Beautiful Complication…

May 24, 2010 by kentonarthurlee

How would you describe young adult ministry?  Frustrating.  Hard.  Impossible.  Forgotten.  Variable.  Nuisance.  Difficult.

Well, those are definitely all parts of the puzzle of young adult ministry.  But there is a better way to describe the overall nature of young adult ministry.  Just two simple words have summed up my experience thus far in my life with young adult ministry: beautiful complication.

Beautiful complication.

Is it frustrating and difficult and seemingly impossible?  Yes.  Definitely.  So where is the beauty in that?

The beauty comes in the relationships.  The beauty comes in the community.  The beauty comes through the connections with people – the young adults themselves.  It’s messy. It’s crazy.  It’s unpredictable.  And that is a-ok.

So the next time that you think about young adult ministry and you start to think of all those common descriptions for it – frustrating, difficult, hard, impossible… Don’t be discouraged by those things.  But live in the beauty of the relationships that come in the midst of young adult ministry.

Young adult ministry = beautiful complication.