First Kings 19: 11 - 18 tells the story of Elijah seeking the Lord's direction.  In part, it goes like this: "Now there was a great wind, so strong it split mountains... but the Lord was not in the wind... and after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sheer silence..."  The story goes on to tell how the Lord was in the silence, and Elijah heard the soft voice of the Lord.

I've been thinking about this verse a lot lately.  We seem to have accepted as normal, even worthy, in our church culture, to crave the gale force wind-earthquake-fire- experiences and miss the voice of the Lord.  We're drawn to glitz, power and celebrity.  Meanwhile, regular church attendance is dropping among professing Christians, and we have a church culture of biblical illiterates and spiritual babies. 

When I was principal of a small Christian school in rural Maine, I always resisted the temptation to have what is known as 'Spiritual Emphasis Week'.  This is a week of school set aside for special services with (inevitably 'cool') youth speakers to minister to the students the teachers worked with all year long.  My feeling was every week should be spiritual emphasis week, and who better to do it than the adults who have an ongoing relationship with the kids.  I also refused to have middle school or high school retreats for the same reason.  I did have annual ministry trips of 4 or 5 days chaperoned by teachers and parents; again the people who really knew the kids working alongside them in a new and challenging setting.

I must admit I feel like a hypocrite saying this, as the Supreme Court Jesters have been utilized for SEW's twice in one of the longest running Christian schools in the world in Quito, Ecuador.  We have also been utilized in countless retreats as well.  I can  not explain away this contradiction; all I can do is recognize it and acknowledge it. 

I also acknowledge, having committed much of my life to working with teens, that people in general, and young people especially, automatically give more creedance to young, new, dynamic personalities than the adults they see every day.  I remember being a teen going to the barber and asking for a haircut like Donovan's.  Unfortunately, this was the late 70's and no one knew who Donovan was any more.  All the other guys wanted to look like John Travolta.  This placed me on the high school social chart somewhere between freak and nerd... I was a ferd.  I only found comfort in the fact that Donovan's 'Universal Soldier' was clearly more socially significant than 'Greased Lightning'.  Spoken like a true ferd.

But people's tendency to emulate heroes they don't actually know doesn't mean we have to feed into this immature mindset.  Maybe if the parents and pastors and teachers and grandparents did a better job coming alongside young people, they wouldn't be so distracted by the wind, earthquakes and fire.

In the book of I Jesters 19, in might read like this:

"Now there was a great music festival, with wailing guitars, and performers with hairstyles every bit as cool as their secular counterparts, but the lord wasn't in the festival... and after the festival, a youth rally, with a hot twenty-something youth pastor whose abs were admired by all the teen girls when they saw him during free swim; and his pretty wife, who all the teenage boys lusted after, but the lord was not in the youth rally...and after the youth rally, a week of revival meetings featuring a best selling author who the folks in the little church couldn't believe would come to their small town, but the Lord was not in the revival meetings; 

"but after the revival meetings there was the balding, pot bellied pastor who worked faithfully and often thanklessly, for his church for decade after decade; there was the school lunch lady who hosted neighborhood girls in her home every weekend to teach them baking and tell them about Jesus, (and even the girls' mothers remember going to the lunch lady's house when they were little girls); there was the chubby teenaged boy who went unnoticed by his peers until someone was being bullied, then he faithfully stood up for what was right without a second thought; there was the aged widow who taught Sunday school week after week, year after year, and always had lollipops for the third graders after the lesson was taught; and it is here that the still, small voice of the Lord can be heard."