Let's Take a Walk

There are few things in this world that I love more than Florida State University football. If you’ve known me for any length of time you know this to be true. Growing up I watched every game either on TV or in person. As a kid growing up in the 1990s…that meant I had A LOT of happy Saturdays watching FSU football. My heroes were Warrick Dunn, Charlie Ward, Chris Weinke, Derrick Brooks, Peter Warrick…and of course the great Bobby Bowden. As a die-hard FSU fan there weren’t any teams I enjoyed watching the Noles beat more than Miami & the University of Florida…and no teams I hated losing to more.

In 2014 I was in my second year of interning at my home church. I was loving every minute…I was learning all that I could, developing GREAT relationships with the kids, and I had started to apply for full time jobs in youth ministry. Every fall, camp would put on a weekend retreat for youth groups in the state and our church would always go. For whatever reason…that year the retreat happened to fall on the same weekend as the FSU Miami game.

By the time the game started…all the retreat activities for the day had come to an end, and a group of students, adults, pastors, and youth pastors alike gathered in one of the common areas around a couple TVs to watch the game. Like all of FSU’s games that year…it was close and FSU was battling from behind for most of the game. Towards the end of the 3rd quarter…I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the face of one of the youth from our church. This youth was a great kid. He was quiet, but loved to have fun, and always had a smile on his face. He was very intelligent and thoughtful and I could tell he had something on his mind. He looked me in the eye and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I could tell he needed a conversation…I glanced at the TV…normally there’s no way I would have left watching that game in that moment…but this was an easy decision. “Let’s take a walk,” I said.

I wanted to get away from all the noise of kids playing and people watching the game. He and I walked around the entire camp for a long period of time. That weekend the retreat’s program had been focused on various social justice issues and he was struggling with how he thought about homosexuality and its relationship to the church. This was one of the subjects that had been covered…and it was a hot button topic in our church’s denomination so I wasn’t surprised. He said to me he had always thought it was wrong…that he had never thought it was possible to be gay and follow Christ. This weekend’s content and relationships he had built with other youth who identified as LGBTQ+ had made him begin to think differently. He was asking for help and advice.

This was something I had struggled with myself in my life. What I saw in this kid though wasn’t so much a youth that was struggling with his theology, or his opinions on humanity & sexuality…he was a kid who was struggling with growing up and his perspective shifting after experiencing life. This is something we all go through regardless of what we believe. I told him it was ok to have questions and to not know all the answers. I told him it was ok to not have his mind made up about what he thinks or believes. I challenged some of his older beliefs by simply asking why he thought that way…but mostly I challenged him to keep going. I could tell what he was wrestling with was motivated by his love for other people…by the fact that he knew people who identified themselves as LGBTQ+ and he loved them. I was honest with him about where I fell on the issue…what my opinion was and how I got there. At the end of the day I told him he had to decide what he thought for himself…but that if his thoughts and actions were motivated by Christ’s call to love one another above everything else…he would end up in a good place.

Our walk eventually brought us back to the common area where people had been watching the game. The youth I had been talking to was also a FSU fan so he too was interested in what happened. I saw an adult walking out and I asked him if the game was over. “Yeah,” he said rather flatly. “What happened?” I asked. “FSU came back and won. The game just ended on a pick by Jalen Ramsey.” “You’re kidding…right?!?” I exclaimed. “Look at me,” he replied, “I’m a Gator fan…do I look happy?” He did not. That was all the convincing I needed! The kid and I shared a celebratory laugh and I said to him, “Well shoot man if this is what happens when we have a nice long talk we should do this every game day!” He laughed and said, “I’ll meet you same time next week at the park!”

To me…this is what youth ministry was all about. It’s what I loved the most and what kept me coming back after many hard times. When you’re doing youth ministry right, you get these beautiful moments to walk with incredible kids as they become who God made them to be. You get to speak to them in those moments, encourage them to think outside the box they’ve been living in, and watch them grow into a new and more fully realized person. I love FSU football. I’d miss every game for the rest of my life it meant I got to have conversations like that one that day. May we all be blessed enough to have such conversations. We’d all be better for it if we do.