Youth Ministry Initiative

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2002

From Harold Masback, There You Will See Him" (March 31, 2002) at pages 9-10:

She was a 16 year-old girl attending our weekly YG Quest gathering. She doesn’t intend to tell her comrades she is facing surgery to remove a rapidly growing tumor, but Jesus appears in her meditation and assures her of his healing power. Emboldened, she murmurs news of her illness to her stunned friends. We surrounded her, laying our hands on her head, and prayed for healing in the name of Jesus. After surgery, her Dr. was stunned; he had found nothing left to remove. Kathryn Russell knew that Christ is alive for her. She had seen Christ there, in the Galilee of a Quest gathering, just as Jesus told us.

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2002

From Harold Masback, The Hope that Doesn't Disappoint" (March 3, 2002) at pages 7-8:

The evidence was that our 75 teenage missionaries were so lacking in basic strength and construction experience that they couldn’t possibly cart away the mountain of debris and build out the 7,000 square foot Bethesda Head Start center in Chicago. Heck, most of these kids don’t even take out the trash at home. But God had a youth group that turned to him in hope, and God changed the evidence. Our kids formed a 75-person chain that hand-passed 45 tons of debris out of the space through the garage and out to the waiting fleet of dumpsters. They then hand carried in and raked out 12 tons of concrete to lay the new floor, put up 405 steel studs and 10-foot dry wall walls. They finished out the space nailing and gluing 105 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ flooring, and decorated the new Head Start space with balloons, banquet tables and posters and threw their hosts an end of week Pig Roast to thank them for the opportunity to serve. Hope in God does not disappoint.

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2002

From Harold Masback, And We Ourselves Heard" (February 10, 2002) at pages 4-6:

Well, never underestimate the creativity of a New Canaan High School senior with a topographical map. Owen pored over the map while I drove, and darned if he didn’t find a Mount Dana – at over 13,000 feet the highest peak by far in the park. And when I say “in” the park, I mean just barely straddling the park’s outer boundary, miles and miles from the valley.
After four hours of hard climbing we had cleared the tree line. Two hours later we had hiked across snow fields to about 12,000 feet and were just about an hour from the summit. While we were resting, a lone, puffy cloud drifted over us. Looking up, Owen said, “Dad: we’ve got to make a move and we’ve got to make it now. Either we have to find shelter under a boulder here above the tree line, or we have to run back down for the trees. In these mountains, one cloud present means more clouds coming. And more clouds coming in these mountains means a thunderstorm, and we’ve got to be under cover when it hits.”Well, I really didn’t like either of those options, and neither made any sense by my flatlander standards. I had lugged myself up a six-hour climb, and we were only one hour from the peak. And there was just one, small cloud in a sunny sky of blue. Surely there was time to make the summit and then scramble back down. But even though I didn’t agree with Owen, I knew he knew far more about the mountains than I did, so I reluctantly followed him as we trudged back down. Of course, I was kind of dragging my feet so when I was proven right and the cloud passed out of sight we could reverse course without having given up too much altitude.Don’t you know within 30 minutes, we were overtaken by a howling wind and a raging hail and a snow storm while we were still high above the tree line? You might call this the repentance phase of my adventure. For I now turned absolutely humble, absolutely open and absolutely attentive to whatever wisdom or guidance might get us off that mountain alive.I looked ahead at Owen and said, “Hey, Owen! Two questions: “What is that high pitched whistling sound and why is your hair standing on end.” Owen listened for a second, felt his hair and turned and shouted “Get down, Dad! Get down now.” Well the newly humble, newly open and newly attentive Dad was on the ground in a second, and good thing too, for as Owen knew – and as Dad did not – the whistling sound was the sound of electrons lining up for the lightning phase of our afternoon entertainment, and seconds later lightning started striking all around us. Let’s call this the acceptance, adherence and obedience to the ways of the mountains phase, the discipleship phase of my excursion. Call, repentance, and discipleship, the three phases of mountaineering.

