An evening with 13 middle schoolers

I enjoy reminding people that when it comes to youth ministry, numbers don’t matter. What matters is the quality of experience for each individual, no matter how many people show up. However, “critical mass” certainly does help, and yesterday, we had “critical mass.” Thirteen youth in grades 6-8 participated, an auspicious beginning as we make an effort this year to give both the middle school and high school groups more activities of their own.

In our kickoff youth event for the new school year, and in an effort to welcome new 6^th graders, we threw a beach party. Could we have chosen a better day? With temperatures in the high 90s, we gladly plunged into Lake Washington, but we also shared an intense game of Apples to Apples on the shore. And we played a name game that involved hitting each other on the head with a foam bat—that one was especially a “hit” with the boys.

After the beach, we packed up and crossed the bridge into Seattle. Our destination was St. Mark’s Cathedral, where we met up with Cindy Spencer and her middle school youth group. After a quick tour of the cathedral—which involved spending some time in the underground “crypt”—we walked to Broadway and ate at Pagliacci’s. Some of us topped it off with ice cream at Dick’s, and then we walked all the way back to the cathedral.

We gathered on the lawn at 9:25 p.m. I told the kids about the service of Compline: that it is one of the six daily monastic church services, that it is traditionally done at bedtime, and that a group of male singers has been praying the service of Compline every Sunday night at St. Mark’s since the 1950s. Each week, hundreds of people, many of them university students and high schoolers, descend on the cathedral for this half-hour contemplative worship service.

Then we entered the dimly lit cathedral nave and gathered on the steps leading to the altar. Some of us sat down, but most of us lay down on the floor, as is traditional at this service, in order to meditate on the music as it washed over us. We were surrounded by young people, some of whom I know from diocesan youth events. I would guess that there were 400 people there, and that the average age of the crowd was under 25.

It was a full day for this group of middle schoolers. I know I had fun, so I sure hope they did, too. And it wouldn’t have happened without youth ministers Matt Lanier and Sarah Evison, my new Sunday school teaching partner Tammy Waddell, and the moms who helped drive us around, Jana Baker and Jeannie Palm. Thank you all.