A friend recently told me a story about a former student who came back to him to apologize for how he had acted while he was in the youth ministry.
I’m actually a living, breathing example of that story. I terrorized my youth pastor by toilet-papering his house the night before we’d leave for camp every year. It might help you to understand the level of this crime if you know that we would leave for camp around 4 or 5 am every year.
I deserve Hell for doing that to him!
He would wake up at 3 am, with all kinds of stuff to think about. One of the biggest events of the year was about to kick off. And I thought it would be funny that he woke up to that. I’ve since asked for his forgiveness.
More recently, I’ve heard a lot of stories of students turning their back on their student ministries to go to other local student ministries that offer the “bigger and better.”
Specifically, one youth pastor told me about a student who left because he “wasn’t getting anything out of the sermons.” The youth pastor was shaking his head as he recounted how he gave that student several opportunities to jump into leadership. But instead of getting in the game, the student would disengage, sleep in on Sundays, and complain that it wasn’t good enough.
The sad truth is that we would rather complain about the status quo than do something to change it.
And it makes sense that we would experience that. The nature of our job is to serve those who “aren’t there yet” (and they won’t ever be there). No one is naturally a producer. We’re all born consumers. It takes intentionality to be a producer. To be compassionate. To be considerate. To serve.
All of us will have a different perspective ten years down the road. If you think you won’t, you’re ignorant. You don’t know everything there is to know right now.
Knowing that we might have a different perspective down the road, we should take caution to be graceful as we go. There’s nothing wrong with apologizing for what you’ve done wrong in the past, but you have no idea how impactful your words/actions are NOW.
One day, you’re going to apologize for what you’ve done wrong. But one day is not today for the person who’s been wronged. Today is here. Be graceful as you go.