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2002

From Harold Masback, Blessed Are Those that Mourn" (February 3, 2002) at page 3:

Can you remember the sheer fascination of your first airplane flight? April, 1965, La Guardia to Fort Lauderdale: my first flight. I had looked forward to the flight for weeks with an almost unbearable sense of anticipation. And now we sat on the runway in our gleaming, white and blue, Eastern Airlines 727 “Whisper Jet”. As the plane accelerated down the tarmac, I strained to absorb every sight, every sound, every feeling while thousands of tons of steel hurtled forward and then jerked us sharply up into the sky. The plane banked slightly as we roared from ground to cloud and I watched the ground recede with bug-eyed, slack-jawed awe. When I pulled my nose from the window to catch my brother’s eye, I was shocked to see row after row of grownups poring over their newspapers, adjusting their belongings or slipping into naps – oblivious to the miracle occurring all around them. I was sad for them, for it dawned on me right then that repeated flights had dulled their capacity to marvel at flight, and that whatever gifts age and experience had brought them, there had been the loss of the awestruck fascination then grasping me.

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2002

From Harold Masback, Follow Me" (January 27, 2002) at page 7:

Try this thought experiment: imagine you have 10 children over to your house playing in the play room. Walk into the playroom with a dish holding 8 Hershey kisses and set it before the 10 kids. What’s going to happen? We know! We know they’re going to dash desperately to stake their greedy claim, clutch their prize tightly, and eye each other warily to see if anybody got two when they only got one or none.

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2002

From Harold Masback, The Neglected Gift" (January 13, 2002) at pages 6-9:

My last chance to catch up was the last week of my sabbatical when I had a monastic retreat at St. Anselm’s Abbey. You should have seen the look on Father Bennett’s face as I showed up at their door dragging my preposterous duffle bag behind me. By Monday night I was grinding through my third book, by Tuesday the fourth, but by Wednesday morning it hit me. I had 131 books to go and my sabbatical would all be over in just two days, and my reading program was in tatters, and I was exhausted and discouraged and of course thoroughly messing up my monastic retreat.
And you know, sometimes I pray and it just seems like I’m talking into empty air. And sometimes I pray and there is just a sense of wordless presence that brings its own kind of assurance. And sometimes, only once in a very great while, but sometimes, there right in my head is a voice and I just know that’s it’s the voice of God responding to my prayer. And this was one of those times. And while I lay sobbing face down on the floor a voice came right into my head saying, “Well, Skip, just tell me what you want.”And I said “Oh God, I should be better prepared to respond to the needs of my congregation. God I don’t want to be a mile wide and an inch deep. I should be well read, well informed in grief counseling, marriage counseling, vocational discernment.”And God said, “Is that all? Isn’t there more?”And I said, “Well yes, I should at least be competent in all these areas, but God, I don’t want to be just a jack of all issues and a master of none, I should develop some real depth in some area that I can kind of build upon.And God said, “Come on, don’t choke up on me, isn’t there more?”And I said, “Well sure, while we’re at it, I’m called to preach, and the congregation has the right to expect more than just a rookie preacher. I should be responsible to my call; I should develop my craft as preacher.And God said, “surely there’s more, come on, I want to hear the whole list.”So, I said, “well, you know, I want to be a better father and husband. I keep getting caught up in my work and I know I should be more attentive and loving and available for my family.” And God said, “Okay, okay, we add the family to the ministry list, is there anything else?”And I said, “As I think about, I’m sick of being so out of shape. I was an athlete throughout school, and I always looked with disdain on those guys that were all sloppy and overweight. And here I am pushing 235 pounds and it’s been years since I was in really good shape.”Okay, God said, “You want to get in shape, but there must be more, what is it?”Well, it just got wilder and wilder after that as I added sports, and hobbies, and arts, and friends, and appearance to the endless list of shoulds. And you might have expected God to be gagging by then, but instead he just turned the conversation on me and quietly asked, “Skip, if I gave you everything you just listed. If I gave you everything you can think of. Do you think then that you would be happy?And in the silence of that monastic cell that question just hung there in the air. And as it hung there my heart just sank because I knew, I knew right down to my bones, I knew that the answer to God’s question was “no.” No, God could give me everything single thing I had listed, and sure, I would feel great for a while, but then I would come up with one more skill, one more achievement, one more attribute that for sure I should develop if I were going to be acceptable, passable, tolerable even to myself.And God just let me stew in that recognition for a long time. And then he spoke again, saying, “and Skip, look at everything I have given you. Look what I have already given you! I’ve given you myself, my love, your health, a wonderful family, and a successful legal career. And when the career began to choke you and the noose tightened around your neck, I freed you, slipping you out of the noose and giving you a new way forward, a new career, a new congregation. I’ve given you all of this, all of this, and here you are on the floor crying about your despair. Are you beginning to see what the real issue is here?

