God Shatters Expectations

Starting as Campus Minister at my current high school involved a lot of learning curves. I had to get the practical stuff - how to make copies, what keys work in what doors, where the faculty bathroom is. I had to learn the religious traditions and customs - Food Drive blessing at Thanksgiving Mass, the big Catholic Schools Week Mass with feeder schools, the Living Stations of the Cross prayer service. And then I had to grapple with what I wanted to institute - creating a Student Ministry Team, starting a service-learning immersion, trying to get regular service outreach going, and overhauling retreats.

I am deputized to help our chaplain inaugurate Kairos here (going up to K5 in February). I instituted an overnight senior retreat (did 2 last year, just did the 1st of 3 this year). I evolved my Student Ministry Team into a retreat planning team for spring of last year, and now they're leading the new sophomore overnight retreat. And this year, we hit phase two of ramping up the Freshmen Retreat, most of the way to a full-fledged all-Saturday retreat.

Setting aside for now the growing pains of the administration, scheduling, and organizing of all these events, I had one overarching realization as I began to go on retreats with this student population: their retreat literacy was low.

Whether in small-group, large-group, or other retreat activities, these students could not find the retreat comfort level. They clung stubbornly to the rigidity of the classroom. Discussions had to occur in a cut-and-dry manner: you ask me a question; I supply an answer: you move on to the next student or your next question or point. They struggled with open-form, natural feels. They needed structure to an uncomfortable extent, or else, they couldn't function. The organic, conversationesque flavor of retreat rarely materialized without quickly falling into disorder or running off the rails to tangential distractions.

Frustrating as it could be at times, I understood that their previous experience was so limited that they needed to first be taught the reins. I needed to train small-group leaders in discussion facilitation. I needed to work more closely with speakers on writing emotionally vulnerable but carefully crafted talks. And I needed to be more conscious and intentional about being enthusiastic and proactive in directing large-group sessions.

Luckily, our student population is fairly well-churched. They may not have the best vocabulary. They may not be budding prophets and priests. But they have a positive disposition to church and prayer that is easy to work with.

Over almost a year-and-a-half of being at this helm and directing several retreats, I can see changes starting to come. The quality and quantity of students interested in leadership has increased steadily. Though the structure is still needed, the input students give is getting deeper and more developed. And their reactions to retreats after the fact is stronger, as the students - even if at times dissatisfied or critical of their experiences - are responsive and passionate in their response.

Last week, the first Senior Retreat of this year proved just how far they've come. First and foremost, as we moved through the units of the retreat and confronted integrity, relationships, sexuality, identity, and drugs & alcohol, my small-group did a fabulous job of being open and relevant yet comfortable. They didn't need militant question-and-answer to converse constructively. And the senior facilitators - simply seniors attending the retreat who volunteered to facilitate and met with me for 15 minutes to get a packet of questions and a brief rundown - did a fine job teeing up the topics and affirming others as they shared.

And just when I thought that was the great takeaway, they floored me with their investments into the prayer services.

At the end of night one, we do a Burnt Offering service. Built off the psalmist's prayer that his intentions will rise like incense to the Lord, we conduct an Examen to review our day on retreat and then take time to journal some thoughts and prayers that we need to offer to the Lord. I play some music and invite everyone to come to the altar, where there is a pot on a candlelit table, to drop their prayer in, and then to kneel at the altar and say a prayer.

The candlelit altar with the pot for our offerings.

The altar is right at the step that goes up into the small sanctuary, so I direct them to kneel beside the altar at the step and pray. Maybe I wasn't clear enough or maybe they just had a better idea. The first student who went up placed his sheet in the pot and then walked past the altar, about 10-15 feet further into the sanctuary, approached the tabernacle, and then knelt at the small step before the Lord.

As I asked them to go up no more than two at a time, up went the next student to join the first one. And thus began a pattern of 50 humans praying at the tabernacle. I believe this was no accident. I think that first student - a recent Kairos leader - felt drawn to the tabernacle and opted to make his prayer there. And I believe that while some students simply followed the leader, others consciously chose to emulate that piety. The visual of these students dropping their prayer then approaching the sanctuary to kneel was striking.

Move forward to the end of our second day, a shorter day that ends in the mid-afternoon. We conclude that day, and the retreat, with a Reconciliation Service. After listening to a song together (Friends Again by Martin Sexton) and discussing the lyrics, the mood and tone of the speaker, and the way it helps us think about our own relationships, I invite the students to the sanctuary again (where the pot, now full of burned prayer offerings, remains) to a bowl of water.

I ask them to come up one at a time, dip their hands into the water, and explain something they want to be cleansed of. I wait with a towel to dry the hands of the first person, give them a hug, and then leave them with the towel for the next person. I encourage the students to remain in the sanctuary, after they've washed up and dried off another person's hands, as a sign of support to the others who have yet to come up. I even push the altar back toward the sanctuary to maximize the room up there for everyone to cluster in. Again, they had a better idea.

After a boy came up to get us started and I dried his hands, I headed to the back of the chapel to play some quiet music beneath the ritual. After the second student went up and spoke, the first one dried his hands and hugged this second student like I had done for him. But what followed was different, and arguably better. Rather than form a mushed-up clump behind the water bowl, they arced outward around the water bowl station and amplified the ritual support.

The initial line behind the altar started to grow, as did the ritual.

As the arc of people who had cleansed themselves grew, they created a receiving line of hugs. After someone had washed up, dried off another's hands, and hugged that person, they headed to the edge of the arc and went down the receiving line, where they got a hug from every single person who had gone before them. As the group of 50 went up one-by-one, the profundity of the communal support grew, as the visual became more powerful. It was taking people several minutes to make their way through the line, as they were personally greeted by so many of their peers after laying bare some of their pain.

The receiving line arcs out as the careful, deliberate hugs roll along.

Once the group had finished doing this ritual, the unbroken chain of support clumped up a little as they all pulled each other in for a group embrace during the final reflection song. As I watched these things transpire, I couldn't help but feel like a proud papa, as the Proud Papa above worked such grace-filled love in these budding believers.

The community-wide embrace soaks in the final song.

These teenagers had taken a basic ritual and put their own signature on it, adding in their own layer of support by taking their peers into a loving embrace, moments after they had admitted their weakness. If that's not countercultural, I don't know what is.

And if that's not deep retreat literacy, I don't know what is. Sure, hugs can be a hollow, routinized gesture, but the manner, the flavor, of this series of embraces was different. It felt deliberate. It felt special. It looked as if each person was excited and delighted for every person that came past them in the receiving line. They were relishing this manifestation of God's love and support through themselves and for another.

In a couple profound, clearly visual moments, these seniors demonstrated that they get it. They might not have gotten it as much before, but there were getting it now. Sure, there were times when they exaggerated how tired they were, when they were slow and rude in getting to lights-out, when they took two packets of hot chocolate and didn't leave enough for everyone to get one. But here, they manifested an awareness of God's presence and a desire to actualize it that was so literate.

Earlier on the retreat, a teacher had given the talk on Identity. Talking about his being adopted, about his father's being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and about his marriage being labeled infertile, he walked us through how God shatters expectations by confounding our flimsy labels and moving us to deeper, better, bigger things with His love.

In these instances of growth, God shatters my expectations and shows me a student population with a hunger for Him that is being fed. It makes the heart of their Campus Minister quite warm. And I think our communal ministry is pleasing to God.