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Winters can be harsh in Hayward, WI. A combination of lots of snow and below zero temperatures can begin to wear on people. That’s why Spring is so welcome to us. We love the change of seasons because they are so dramatic.

Well, one Spring, as the temperature was climbing and the sun was shining, 4 elementary-aged boys took it upon themselves to walk over the church for Followers (Hayward Wesleyan’s after school program) instead of ride the bus. Unless parental permission is given, student must ride the bus to Followers. They cannot walk.

One student later told me he had asked for his Dad’s permission and got it under the condition that he go with a few other guys. So that’s exactly what this young man did. He got three of his friends to walk over with him.

The problem was the Dad didn’t think to let either the school or anyone at the church knows he was letting his son walk, and surely the other boys’ parents weren’t informed, neither was the school or the church.

We have a list of the students we’re supposed to pick up. When students don’t show up where they are supposed to, the officials find out where they are. So when these 4 boys didn’t show up on the bus, both the school and I (the church) were trying to find out where they went. Luckily this walking trip to the church wasn’t a secret and other students had heard about what they were doing, so we were told they had walked over.

So when these 4 guys arrived at the church I pulled them aside and placed them in the Fireside room (a room off to the side of our gym).

They were all saying things like: “Are we in trouble?”

I didn’t answer them. Now I knew these 4 boys. I knew they hadn’t intended to be malicious nor had planned a great evil. However, I need to help them understand the gravity of the situation instead of just yelling at them for making such a stupid decision.

By the way, most people fly off the handle in those situations, and as a parent myself, I understand why. Adults lose it and yell because they have active imaginations. They imagine what could have happened to their child and they want their kid to understand those imaginations. Now, the kid is thinking: “Chill out. I’m fine. We survived. Why is Mom thinking we got kidnapped?” In these situations when a kid is calm and the adult is freaking out inside, the only way an emotional adult (male or female) can communicate their frustration is the yell and lecture on what could have happened.

There is a better way, however. This better way requires a bit of self-control, though.

Here’s how I handled this potentially volatile situation without minimizing the boys’ reckless decision, but helped them understand the dangerousness of it:

I started by asking them how the walk went. They said they loved it! Because the weather was so nice they figured a walk would be good.

I then asked why we might be a little frustrated with a walk that went so great. They didn’t know.

I then schooled them on how a business transaction worked. “It’s called the two-party transfer,” I said. “You guys violated the two-party transfer agreement.”

They looked confused. I had them. They were interested in what this two-party transfer thing was. Their defenses were down because I was talking with them about something other than their “mistake.” For the moment I was talking to them about something that didn’t directly relate to them. The technique is akin to solving a problem together. Instead of me yelling or lecturing what their problem is, I invite them to discover it with me. Today, the container for discovery was the “two-party transfer.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and explained the concept:

“If I, one-party, hand over my phone to one of you, another-party, that is called the two-party transfer. I’m transferring something from one person to the next. When someone buys a house, it is a two-party transfer.”

They were genuinely intrigued! They just got schooled on the essence of a business transaction. But I could see on their faces these couple of things:

• Maybe we’re not in trouble?
• What’s he talking about?
• What does this “two-party” thing have to do with us walking over to the church?

“You four guys,” I continued, “violated the two-party transfer. You’re supposed to go from the school’s hands (one-party) into the church’s hands (the other party). Just like my phone. It would be like me handing my phone to one of you, but then it drops and crashed to the floor.” I feigned dropping my phone. “The other party didn’t take possession of the phone causing it to crash.”

Here it comes…

“You guys crashed to the floor.”

Boom. They got it. I could see the realization on all their faces. They exhaled. Their eyes got shifty. They were looking at each other. They felt guilty… ashamed… they had done something wrong. And all the while I’m giving them enough time to feel the weight of their choice. The realization of a poor choice is often a great teacher.

I squeezed it in a little more: “Do you guys understand what you did?”

They all nodded rapidly and quickly apologized. I told them that I forgave them and then talked about how cool it was to walk over.

I said: “As long as you let one of the parties know what you’re doing (with your parent’s permission) I have no problem with you walking over.”

The boy who had got his Dad’s permission was still a little confused and said: “But my Dad said I could.”

I looked at him with an incredulous, offended look on my face and said: “Is he one of the parties? Is he one of the two-party handoff? What your Dad failed to do was let one of the two-parties know (either the church or the school). A step was missed.” In other words, this boy’s father had given him permission but didn’t let the church or the school know that he had allowed such an action.

Then this boy understood. The conversation lasted less than 5-minutes. It doesn’t take long to get through to kids. It just takes a knowledge of what you think their motivation was (good, ignorant, or evil) and working through the issue with them instead of for them.

