was responding. I’ll never forget holding him down for that first round of blood work, him sobbing and struggling, and me being overwhelmed with the thought that this was going to be our routine for who knew how many years.

He’s tough, and over the months and years, through all the tests, surgeries, doctor’s appointments, procedures, and whatever else, he took it all in stride. Often times he saw the bright side of things when we would be upset. And just like the doctor predicted, after almost eight years the disease seemed to stopped progressing. Months ago we stopped giving him the medication to see if it was just the drugs keeping it at bay or if it really had run its course.

And last week the doctor told us it’s dormant! We’ll go in to see him again in a year, but more for Heather and my peace of mind than an actual need. I have to be honest, after so many years, it doesn’t totally feel real! Yes, we do still have to keep our radar up for its possible reappearance, but in the mean time, after spending the majority of his life on some seriously powerful medicines, Noah is off everything and thrilled about it!

Quite the answer to prayer!