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Holy Week resources and reflections

Who me? With them? Triennium explored the gospel and issues of race

Guest Outpost blog by Christopher De La Cruz

“You are enough.”

Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 10.34.13 AMOver 4,000 teenagers packed in a Purdue University music hall erupted in spontaneous and passionate applause as Rodger Nishioka, the first preacher at the 2016 Presbyterian Youth Triennium, preached these words.

And if you were a teenager, wouldn’t you? Nishioka, director of adult ministries at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, had listed all the ways that high schoolers feel like they aren’t enough: not being tall enough, short enough, masculine enough, feminine enough, too young. Not enough to be loved, much less used by God.

But the fact that God chose to reveal the birth of Jesus to shepherds, a group looked down upon in first century society, says otherwise, Nishioka said.

“All those not enough messages are a lie,” said Nishioka. “You are called to be here. That is not your doing. It is the doing of the Holy Spirit.”

I spent last week at Triennium, as a church leader of the “Sent By Love” delegation, a group consisting of youth from New York City (Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church) and Iowa (First Presbyterian Church of Spirit Lake and First Presbyterian Church Lake Park). And while the theme this year was ostensibly God’s call for us to “Go,” the feeling, at least with our delegation, has been more of dealing with the questions that come after the call:

“Who, me? And with them?”

Who, me?
Teenagers, like all people, feel like their failures and shortcomings define them, said Alice Ridgill, Thursday’s preacher and the founding pastor of New Faith Presbyterian Church in Greenwood, South Carolina. Her powerful message to high schoolers was that they, indeed, were enough. Not because they had done anything to earn it, but because of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, purely out of grace.

Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 10.33.18 AM“God loves you and there ain’t a thing you can do about it,” Ridgill said. “If God was a God of second chances, I would have used up all of my chances. God is the God of another chance. … We never use up all of our chances with God.”

Carrying a backpack the entire sermon, she ended by connecting it with the sorrow, shame and burdens we all carry.

“God doesn’t want us to carry our burdens alone,” she said, letting her backpack drop to the floor. “So I’m taking it off.”

Tony De La Rosa, interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, presented himself the last night of worship as an example to students as someone called by God despite his own self-doubt. Being half Mexican, half Puerto Rican and openly gay, De La Rosa said he never thought he would have the position of power he has in the Presbyterian Church, and in some ways he had felt rejected by that very church for many years.

“I realized it was all part of God’s plan,” De La Rosa said. “I just wish God let me in on the game plan. … Don’t ever give up when [the church] disappoints you.”

Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 10.34.37 AMI’ve worked in youth ministry for years in many different positions in different contexts, and if there is one constant I’ve experienced from students, it is young people trying to grow into themselves, be comfortable in their own skin and feel like they are loved. We adults, whether we work in youth ministry or not, need to be constantly reminded of the raw pain and struggle of being a high schooler and the encouragement and power that the gospel can truly bring.

“The message resonated really powerfully with me,” said 15-year-old Casey Crowe, from Brentwood, Tennessee, of Nishioka’s sermon. “Social constructs don’t really matter. God’s love is what really matters.”

With them?
The youth heard this message: But if I am enough by being made in the image of God and saved by Christ through his life, death and resurrection, then that has to be true for everyone else around them, including the people they are called to serve to and with. Almost every speaker mentioned issues of racism, and many of the teenagers themselves seemed to have been affected one way or another by the string of shootings and horrific events that have defined this year.

Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 10.35.05 AMThe message throughout all of it was this: God’s love in Jesus Christ transcends the barriers and walls we set up against one another. And many young people I talked to throughout the conference seemed to deeply connect with this.

“I think there is so much hate going on in the world,” Bizayehu Llewellyn, 16, from Tacoma, Washington. “It’s cool for us to connect from different places to share that everyone is equal.”

Organizers set up a “Hate Wall” with derogatory words and stereotypes about various groups – “thug,” “redneck,” “anti-LGBTQ” – spray painted on the walls of wooden boxes. Triennium participants then took ribbons and wrote messages and prayers of love to symbolically cover them.

Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 10.34.54 AMSavanna Duke, 15, from Tacoma, Washington, wrote, fittingly, “you are enough” on her ribbon. Saying that “love can go so much further than hate,” she added that she would be unafraid of speaking out on behalf of and with the less privileged, not because of her own abilities, but because of Jesus Christ.

“He (Christ) did the hard thing for us, so we have to do the hard things for him,” said Duke.

Christopher De La CruzCHRISTOPHER DE LA CRUZ is the director of Christian formation at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City.

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