I later talked to one of the boys’ parents. As soon as Followers was done and he got into his Mom’s care, he told her that he had done something really bad. I didn’t make nor suggest that the boys confess to their parents (it just wasn’t a part of my talk with them… I did follow up with each parent). He did that one all on his own because he felt so convicted and understood the gravity of what they had done.

My goal is to get them to see and understand that with as much grace as possible.

I often think when I’m disciplining kids about how I would like an adult to correct me. Someone who is already remorseful doesn’t need to be yelled at. You’re wasting the yelling. Save that for something that is really evil that they do. I would much rather have someone who wants to kindly and gracefully, with conviction, help me understand.

One night at Youth group there was a 6th grade guy that got in trouble during a small group.

The small group leader can take care of most discipline issues themselves, but when they come to the end of their rope with a student, they get sent out of their small group and our security guy keep them company until I’m available.

So on this particular night, toward the end of the evening, Rocke (great name for a security guy, right?) told me I had someone to talk to and I went in and sat with this 6th grade student (I’ll call him, Tim).

I made myself comfortable by clucking a little, whistling a tune, and sat sort of next to him with my feet propped up on another chair (the relaxed adult position… almost like I was settling in for the long haul). After a little bit of himming and hawing with myself (sort of semi-ignoring Tim… to let him know he wasn’t the center of my attention), I started by asking him THE question:

What did you do?

Now the answers I get from this question are almost always semi-close, but almost never right.

He said: “I was wiggling my ears.”

I laughed. “Really? Show me.”

Tim showed me his talent. I told him that was cool and that I could do it, too. We shared a moment together, then I asked him the follow up question to the first one:

What else did you do?

Why did I ask this question? Because there is no way my fully capable small group leaders couldn’t handle ear wiggling from a middle school boy. There had to be more.

Tim said something about looking at a book and someone saying something to him and then the book was in his face… I don’t know… that second answer got really confusing for me, and because I knew it still wasn’t the full reason he got in trouble, I didn’t bother to fully understand the second answer.

I’ve learned that when I know the problem they are sharing, really isn’t the real problem, I will either be super-interested and engaged (i.e. ear wiggling) or feign interest then move on abruptly without acknowledging or chasing down the facts (i.e. the second answer about the book).

I then asked a tough question to ask a middle schooler because they aren’t fully versed in this cognitive ability yet, but I’ve found it helpful for getting to the real problem after a few attempts at it:

If I were to ask your small group leaders what the problem is, what would they say?

I’m asking this young man to step outside of himself, put himself into someone else’ shoes, and think/imagine what they would say. Middle school (even some high school) students aren’t very skilled at this process much, but it is ALWAYS good to allow them space for its practice, especially when they are in trouble and care at the moment.

These times are what is commonly referred to as a teachable moment (or at the very least, the potential for a teachable moment).

And Tim got it. He said: “They probably would say that I was messing around.”

Yes! YES! Finally, we got the real problem! He was messing around and distracting everyone else in the group.

Do you see how I got Tim to verbalize his problem to me instead of me doing it? My whole goal in a hopeful teachable moment is not to lecture a student into good behavior, but to guide them to see that their behavior is a problem. By and large, if a student does something wrong, they know it’s wrong. Lecturing them on why it’s wrong is futile (unless they are a child, you do need to educate on right and wrong, but for the most part, teenagers already know what’s right and wrong… the problem is executing right choices versus wrong choices).

Side note: This isn’t the real issue in Tim’s life. This negative behavior is a symptom, an outworking of a deep issue of wanting to be the center of attention (so perhaps people won’t focus on his insecurities) and wanting to be cool and well like by his peers (because showing you can control adults places you higher on the social credibility list).

But I didn’t have a half-hour to process through everything with Tim (if I did, then I would have gone after the real issues, but sometimes you just have to settle for the immediate), so I focused on the disruptive behavior in the present and made a mental note for when Tim gets in trouble or this issue presents itself in the future.

I congratulated him on getting to the real problem and then launched into a story (stories are always better than a lecture):

“Tim, we are always trying to take you guys somewhere at Youth and during small group. It’s not just biding time until you can play in the gym again. It’s like a football game and the football is on the 20-yard line and the goal is to drive into the end-zone and get a touchdown. We’re trying to take you somewhere. However, you are constantly switching sides, opposing your own team. Your leaders keep trying to prevent you from stopping forward progress but you seem to think it’s cool to switch back and forth from our team to the other team. Do you see what I mean?”

Tim was getting the picture. Tim is pretty tall for a 6th grader and he has a lot of influence. I told him that.

I said: “Tim, I don’t know if it’s because you are tall or because of your personality, but your peers (friends) listen to what you say and follow your lead. You have a lot of influence over them. You can either use that influence for good or for distracting purposes (I didn’t say evil). That’s another reason why YOU are meeting with me (in trouble) instead of someone else. You are what we call: a ring-leader.”

