In this installment of Ask Rooted, we want to provide practical, gospel-centered encouragement to youth and family ministers as they walk with hurting students and parents during the holiday season. We hope our Rooted writers’ insight helps you navigate whatever interactions you have as you engage in relational ministry this Christmas.
Curtis Dunlap, Family Life and Teaching Pastor, Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia, PA
For many people, the holidays signify a time of great joy—the joy of connection and shared memories. Yet, for others this same holiday season can be especially difficult. For the last few holiday seasons, my family and I fall into the latter category. We’re navigating a loss of closeness with certain family members. While we have no regrets for stepping away, the residue of mixed emotions still linger. What should be a time of love and connection has turned into reflections of “what if?”
Maybe you, your family, or your students find themselves in a place like this. Let me start by saying God sees you! I remember Hagar, a woman who experienced mistreatment and abandonment. God met her in her distress. It can feel lonely, and the wound can feel fresh. But I encourage you to hold close what the psalmist reminds us in Psalm 34:18 (CSB). “The LORD is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit.” Whether you’re grieving lost relationships (like I am), the death of a loved one, or even the grief of a life you expected to have that never came, God is near and he sees you right where you are. Be honest about the pain and the loss. My prayer is that the broken places in your heart will remain open for God to come in and heal.
Anna Harris, Parent and Rooted Staff Member in Birmingham, AL
When my husband died the first week of December 2010, our boys were 9, 12, and 13 years old. Our needs that first year certainly felt urgent, but a mourning family will also need your care over the long haul.
In the shock of a recent loss, each member of the family will need something a little different. One will want to talk endlessly about the person they’ve lost. Another will want distraction, perhaps by wrapping gifts together or shooting baskets in the driveway. Many kids will swing back and forth between extreme sadness and the need to feel “normal,” doing the things they might have done at any other Christmas. Your physical presence as a calm, caring, trustworthy adult can help the remaining parent (who is also grieving) manage both logistics and emotional intensity. Your job at this time is to show up, listen well, and pitch in with any practical needs you see.
That first Christmas Eve service can feel very difficult, or impossible. It’s best to have a plan for how the family will cope. You (or a familiar friend or small group leader) can arrange to meet the family at the church door. Save seats for the family. Have Kleenex on hand.
Be sensitive to any members of the family who really don’t want to be there. Shield that person from having to make small talk. Help the family get in and out quickly if that’s what they would like. If it’s just too hard for them to be at church, you can offer to come by and pray with the family at some point during the day. The sensory overload of loud music and flickering candles and wearing dress shoes and cramming into packed pews can be all too much for raw and broken hearts, not to mention stressed bodies.
My sons are now young men. Our grief is certainly lighter, but our sense of loss never fails to resurface during the holiday season. When pastors and friends remember the anniversary of his passing–whether by text, phone call, a card, or a shared meal–my boys know their dad is remembered. It’s a welcome reminder that their wonderful dad lives eternally with Jesus, even now!
In committing to long-suffering and long-rejoicing love for these families, you are living out of the love you yourself have received from Immanuel. Thanks be to God!
Liz Edrington, Associate Director of Care, McLean Presbyterian Church in McLean, VA
The holidays can be a season of great tension for students and families who are hurting. Mariah is joyfully blasting in every department store. Cultural cheeriness and excitement dial up. “Are you looking forward to Christmas?” becomes a common refrain. Though meant in kindness, it may come as another barb: a reminder of how different their experience is from most others.
When I think of the way the Lord met me as a teen hurting at the holidays, I think of my youth leader’s intentionality with me and willingness to see me. She’d reach out to invite me to coffee or to bake cookies with her. We enjoyed the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psa. 27:13) in the form of making and eating sweet treats, even as the bitterness of other realities hummed in our ears. I felt seen by her open-ended questions that leaned in.
She didn’t assume I was super pumped about the upcoming break. Her compassionate listening didn’t try to offer trite or immediate scriptural answers. She asked thoughtful questions:What’s the Christmas season like for you? What’s good, and what’s hard? How do you wish it was different? What are your conversations with Jesus like right now? What questions do you have for him? Where do you need for his light to break in?
It helped me to hear stories of how the Lord had met my leader in her own hard seasons. Sometimes, after she’d listened to me, she’d offer a story of her own struggle of wrestling with the Lord in and through it. She didn’t tie a theological bow around her pain. She was honest, and the way she talked about her relationship with Jesus as she struggled was intriguing and compelling to me. It felt real. Through the incarnational presence of Christ in his body, I experienced his grace in those tough seasons. I pray I can extend the same grace and experience to my own students!
Chelsea Kingston Erickson, Rooted Staff Member and Former Youth Minister in Hamilton, MA
The Christmas season can feel so mixed when you are in ministry. We help to carry the heartache of our students and their families who are grieving, even as we facilitate the joy of Christmas for the congregation as a whole. As a youth and family minister, I often felt uncertain how to enter into grieving students’ experience of the holidays.
If I had it to do over, I would be more intentional to schedule coffee or pizza dates with hurting students during the month of December, just to check in. These don’t necessarily need to be serious conversations. You could structure them more as a fun and friendly visit. Save time to ask a deeper question or two and pray together about the harder aspects of the holiday. A meet-up like this has the potential added benefit of giving overextended parents an hour to wrap a gift or run an errand. Meanwhile, take the opportunity to check in with grieving parents via text or to pray with them over the phone.
I encourage you to consider ending your programming earlier in December if you need to so that you can make space for this kind of contact work. It’s such a hectic season in ministry, and we need to go more slowly if we are to care for students—and for our own souls. Praise God, we have the certainty that Jesus will come again to make all things well. Amen, come, Lord Jesus.
Looking for more resources to help families? Check out our Youth Minister training courses.
