Dear Friends, Family, and People whose email addresses we bought off of a spammer,

Our months of recommendation letters, admissions essays, campus visits, praying, worrying and crying are finally over, and April and I can announce with certainty where we're headed this fall!

A couple weeks ago, I accepted an offer of a Divinity Fellowship from Duke University, so in mid-August we'll be moving to Durham, North Carolina. We've alredy picked out an apartment in the Duke Forest close to both the divinity school and the hospital, and April's begun looking for nursing jobs in the area. Best of all, we'll have a great guest bedroom waiting for you all to join us for UVA-Duke football games, long weekends, and surprise visits!

We also want to let you know that you can follow the last bits of wedding planning on the new website Brian set up for us at www.aprilanddavid.net. Right now it's basically just info about the service, reception, etc., but later it will have pictures from the wedding and honeymoon, our Durham contact information, and other goodies! While you're there, you can also sign the guestbook and let us know about all the amazing things going on in your life this summer!

We're very much looking forward to seeing all of you in July (if you see this and don't mind taking a moment to reply with your summer address, you'll help save our time and sanity as invitations go out next week), and we pray that you have a safe and blessed Memorial Day!

Blessings upon blessings,
April and David

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away--and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father." --John 10:11-18

As I was preparing during the week for this morning's children's message, I looked through hundreds of pictures that we've taken over the past few years at Sunday night dinners, at weekend lock-ins, on youth retreats and summer mission trips. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, and these photos have become an important part of how we understand youth ministry here, just as they're important parts of the lives of many families. As I was looking through these photos, I saw some really interesting things. Many of them capture moments that I could never forget, even without pictures to remind me. Others capture moments I wish I could forget but haven't been able to. And some of them are pictures I should probably burn now so that no one can use them as blackmail later, but I'll save the sermon on not humiliating your youth director for another, more captive audience.

But as I looked through these pictures, I saw Christmas carolers at the homes of Gaynelle Kidd and Myrtle Marks. I saw lunches on the Downtown Mall, in the Florida Everglades, and in uptown Toronto. I saw Lin Walton scaling a pole in the fellowship hall and then explaining it away with some hard rock story about a stairway to heaven that he was climbing. I saw JC Koehn sliding down a hill on a trash bag during last year's Pentecost Retreat in northeast Tennessee. Interestingly, I also saw two girls from our group fall out of their boat while white water rafting on that same trip.

I saw a whole group of youth re-creating the George Rogers Clark statue and other Charlottesville landmarks during a photo scavenger hunt last fall. I saw Daiquan Harris power-washing a community center in Buffalo so that another group could come along and paint a mural there to make it a more beautiful and inviting space. I saw people carrying desks and sofas and tables and chairs around the downstairs here to make our own youth room a cleaner, more inviting space. I saw Lina Schneider displaying her artwork during a summer Governor's School program, and I saw Emma Clements and Lee Bibb on the day of their graduation from Walton Middle School. I saw Kyra Kaster, the fiercest Spoons player in all of Montreal; Rose Dubuque, the fiercest floor hockey player in the history of Charlottesville; and Jeremy Hopkins, the most dangerous potato chopper in south Florida. I saw people working together to build a human pyramid on the beach, to put up sheet rock in a burnt-out home in Pennsylvania, to pull off a yard sale on hours of labor and no sleep, and to plan and lead an entire Vacation Bible School for a poor mission church in western New York.

In all these pictures, and in all our time together, the one common thread of youth ministry at Hinton Avenue is relationships. In a very real way, the best thing we have going are the relationships young people here have forged with one another, with the chaperones and other adults who are a part of our programs, and with people around the country whom we've met in our travels. They're what bind us together as a community of people of faith, willing and able to love and support one another during times of joy and times of sorrow, to hold one another accountable to the promises we've made and the values we've shared in this place, to call one another to task and to action in the world on behalf of Jesus Christ.

You see, the model for our relationships with one another is the relationship God has established with us through the love and sacrifice and example of Christ, and sometimes our relationships are mirrors in which we can see our faith journey for what it really is, in all of its miscommunication and frustration and brokenness. That's true in youth ministry, and whether we like it or not, whether we even recognize it or not, it's also true in the life of a congregation. We're never going to agree on everything; that wouldn't be true of our relationship with God either. But the way we agree or disagree with one another, the frequency and sincerity of our decisions to love or not to love one another, the relationships we share with other people, are reflections of our relationship with God.

It's clear to me that we can't have effective youth ministry if our youth aren't getting along with one another. We've experienced that firsthand from time to time, and we do everything we can to develop healthy relationships, establishing appropriate boundaries that allow space for questioning and exploring how we are to live together as sisters and brothers in Christ.

