My Best Day in Ministry: Tim Ghali

Here's another great guest post, this one from my Twitter friend Tim Ghali.  This

series continues to be everything I prayed it would be, and we still have three says

left!  I am thankful to have Tim share with us all today!

Know that I am honored to guest-post here.  So a little context  - I'm Tim, I'm 
35, husband to Susan for 12 years, father of 3 (oldest is 3, youngest is 5 mos) 
and I served in youth ministry vocationally for 11 years.  Though I would say I 
am enjoying many parts of the story of my life, very little has gone as planned.

I honestly believed that I would be in youth ministry for about a decade longer.  
I really enjoyed working with youth, especially high school students … most of 
the time.  But as we all learn in life, doors close, doors open, and we find 
ourselves praying the Lord will give wisdom and discernment. It's in that 
mindset that this post is written from.  

While picking the day that brought me most enjoyment in youth ministry was a 
difficult task, I think I got I one - June 26, 2011.   It was a Sunday, 
Graduation Sunday to be exact and I was privileged to give the Sunday message 
and to honor our high school graduates.  I had arrived at this church when the 
class of 2011 was in 8th grade.  In so many words, they were my first real class 
to go through their high school experience with me.  

They were a pretty large class for our mid-size church.  They always attended, 
always shared their gifts and of course, always complained and debated with me.  
"Listen Tim, this is cool and all but it doesn't work for some of us and if you 
really want to connect with the kids who aren't here …" and "You're crazy - 
soccer is much better than football!"  I think it's fair to say that in my 11 
years, this was the class that I interacted with most and like all things in 
ministry, it was bittersweet.

By their junior year, we found our rhythm.  They had bought and added on to our 
vision and hope of our ministry.   Between a solid core of students, amazing 
leaders, new students, prodigal students, our group felt to be clicking.  The 
only glitch was that it looked like our season was ending in this church.  It 
would take more than a year for it to be actual and while nothing was decided by 
June 26, 2011, it seemed likely that seasons would change.  

Each year, we had what was called the "Senior Sneak."  We would take that year's 
graduating class on an incredible celebratory trip.  For all the years, we made 
them endure generic soda and chips, we were breaking the perfume bottle and 
showering their feet.   Living outside New York City, we always had options.  
Previous years had included seeing Brian Regan, the Fray, and Seinfeld and 
enjoying cities like New York, Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore.  

These trips always included a good amount of deception because high school 
students with expectations are really intuitive.  So we would create false 
itineraries and accidentally leave them out (and the itinerary always sucked).  
This year I told them because of budget cuts, we had to cancel the Senior Sneak.  
Though they were sad, one senior came up afterwards and said, "That seems to be 
the right thing to do in light of the circumstances."  A good youth pastor would 
have been proud of her sacrificial nature (which I guess I was) but what I was 
really thinking was, "YES, this plan is going to work!"

So June 26th was coming and I needed their parents' involvement to secretly pack 
an overnight bag for a series of events that I could not tell them about.  I 
trust parents less than I trust that shady 15 yr old couple who always find the 
darkest part of the room/church/mission trip to cuddle together.  But the 
parents came through.  While I will spare you the details of the deception, 
there we were in the church van driving north when we drove past the sign that 
said, "Boston".  

The theme was "Saying Good-Bye to High School" which I was able to weave through 
Sunday's message, that night's Owl City concert and Monday's sightseeing.  After 
the Freedom Trail, we found a quiet spot in the Boston Commons Park and talked 
for 2 hours.  There was a lot of affirmation, a lot of tears, confession, not 
confession of sin mind you, but confession of souls that were well, further 
realizing that everything was changing.  It was pretty incredible.  (You can 
read a little more at http://www.blackcoffeereflections.com/search/senior+sneak/).

It was tough for me too, because I knew that soon, I too would be "graduating" 
from this church.  I looked around our circle remembering all our moments 
together.  The girl who swore she'd never come back was there.  The guy whose 
parents thought I was a heretic loved his youth group experience (and they came 
around to loving me too.  Maybe their theology got better but what I really 
think is that we found community together).  There was the girl that gave upon 
her baptism, shared with the church that being encouraged to confront her doubts 
was the game-changer in her faith.  I could go on and on but you get the idea.  
We closed our time in prayer, frantically searched for bathrooms, hopped in the 
van and said goodbye to Beantown.  

We sang, laughed and reminisced all the way back to Jersey.  I looked in the 
rearview a few times, sad that was over, excited that it happened, overjoyed for 
these moments of the journey of life and excited for what was ahead for all of 
us.  

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A special thanks to Carl for letting me guest post here.  Feel free to visit me 
over at my blog, Black Coffee Reflections or follow me on Twitter (tg24) - would 
love to connect.