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2002

From Harold Masback, In Praise of Epiphanies, Large and Small" (January 5, 2002) at pages 14-15:

Three years later I was a seminary student. Some days it felt just right, a faithful response to a divine call. Some days it felt like nothing more than the world’s most florid mid-life crisis. Walking across the quad, I’d suddenly catch myself, “What am I doing here? What was I thinking? Why did I drag my whole family away from their home?” I prayed constantly for reassurance. “God, just let me know why I’m here. Just let me know where this is leading and I can hold on.” But week after week God chose not to answer. Not a whisper.

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2003

From Harold Masback, The Prodigal Son, The Prideful Son and the Forgiving Father" (January 19, 2003) at pages 10-11:

Maybe it will look something like this: a 16 year old boy finds his life spiraling down into the abyss. He comes to a couple of youth group meetings, but he doesn’t believe in God and really doesn’t see the point. A girl gives him a note at lunch urging hope and faith in God, but it just doesn’t help, he shoves it in his pocket. Things go from bad to worse and he finds himself in jail, cut off from friends and family and facing a 75 year sentence. The national media is camped out at his school, the older brothers of the world are shouting “Columbine,” and the school system wants him out for good.
When Christ died on the cross, He made all suffering holy. Through suffering, we become closer to Him. And God is love and joy and peace and all our hearts could ever long for. All will be made right in the end through Christ our Lord. The truth shall set you free. And so he was freed. Last week the young man told our Quest group that the moment he read the letter he knew God would see him through. He had been welcomed home. He’s now a senior leader of our Youth Group and our YG Quest – never, ever misses a single meeting. He read scripture for you at Lessons and Carols both last year and this and will be graduating from New Canaan High School this spring. Maybe it looks something like that.

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2003

From Harold Masback, Just Do It" (February 9, 2003) at pages 12-15:

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2003

From Harold Masback, Glimpses of Glory" (March 2, 2003) at pages 6-9:

In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott an English mathematician and cleric wrote a lovely story to illustrate our growing blindness to the spiritual dimension of reality. He called it “Flatlands, A Romance of Many Dimensions.” It goes something like this.
What nonsense, we reply. “If this third dimension exists, point to it. Show us where it is.” So the theologians quietly go back to their work, disheartened by our unwillingness to believe in another way of seeing reality. Every square creature in Flatland sees another square as merely a short line segment, the side of the square nearest to him. He can see the other sides of the square by going around, but the inside of a square is forever unseen, mysterious.One day a three dimensional figure, a perfect sphere, came and floated above Flatland. The sphere hovered just above a square and called out a friendly, “hello,” but the square could not see the sphere above it and became suspicious. The voice seemed to be coming from the air around him, but he couldn’t see anything, so he wondered if he was hearing things.Exasperated at being written off as an illusion, the sphere descended to touch the square right in the center of his heart, but the square still could not believe what he could not see. So the sphere flicked the square up into the air. As the square sailed to and fro settling back toward Flatland, he could now see his friends from above for the first time. He could look down and see the perimeters of circles and squares and triangles as they moved about below him. As he tumbled back to the ground, his friends quickly gathered to ask him where he had been, for he had mysteriously disappeared and then reappeared. Stammering to reply, all he could get out was an embarrassed, “I think I was . . . .well, I think I was up!”Another dimension had intruded, just for an instant, into the square’s flat perceptions, and he had glimpsed the reality that had been unseen. He would never be the same.

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