“Alex Kicked the Bucket!”
I had been the youth pastor at the church for just over a year. During that time I had been focused on getting the ministry started; getting it organized; and laying some foundation in our teen’s lives upon which we could build a healthy ministry. Along the way I had been equipping and releasing teens to lead various aspects of our ministry such as preaching, leading worship, overseeing setup and teardown, etc. I was making a very intentional and concerted effort to give away more of the ministry to the students.
A few weeks ago, after a very busy summer, I decided it was time to finally give our youth room an extreme makeover. I approached two of my students, Jeny and Alex, whom I knew to be very artistic. I told them that rather than just painting our youth room one color, I wanted them to paint some murals. I told them they could design the room anyway they wanted to. They had complete freedom to dream and implement.
About a week later, on a Saturday, Alex and Jeny came to me with several sketches. I took them out for lunch and we discussed their vision for the youth ministry. After lunch I brought them over to the church and they sketched out their concepts on the walls of the youth room. When they felt they had things laid out the way they wanted, I took them over to Lowe’s and bought them five gallons of paint. I thought they would need more, but they insisted they would just mix the paints to create their own colors. So, off we went with our red, yellow, blue, black, and white paint.
I turned them loose in the youth room about 3pm while I retreated to my office to get some other work done. At about 5pm I was ready to go home. To my pleasant surprise Jeny’s mom was coming over to help them. Yes! Adult supervision! (Not that they needed it, mind you.) Now I was free to go home and hang out with my family.
At about 9:30pm I called over to Jeny’s house to talk with her dad about something unrelated to the painting job. Toward the end of our conversation I asked him when Jeny and her mom had gotten home. He said that they had not yet returned. After putting my kids in bed, at about 10:30pm I kissed my wife goodnight, and I headed over to the church to check on these faithful servants.
When I arrived at the church I went upstairs to the youth room. On the pool table were two boxes of half-eaten pizza and several half-empty soda bottles. Along the wall, working silently were Jeny, Alex, and Diana, totally consumed with the task at hand.
As I stood back to view their creation, I was stunned at their creativity! They had transformed a plain white wall and two doors into an amazing mural based on Revelation 6:12-14. They just had a few more touches and it would be done. They invited me to assist them, so I grabbed my brush and jumped in.
I was standing on a stack of chairs painting the sky when all of a sudden Alex stood up from where he was working and started walking around. I didn’t see it, but I heard it! “Plunk!” I thought little about the noise, but then I heard, “Uh oh!” I turned and looked down, and there it was . . . the paint bucket was on its side, ½ of a gallon of bright red paint flooding our carpet. Alex had tried to step over the bucket but came up just a little bit short.
With little time to think or ask questions, we all raced over to help Alex clean up. We got paint stirrers and tried to push as much of the paint back into the bucket as we could. We scraped, we rubbed, we soaked . . . but that paint was not coming out of the carpet.
After our unsuccessful and comical clean up, I joked with Alex that I was going to write an article about this incident. I told him I would call it “Alex kicked the bucket!” I did not, however, share with him the focus that immediately came to mind when the idea of documenting his mishap came to me. There are many different approaches one could take when observing a story such as this. Nevertheless, the approach I would like to take is a positive one.
I Thessalonians 5:18 reads, “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Notice the text does not say, “Only in the good things.” It says, “In EVERYTHING give thanks” (Emphasis mine). Honestly, when I turned to see ½ of a gallon of red paint oozing into the youth room carpet, the first thing that entered my mind after the initial, “Oh my gosh! What happened?” was “You stupid, no good, good for nothing, disrespectful, rebellious teenager!” Oh, no, wait, that’s not what came to my mind! Scratch that. Seriously, my first thought was, “What a great testimony!” I actually felt proud! As strange as that may sound, it’s the truth.
You see, I was so grateful for, and proud of, these three people who were devoting their talents and valuable time to serve the Lord, to bless me, and to help their peers take pride in their youth room. How could I get mad at this young man who had devoted an entire Saturday to support his youth ministry instead of hanging out with his friends or playing video games, just because he made a very human mistake? I am sure he was tired; it was 11:30pm. But you know what? He was in the youth room while most other teenagers were sleeping in their beds or watching their TVs. This statement is not meant as an indictment of anyone (please hear my heart), but I would rather see teens make mistakes while serving the Lord than have a mistake-free year while living for themselves!
We talked through various ways we could clean or camouflage the large stain which was painfully obvious to anyone entering the room. We thought about bringing in special paint-removal cleaners. We talked of bringing in a rug to cover over the stain. But then I had a great idea! How about if we just leave it alone? What if we just let people walk into our youth room and say, “Wow, this is coo . . . What in the world is that?!”
I thought through this possibility and saw within it an opportunity to share some of our youth ministry values with anyone who reacted in such a way. Values such as learning, patience, laughter, inclusiveness, and creativity. If one has eyes to see, he or she can observe how each of these values were lived out through this incident.
- We value learning, not perfection. People make mistakes. Our goal is not to create perfect robots but young people who know how to process their mistakes and learn from them.
- We don’t react suddenly under pressure, we value and exhibit patience. We do our best not to jump to conclusions without properly processing what has happened. We demonstrate as much grace under fire as we possibly can.
- We value humor. We reacted to the spill with humor rather than horror. This response no doubt made Alex feel better than if we had freaked out and jumped all over him.
- We value inclusiveness, not exclusiveness. I could have been at the church that Saturday painting the youth room all by myself. Instead I equipped and released some of our teens to function within their giftings and design their own youth room.
- We value creativity. Not only was tremendous creativity being exemplified in their artwork, we also came up with a creative way to view the entire incident through redemptive eyes.
As a youth pastor I take the job modeling very seriously. I hope and pray that through my reaction to this incident our teens saw and continue to see that we can give thanks in every situation. I am learning to redefine failure. Failure to me is no longer making mistakes; it is the failure to learn from mistakes. If you can learn something from your mistakes, then you have not failed; you have succeeded in God’s eyes!
So, Alex kicked the bucket and there is a big ole stain on the carpet in our youth room. But every youth pastor loves a good object lesson! Now I have the privilege of having a permanent object lesson right in the middle of our youth room. It is an object lesson that gives me an opportunity to show everyone that we believe in students, and that we can give thanks in every situation!
Questions for Personal Reflection
- When was a time when you made an embarrassing mistake?
- How were you treated by others when they saw or heard about your mistake?
- What good has come about through your mistake? Or What good can come from your mistake?
- Discuss the idea of failure with a friend in light of the definition given above.
- What can you do to ensure that you have an attitude of thanksgiving in EVERY situation, not just the good ones?
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