Tim was nodding the whole time. I wasn’t lecturing him. I was telling him the truth and bringing him along by interpreting both what was going on and what was really going on. I  often have kids tell me that I can get inside their head and know what they are thinking. This isn’t some magical skill I possess. I just speak what’s true and use my imagination with what I know to be true of a middle school boy (of which I was one). I know what they are probably thinking at the moment. It’s actually rather simple.

Also, when a kid, who is in trouble, is engaged in the correction process (mentally) then you know you’re getting through. If he/she is kicked back, not talking, not engaged, rolling their eyes, and generally acting either annoyed or confused as to why they are in there with you, then you need to change tactics and throw them a curve ball. Do something… ask something they didn’t expect. Call out the behavior they are doing. Say: “Nice eye roll. Am I boring you? Why?” Then answer your own why question with the eye roll probably means (because they’re not engaged with you): “You don’t want me confronting you on this do you? You want to leave and get out of here don’t you? I would love for nothing more than to grant you what that eye roll means, but I would be not caring about you if I did. Thanks for the eye roll… it tells me where you’re at without you using any words. Can we get to some words now so we can shorten the time you have to be in here with me?” Use shock and awe!

So I concluded with Tim that he needed to make it right with his two small group leaders. I usually make the student come up with their own process, but I was changing it up a little. I told him he could say something like: “Hey, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been messing around too much and distracting others in the group. Thanks for calling me out on it. I’ll work on being on the same team.”

After I got done, Tim looked at me with a sort of glassy-eyed stare and said: “Can I just say, ‘I’m sorry’?”

In my head I’m thinking: “Hell no! You have to man up to what you did.”

What I actually said was: “Sorry’s cheap. Anyone can say ‘I’m sorry’. What really shows that you’re sorry is when you claim responsibility for what you’re actually sorry about. That’s what a mature man does. It’s not easy, I know. But a real man owns up to his problem and doesn’t shy away from it.”

Boom! I just laid a challenge at his feet and basically told him he wasn’t a man if he didn’t do a good apology. Trust me, I know what challenges and motivates a 6th grade guy to do something hard: question his manhood!

Notice, I didn’t tell him he had to, but I challenged him to. Then we shook hands and I sent him on his way.

I followed up with his small group leader and one of them said that Tim had come and apologized to him and told him what he had done and he looked him the eye the whole time! Wow! I hadn’t told him the “looking in the eye” part, but the man-challenge caused him to improvise a little as well!

Every year at the Easter Eggstravaganza, we always do some fun music, a simple story about the Jesus of Easter, send the kids and their families out to do the egg hunt, and then they gather back in the building to count their “booty” and get some popcorn and juice. It’s always a meaningful time.

I always like to do a character or some kind of object lesson that the kids and their parents can relate to. For 2014 I used:

A Crown, a Throne, and Freedom

What does a king wear? A crown.
What does a king sit on? A throne.
What can a king do? Whatever he wants, freedom.

We want to be important.
We want to be powerful.
We want to do whatever we want and we don’t want anyone telling us what to do.

We want FREEDOM.

While we don’t have kings in America, we do have a lot of important, powerful, freedom-loving people… don’t we? We want to be our own King… we want to be our own god… and when we don’t get what we want, we feel:

Un-important – like we don’t matter.
Weak – like no one cares about what we say.
Enslaved – because people won’t let us do whatever we want.

We feel frustrated, annoyed, angry, jealous. We talk, scheme, covet, and sabotage. We try, try some more, and go to sleep at night exhausted and unfulfilled.

This is the American way: try to be your own king (but it will never happen).

Enter Jesus.

He doesn’t do any of the things we think he should do:

He doesn’t fight for a crown of importance.
He doesn’t demand a throne to be powerful from.
He doesn’t demand his freedom but other people’s freedom.

Jesus went almost the opposite way. When he became king:

What does Jesus wear? a crown.
What does Jesus sit on? a throne.
What does Jesus do? whatever he wants, freedom.

Instead of a crown of importance, he wore a crown of thorns: humility and suffering.
Instead of a throne of power, he was nailed to a cross in a display of weakness and suffering.
Instead of freedom, he laid it down for the sake of the freedom of all mankind.

You see, Jesus showed us that going after importance, power, and our own idea of freedom will always and only lead to frustration, anger, jealously, and annoyance.

Instead, Jesus offered us the gift of importance (by putting others before yourself), his power in suffering for this world, and freedom from having to try really hard to get what we think we want, when all we really need/want is Christ.

So the only way for life to work is to seek a crown of thorns, a throne that is a cross, and freedom limited by Jesus’ love.

My daughter drew these two pictures later on that day: