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Third Baptist (summer #1)

My first position, a summer between my junior and senior years at Murray, I was youth minister at Third Baptist Church (home was at First Baptist there in Owensboro, KY). I was 21, and I felt good about my first leadership role. The youth group accepted me, and seemed to enjoy me. I was invited back for the following summer when I left to return to school in the fall. I drew heavily on prior experiences in the BSU and in my own youth group. Serendipity -type Bible studies (which were a significant part of my own experience as a youth), meetings in the homes of youth, weeknight volleyball games, bike rides, a co-ed softball mini-league we set up, and a trip to Cincinnati for a weekend. I felt I was getting a good start. I modeled vulnerability in sharing and reflecting on my own spiritual questions for the youth. I was still very much fresh off of my experience with the small group I mentioned, and from reading such people as Elizabeth O'Connor, Keith Miller, and Robert Raines. These writers helped me to develop a sensitivity to help draw out the youth; to encourage them to share. Although I don't feel I elicited any strong outward spiritual experiences, I felt that I had gained their respect and their interest. I looked forward to the next summer.

My experience in youth ministry always takes me back to my relationships at Ninth Street Baptist Church, where I served during my second and third years at seminary, and the summer in between and immediately following my graduation in 1981. It was a small church, with a youth group that had been drawn together by some very emotional experiences which were often described to me as having "delved into the charismatic". This was a Baptist Church, where such experiences were looked upon with suspicion.

While the charismatic/pentecostal tradition has not been my own, I remember recognizing that this seemed to have had the effect of building a bond among them, and had also motivated them to study and question for themselves the "questionable" leadership to which they had been "subjected". I felt it had given them a strong foundation and motivation to wonder why the adults had been so cautious about this. It seems that these youth welcomed my perspective, which was less conservative, but appreciative of the relational power of community; and measuring the value of spiritual experience by the fruits of oneness and commitment to the growth of each other. We focused on relational things, including sexuality, trust, breaking down barriers between us. I also continued my commitment to model vulneralbility and also hope in the process of becoming more like Christ, and I saw signs of this opening up doors to the community I dreamt of building.

All during these times in my youth ministry experiences, both as a high schooler and as a group leader, I felt the void of the absence of an intimate relationship with a female, and I felt during my youth ministry that perhaps being in a leadership role endowed with some kind of spiritual authority, that I had some kind of "adoration" ----kind of like the therapist/patient relationships that develop a kind of sexual attraction. I never advanced toward anyone, or planned to take any action of this sort on these "buried" motivations, but in my second year at Ninth Street, one of the older high school girls asked to talk with me one night. I was 24 years old, and she was 17. She was certainly a spiritual leader among the high school girls, and I often dropped her at home on my way to where I stayed, so she was often the last to be taken home, and so we had a lot of one-on-one conversations. That night she confessed to me an attraction to me. That summer we had a little romantic fling, although nothing ever went "too far" sexually, except for the fact it should never have happened.

My work with that group was never focused enough after that. I found myself so regretful of that experience, particularly since it was her and not me that made the decision to not pursue things any further. I felt I had sabatoged what had been growing in the group. And I felt like a failure, feeling rejected; partially as a male, and also as a leader. It was ironic that she was a key player in the core of the group. She told me of her decision when school began that fall, and that whole school year was rather difficult. I do feel that the hurt and failure ai sensed was growth producing for me, however, because it had the effect of "helping" me to question what I really needed to be doing. I began to focus more on what the church was supposed to be, and what these youth could do to "be" the church where they were.

The church was going through a little crisis of its own in trying to decide whether to stay downtown or move out to the suburbs. The church had its 150th anniversary, and had a Northern Baptist Seminary professor of "Urban Ministries" Raymond Bakke as a speaker, whose message challenged the church not to forsake the city. But later, they did. I was disappointed with that, and felt a sense of failure as a "persuader"; I felt like a kid that the adults didn't take seriously. I know better now, but wish I had built a better "leader" persona while I was in my ministry there. The church moved to the west suburbs and dwindled away slowly in the next 5 years, to where they are now a largely elederly congregation in Westwood.