The Boys of LHS Part I

My first ministry experience was in college with Young Life, an evangelical organization geared minister to unchurched high school kids. I became a Christian through Young Life and so by the time I got into college I wanted to do what others did for me. I wanted to tell lost kids about Jesus. After jumping through all the hoops I was officially assigned to my Young Life team. I had been placed at Lubbock High School.

Now I gotta say that Young Life in my high school, Coronado, was pretty white bread. There were lots of rich white kids there and Young Life pretty much reflected that. Rich white kids with nice cars show up for a skit, some songs - including the obligatory "Brown Eyed Girl" - and then a talk about how all the stuff in our lives isn't enough to make us happy. Somebody would say something like, "There is a giant God-shaped void in your life and you can't fill it with anything or anyone else," which has pretty much been true ever since Pascal said it. After Pascal everyone would then stand up and sing "Light the Fire" and go home. Vintage Young Life. And I loved it.

But then I got assigned to the team at Lubbock High School and Young Life changed. I would even say God changed, or better, my whole idea about God changed.

LHS was anything but white bread. Sure they had their fair share of white kids walking the halls - about 40% in fact - but these white kids were not the same kind of white kids rolling around Coronado. They were smart and they were into music - often their own music - and they had heard of other colleges besides Texas Tech. So they were weird. Then there was another 40% of LHS kids who were latino. Out of ignorance we called them Mexican, and some of them may have been. Then there were the black kids. About seven percent. The rest of the school was "other."

So you see my dillema. Freaks, Geeks, Mexicans, Blacks, and others? Come on. Who was I going to connect with? Who in that group would want to join arms and sing "Brown Eyed Girl"?

"There must be some mistake, I ordered my sandwich on white bread."

The area director for Young Life tried to cheer me up with an eye of the tiger pep talk. He told me I had been assigned to LHS because I wasn't a quitter. He said something about only the tough surviving ministry at LHS. In other words, he was basically saying they assigned me to LHS, not because they thought I would necessarily do well, but because they thought I might actually be willing to die trying.

I did not die of course, but over the next two years of ministry at LHS I did give my life away. That is to say I gave away the person I was and became someone entirely different.