Today we drove along the California coast with our high school youth group from Our Savior’s.  We stayed the night last night at California Lutheran University.  We played a totally awesome game of Ultimate Frisbee.  Yesterday, it seems like so much further ago in the past, we went to the Griffith Park observatory and gazed at the stars, galaxies and groups that make up the universe.  I learned for the first time that we are part of the “Local Group,” a cluster of galaxies in our region of the universe.  The terminology is apropos, because we are a youth group.  It makes me think of “group theory” that we learned in mathematics, back in the day.  In mathematics a group is a set of numbers or objects that fulfill a couple of properties.  There must be an identity, an inverse for every object in the group, and all the members of the group must follow the rule of associativity.  Whether you know what that means or not (anyone could), the point is that there are some specific requirements to fulfill in order to be considered, “a group.”

Is this not true for youth ministry?  What makes a random collection of people, a “youth group.”  When do you cross the threshold to being official?  Are you sponsored by a congregation?  Is there a leader?  What is the purpose?  These are essential questions to forming any group.  But of course, the most essential element to a youth group is an openness to the activity of God.  It is not as if a group must be so spiritual, so ethical (although that is a very good idea), or so knowledgeable.  Rather, the group that is open to the activity to Holy Spirit in all of the highs and lows of the day is a youth group.  This is not the same as passivity.  This a non-anxious expectancy, as I believe Kenda Dean has called it.  It is being okay with some incompleteness, some development in a direction that you do not expect or intend.  This is essential to the group.