There’s a modern proverb that says, “If you want to stay young, work with young people.” I would like to amend it to finish with “…and if you want to die young, try to keep up with them!” I’m reminded of that fact when I go to summer camps as the “camp speaker.” Every camp presents a unique challenge to me as an aging youthworker, but the one high in the Sierra’s a few years ago was remarkable.

It’s the first day of camp and teenagers are everywhere. They’re making sure they get to room with their friends. They’re checking out the opposite sex. They’re running off the “steam” they built up on the long, winding bus ride up the hill.

I’m playing Ping-Pong with a couple of guys. Some of their friends come by to see if I’m any good, (not bad, but not unbeatable), and to plan their annual hike to Indianhead. They start pestering me to go with them, so I ask them about the hike.

“Oh, it’s really sick, dude! It’s like this humongous three-hour hike through the woods, and then we climb out on this big rock that looks like an Indian’s head…”

(“Of course.”) I think to myself.

“…And it’s like three hundred feet straight down, dude! It’s really awesome — you gotta come!”

I politely decline their invitation. (Remember, “…if you want to die young…”) But, over the next three days they keep bugging me to go. I finally relent, and find myself with about thirty kids (mostly guys) and two other adults gathering at the camp’s flagpole for the hike.

We head out of camp, and the freshmen guys start running up the trail. I’m sure. Like they’re going to run for three hours at 7000 feet elevation! But, they’re freshmen, let ’em go.

Those guys weren’t kidding when they said it was a tough hike! We must have climbed 2000 feet, with the last hour’s climb requiring us to leap from boulder to boulder almost straight up a rock fall. As we climb, I can see Indianhead above us. It’s a huge outcropping of granite with shear cliffs, and if you look at it right, you can see the prominent nose and deep-set eyes that give the rock its name.

By now I’m somewhere near the middle of the pack, and as I ascend I notice that one of the guys, Todd, has started to climb the face of Indianhead. Rather than go up the mountain around to the back of it where you could easily walk out onto the rock, he’s scaling the front cliff. Todd doesn’t have any rock-climbing gear on, just a pair of shorts, tennis shoes and a T-shirt. But he is sure impressing his new camp-romance girlfriend (you know, one of those five-day wonders).

“Stupid kid.” I think to myself.

As I get closer, I can see that Todd is about 75 feet up, and his girlfriend is at the base of the cliff, waving her arms and yelling, “Ken! Get up here! Todd’s in trouble!”

So I scamper (if that’s what you want to call it after an old man has climbed straight up for over an hour) to where she is, and assess the situation. Todd has trapped himself on a part of the cliff that’s covered in black lichen. It’s dry and crumbly, and has robbed him of any traction. He can’t go up, and he can’t go down. He’s holding onto the rock with just a few fingers of each hand, clutching to a small ledge about 5 inches wide and a half-inch deep. His feet are clawing at the cliff, and I can see the tendons straining in his forearms.

“Please do something!” yells his girlfriend.

Do something?! What can I do? I’m not a rock climber. And I sure don’t want to get stuck on the cliff like Todd! I tell his girlfriend to stop crying and start praying. Then I begin to climb up the cliff toward Todd.

I get within ten feet of him when I encounter a lichen-covered patch of rock. Seeing it spooks me, and looking down doesn’t help matters either. There’s no way for me to get closer. So, I climb down to a ledge I can stand on. I’m just below and to the side of Todd, frustratingly out of range. If I were as tall as Lebron James I could probably reach up and grab him, I’m that close.

As I watch Todd struggle and hear the panic rising in his voice, I begin to wonder and pray, “God, am I going to watch this boy die?”

“Ken! Do something! I can’t hold on much longer!”

Right about then we see another person emerge from the forest down below. It’s Bob, one of the other adult leaders. Now the girlfriend and I are waving our arms and yelling, “Bob! Get up here! Todd’s in trouble!”

So Bob hustles up to the girlfriend, sizes up the situation and says, “Don’t worry, I’m a rock climber. We’ll get him down okay.”

He’s a rock climber! Isn’t God good?!

Bob proceeds to climb the cliff, following the exact same route I did. In about a third of the time that it took me, he gets to the same spot where I chickened out. Then he begins talking to Todd.

“Listen, Todd. You have to do exactly what I tell you to do, okay?”

“Okay, just hurry!”

Bob’s voice is calm, and he confidently says, “I’m going to count to three, then I want you to flatten against the rock and let go.”

“Let go?!” yells Todd.

“Let go?!” yells the girlfriend.

“Let go?!” yells me.

“Yes, let go. I won’t let you fall.”

All I can imagine is Todd letting go, falling into Bob, and the two of them going down and seeing Jesus.

“But I can’t see where I am!”

“Don’t worry, Todd. Just do what I tell you to do.”

My heart is pounding and my mind is whirling as my spirit is praying.

“Are you ready, Todd?”

“I don’t know if I can do this!”

“Just do what I say. Here we go. One…”

I’m praying, “Oh please, God…”

“Two…”

“…please, please, please, please…”

“Three!”

Todd releases his grip, and slides toward Bob. Bob pushes back and Todd slides between him and the rock. Bob clamps Todd to the cliff with his body. The girlfriend and I cheer.

They go through that routine two or three more times, and wind up on the ledge I’m standing on. Then I take Todd’s head off and show it to him!

“Take it easy, Ken” Bob says. “You’ll be able to use this as an illustration someday.”

He was right. I can’t think of a better way to illustrate what being involved in youth ministry is like. Here’s why:

1. Young people can get themselves into more trouble than they can handle. They get themselves stuck on cliffs not made of rock, but of alcohol, drugs, sex, cheating, broken homes, humanism, guilt, defiance, fear – you name it, some teenager near you is stuck on that cliff, and can’t get off without assistance.
2. Their friends are looking to us for help. Most young people in church youth ministries can see clearly the trouble their friends are in (and unfortunately, even the best “church” kids can get themselves stuck on cliffs that can’t get off of). Many Christian students think they cannot do much on their own to help. I’m not saying that young people are helpless, but they do need qualified and caring adults to provide what they are as yet incapable of. They need us to provide for them leadership, direction and steps of action.
3. We are afraid of making a bad situation worse. The stakes are high. During the adolescent years, the foundation is established for the rest of their lives. That’s what makes youth ministry so strategic; we get to work with them while the “cement” of their foundation can still be molded and shaped.
4. There is a way off of the cliff. Although we may be watching helplessly right now, there is a way to effectively assist young people, and build a solid youth ministry in the process. This book will guide you through that process.

I needed Bob to show me how to get Todd off the cliff. In ministry with young people, we need someone with experience to show us how to get our youth ministries up and running. This book is my contribution to help you be effective with teenagers in ministry