I suggested a year ago to the youth ministers in ADOSC that I would likely do some writing and posting on my experiences over the years in South Carolina. Sort of memoir or just recollections of things that I learned from. This is finally the first of that. I think over the past year I was avoiding remembering or thinking about much since my time ended so abruptly.
There is a frightening moment when you realize that a group of minors so believe they are in charge that they are willing to get in the face of the supervising adults and shout at them. That was my experience in my first year in South Carolina. It was eye opening to say the least. Happening was a twice annual retreat led by teens for teens and in many ways was intended as a Cursillo like weekend of renewal. In the year before my arrival, the suffragan bishop along with my predecessor decided to reign in some control of this weekend that had gotten out of hand. I was told the leadership was unhealthy and the weekend not very focused on Jesus.
So when I arrived, a steering committee had been formed to replace a lone adult who was leading the teens to create the weekends. That committee had decided that because Happening was a Christian weekend, it needed to be led by mature Christian students and all aspects of the weekend should be clearly Christian. This included the music being played at key times on the weekend. I worked with this committee, mostly listening and learning about how things work. Frankly, I was curious and excited to see what it would be like. There were two youth ministers on the committee who had lots of experience with Happening and wanted to see it get healthy.
The weekend was to be led by a team of high school students who had participated in a Happening in the past. The team was led by a high school senior who was given the title of “rector”. Various other leaders on the team assisted the “rector” and led music or activities or “table groups”. Many of these student leaders were a joy to get to know. They held an overnight retreat to train and prepare for the big weekend. Many of those students clearly loved Jesus but a few of them were there because their siblings had led previously. This was definitely the case with the “rector”. Lots of crafty things were prepared and the flow of the weekend was reviewed on this overnight. Everything seemed ready for a great Happening weekend.
A few weeks later the weekend itself took place. We arrived at St. Christopher in advance of the “candidates” (first timers) and set everything up. It was in my view a very primitive weekend in regards to location, equipment used, etc. Very low tech, which can be a real blessing. Everything got set up and “candidates” arrived. They were warmly welcomed by the team who was extremely excited for their first “Happening”.
The weekend consists of several sessions. Each has a talk delivered by a student. Several very memorable experiences happen during the weekend which are pre-planned. One of those is called “Caritas” which is when notes are distributed to the students from their parents and loved ones. Efforts were made in advance to gather these notes of encouragement and they are distributed during caritas.
It was disturbing to listen to the talks that students delivered as most of them were religious platitudes with no gospel and little biblical basis. I learned that in order to conform to the trademark rules of running a Happening event, certain talks must be given. Yet the sample talks from which they are meant to be based lack strong biblical support or gospel relevance. I wondered what might the weekend be like if the real gospel were made clear.
I mentioned earlier that the steering committee had decided that the weekend being a Christian weekend should use Christian music at key times in the weekend. So, this particular weekend had a spiritual director in the person of The Rev. Tom who was an ordained priest doing youth ministry at one of our churches. He and I noticed that when Caritas took place, a particularly important point in the weekend, the student leadership had decided to put the music of James Taylor on the sound system. We knew this was a tradition of Happening in SC. We also knew it stood in contrast to the decision of the steering committee. So we changed the music to something overtly Christian. Little did we know what storm that would create.
The session ended and “candidates” were sent to bed. Student leaders were left in the building and we faced the most intense confrontation I could imagine. The “rector” and his assistant with a few others approached the spiritual director (an actual priest) and myself and shouted at us for changing the music from James Taylor to something Christian. It was clear at that point there were issues that still existed within Happening. In my opinion, it was clear that the student leaders leading the team were not actually gospel believers. The argument that was put before us was “This is our weekend” which is all i need to hear in order to know that we have reached a Lord of the Flies moment.
More to come on my experience with Happening.
Leave a Reply