Joel Fether, City Life East
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)
We like to start small group time at City Life Club with a lighthearted question. The idea is to set a tone of participation and safe sharing. I thought I was asking one of these questions when I asked my group, “What has surprised you so far this school year?” I got more than I bargained for when “Nate” responded with this, “My friend dying when he accidentally shot himself.”
Perhaps it’s time to stop being surprised when students share things like this with us. In a 2009 study, 26 percent of high school students reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” By 2021, that number had risen to 44 percent. In a recent Gallup survey of 12-26 year-olds, 47 percent reported feeling often or always anxious. In another recent study, 39 percent of 13-25 year-olds said they “sometimes” or “always” have no one to talk to.
Sadly, these findings track with what we hear from our students. A couple of weeks ago, I received a text from a volunteer asking for prayer for a student struggling with the temptation to self-harm. “She hasn’t given in yet, but she’s really struggling with how depressing her house is.” Earlier this month, a City Life leader got a call from a student we haven’t seen in about two years. She recently lost a close family member and was searching for answers in her grief. Another student recently talked with us about her concern that her older brother is suicidal. This week, a school administrator talked to us about the students in her school and said, “Our students go through so much. We just try to keep them as safe as possible at school because many of them aren’t safe at home.”
The unflinching reality is that many of the young people we are reaching out to are going through a lot. Nate was the last student I dropped off on the night he shared about his friend’s death. We hadn’t seen him in a couple of months, so I told him it was good seeing him again and we hoped to see more of him in the coming weeks. He responded by saying, “I think I kind of needed this tonight.”
This is why we purposely enter into the worlds of teens. We never know when coming to City Life is going to be just what a student needed.
“Harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It’s heartbreaking to know how much our students are struggling, but we have the blessed hope of knowing that the One we point them to is truly the good shepherd.