Mark Twain once said that when he was a child, he couldn't believe how little his parents knew. Yet, when he became a man, he was amazed at how much they'd learned. The older I get in youth ministry, the more I realize I have a lot more to learn.
I've found in youth ministry it's extrememly difficult to relate to the students without being relevant to them. I had a student one time send me a message on Facebook. He was letting me know that he appreciated the fact that his "peeps think you're legit." If you just had to ask someone else what that sentence meant, guess what - you've got a lot more to learn, too!
Just about any time I go somewhere on a long trip, I use my GPS. I plug in my destination, and because the GPS is on my Android phone, it tells me how to get where I'm going. This is a very helpful tool to a guy who once got lost twice in the same night trying to pick up his date for homecoming as a Junior in high school! (To her credit, my date actually endured the entire evening - which included getting lost on the way to dinner, too.)
But a more important question, I believe, is not "Where am I going?" but rather "Where am I coming from?" Check out what Gamaliel, a Pharisee, said in Acts 5:
