As anyone who lives in our area can attest, we have had an over abundance of winter precipitation over the last two weeks. Last night a new snow began to fall and lay a nice white blanket across Knoxville. As I stood on the porch late last night and watched the flakes fall I was reminded of the old saying that no two snowflakes are the same. It was a beautiful scene. Something strange happened this morning though, as I looked outside all of those individual snowflakes looked exactly the same as they made a canvas of serene beauty all over the neighborhood. No matter how many flakes fell they all looked the same on the ground.

Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you

The thought struck me today as I was planning an upcoming event that so many times we see our student ministries as student ministries of snowfall. That is a ministry full of students that all look the same. I mean, we say they are all different and unique but we minister to them as if they were snowfall and not snowflakes. When we look out at the crowd on a Wednesday night whether there's 2, 20 or 200 we see them as similar instead of the unique creation they are. Instead of trying to fit everyone into a one size fits all ministry, throw a little variation into things and create some events that may not be for the mass but for that different, individual personality you have in your group. Even better you, or someone from your team take some individual time to show the unique value that every student has by spending some time with them. I am not perfect at this but today was a great reminder of how important it is.

If you have spent anytime listening to me speak over the last ten years then you have heard me say one thing over and over again. All together now... "it all goes back to the garden." That's right, I hold fast to the thought that everything, that all the complex relational dynamics of life go back to the opening act of creation. There is life and death, innocence and deceit, weakness and redemption, the fall and grace. Over and over I find more and more similarities between me, well really all of us, and Adam and Eve. The thought and idea of being strong enough was the great oversight of the whole garden scenario and is a prevailing theme in the lives of all who have followed them. I believe that the same sense of self prevailing strength that existed then still exists today and I think it is destroying our students today. Our student ministries create beautiful safe havens for our students. Places where middle and high schoolers can escape the reality of harsh climate that is building in our nation and prevails around the globe towards faith based living. We give them a place to step out of the way of controversy and struggle, a place where they can eat pizza, play games and camp themselves into a false belief in their ability to stand against the forces at work in the world. We have actually created such manicured worlds of church that it has made it easy for our students to compartmentalize their lives. The culture of the church and youth ministry is so separate and different from that of the rest of the world that they find it easy to create one "church" ego and another completely separate "world" ego. They are beginning to believe that the goal is to balance the two successfully without ever letting one side prevail over the other. Romans 12 paints a different picture altogether though:

1 And so, dear brothers and sisters,[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b] 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

> This passage paints a picture of the God side of our lives and our students lives, consuming the other. There is no gray area, allow your body to be a sacrifice. sac·ri·fice \ˈsa-krə-ˌfīs : the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone. The very essence of a sacrifice is to lose something, something of value, personal belonging or life itself. Anyway you look at it to be pleasing or acceptable we must give up that which makes us like everyone else. We must learn to prioritize to our students that life is a battle, a battle between our natural selves and the implant of Holy Spirit that comes to live in us at salvation and that there is no cease-fire or appeasing of both sides. One must live and the other must lose. We seem to run into our problem by making our students comfortable with getting their faith spoon fed to them. We have taken away the importance of scripture memorization, personal witnessing and individual Bible study. In doing that we have taken away their arsenal to fight and replaced with a feeling of already achieved victory. Then we marvel at the loss of our teens as they struggle and wander off late in their teen years and in college, with a very low return rate to the church. Why? you ask? Because they feel they are strong enough because they were successful in youth group. They were successful in walking the walk and talking the talk to earn the approval of the church or their youth pastor, sunday school teacher or small group leader. What they lacked was practical experience to exercise their faith, ground their beliefs and succeed and fail within the safety of people who will encourage them and help them to grow form both success and failure. That way the first time that a student who sings on Wednesday night

All of You is more than enough for all of me, For every thirst and every need, You satisfy me with Your love, And all I have in You is more than enough

is offered a hit of a joint or a drink at a party they don't see their faith wilt away like snow on a sunny winter afternoon on a chemically treated road. So why am I taking the time to tell you this? Am I just a Debbie Downer these days? Nope, the other day I was reminded that I had been called to raise up the next generation of leaders in the faith. The reality is that to do that means a fight for the minds, hearts and souls of our students. That we must be bold when we want to hide, we must continue when we are weary and persevere when we want to give up. Those times when our heart is broken by a student that we thought got it" that seemed to throw it away so easily. We must teach our students that they are not and never will be strong enough. However it is not hopeless, that they can trust in this promise:

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength