Party Time!

This is an excerpt from the late great Mike Yaconelli--an amazing youth minister and founder of Youth Specialties. I will never forget hearing about his death. I am still grieving for youth ministry the loss of Mike. He's funny, kind, and really "gets" youth ministry in a way that most people never will. He always opened Youth Specialties Conferences with a speech about using this time to rejuvenate. He'd say, "Are you exhausted? Don't take a class on rejuvenating--go take a nap! Is your marriage in trouble because of all the time you're pouring into teenagers? Don't take a class on marriage enrichment--Put up a privacy sign on your hotel door, lock your spouse in with you and don't come out until Sunday! "

He surprised us all one conference morning in Nashville. Some people had decided to skip this particular event and catch up on some other things. I'm so glad I didn't. He brought up this man (actually, this man was sitting next to me for the first half of the speaking-Yac asked me to save a seat for him) who he said was homeless and played the violin to honor Jesus and he wanted us all to hear him. So this guy started to play Amazing Grace on his violin, scratchy and a bit off key. He finished, to polite applause. then this guy said he had another song and didn't we want to hear it? Scattered applause, kind of. We were getting uncomfortable and disinterested. This homeless man then added that his friend Mikey was here and was going to help him play. We got a bit nervous. THEN up on the stage appears Michael W Smith to lead us in worship!!!!!  It was sooooo awesome. 5,000 youth workers singing and praising God, led by the biggest name in Contemporary Christian music. What a great way to pull a joke on us. Yac was just like that. Every time I saw him he was hugging someone or smiling or cracking a joke. I didn't know him well, but the glimpses I saw of him enthralled me.
IT'S TIME TO PARTY (excerpts)
By Mike YaconelliIt doesn't take much to make most of us realize that we have become too serious, too tense, too stressful. The result is that we have forgotten how to live life. It seems like the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to enjoy living.

It reminds me of a description of life given by Rabbi Edward Cohn: "Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get in the end of it?"

I think that the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college; you party until you're ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye.

It's hard to imagine we were a gleam in someone's eye once. What happened to the gleam in our eye? What happened to that joyful, crazy, spontaneous, fun-loving spirit we once had? The childlikeness in all of us gets snuffed out over the years...

The sign that Jesus is in our hearts, the evidence of the truth of the gospel is ... we still have a light on in our souls. We still have a gleam in our eye. We are alive, never boring, always playful, exhibiting in our everydayness the "spunk" of the spirit. The light in our souls is not some pietistic somberness, it is the spontaneous, unpredictable love of life...I believe it's time for the party to begin.

Copyright 1989 Mike Yaconelli. Permission is granted to send this to others, with attribution, but not for commercial purposes.