It's also clear to me that our administrative board, our council on ministries, our prayer and hospitality and outreach ministries cannot function properly if our relationships with one another are less than whole. A faith community is no community at all if we can't talk to one another in ways that promote peace and justice and love. One of the first steps of our journey to live into and out of our Christian calling is to reconcile ourselves to God and to one another.

I don't know much about how that reconciliation happens, but what I do know (or at least some of it), I learned on the baseball field. You see, as a very young man (5,6,7 years old), I knew I was going to be the next Ken Griffey, Jr. It didn't matter that I was a little bit slower than him or that I didn't quite have the upper body strength to get around on the ball the way he did, or that my father hadn't been a famous major leaguer like his, I was going to be the next Ken Griffey, Jr. I was gonna play center field in the big leagues, make amazing diving catches in the outfield, scale the wall to steal home runs from the other team, do backflips on my way to the dugout after winning the game with my heroics. I'd make millions of dollars, be on the cover of Sports Illustrated and on the Wheaties box. Kids around the country would actually shave my number in the sides of their head to tell all their friends that I was their favorite player.

So I decided that I would go out for the baseball team and make my mark on the sport forever. I signed up, I bought a glove and a bat, I showed up for the first practice, and I told the other kids I was gonna be the center fielder. It all seemed to be going exactly according to plan, except for one minor detail: even though he had never been a famous baseball player, my dad was the coach of our little league team. And as some of you probably know, when your dad's the coach you don't always get to do what you want to do. When someone gets sick or hurt, when someone just doesn't show up one day, you can bet that the coach's son will end up wherever he's supposed to be. At least, that's how it worked in our family.

And it didn't really matter that you were one of the smallest guys on the team, or that the catcher's equipment weighed as much as you did, or that your mother protested furiously on your behalf, when there was a hole in the lineup, that's where you went. Thankfully, catching wasn't really our problem; our problem was second base. After a few practices and a couple games, it became clear that our second baseman was a very good artist: he could write his name in the dirt and draw pictures with his shoe, he could spin himself around in perfect circles in the middle of a game, and he could even carry on a full conversation with his mother from his position on the field. Unfortunately, none of these are things you look for in a second baseman, so Ken Griffey, Jr. dreams or not, my dad moved me to second base.

And before I started there, I studied up on a lot of things: I knew that when a ground ball came, I had to get my glove on the ground and my body in front of it; if I had to I could knock it down with my chest and still throw the batter out. I knew when I needed to throw the ball overhand to the first baseman and when I was close enough to just toss it underhand. I knew that you always check the runner at third before throwing to first. I knew everything about playing second base—except, apparently, what to do when someone hit the ball in the air to me.

And that's exactly what happened in my first game as an infielder. A boy on the other team hit a popup right to my position at second base. I got excited and a little bit nervous, and I charged in, ready to make a spectacular catch. After all, maybe I could be the Ken Griffey, Jr. of the infield. About halfway through my sprint to the ball, however, I realized that it had somehow flown several feet behind me. I did an awkward sort of dance and tried to get back to catch it, but the ball bounced off the tip of my glove and into the outfield. The runner was safe, my team was embarrassed, and I was certainly no Ken Griffey, Jr. When I got back in the dugout after that inning, my dad took me aside and told me that I'd learned something important that day: when you play second base, your first step is always back, so that you can see the field better and judge where you really need to go. It's easy then to run in and make the play, but it's near impossible to do what I had tried and catch up with a ball that's already behind you. So at second base, and really at most positions on the baseball field, your first reaction is to take a step back so that you can survey the landscape and then make your move.

Now I know it's cheesy and it won't do as either a catchy bumper sticker or a profound church mission statement, but I think that oftentimes in our relationships with one another our fist step ought to be back. Not to the point that we're not able to embrace or even challenge one another, but just so that we don't collide all the time. When we go to a PTA meeting to decide on a school fundraiser, when we gather here to debate important issues of church policy and practice, when we meet new people and want to share our faith with them, jumping towards them and on them immediately is often a recipe for disaster. When we take a step back, on the other hand, we're better able to see the whole picture, to meet others where they are, and to walk with them to a new place of wisdom and hope and grace.

We told the children earlier that you can never know everything about a person. Whenever you think you've got someone completely figured out, he goes and says or does something that completely shatters your understanding. I actually want to go a step further than that this morning and suggest to you that it is sinful to take another human being, one fashioned in the image of the living God, and conform her to your image, to put her into a box that is comfortable or familiar for you. That's a model of human relationships that has dominated for generations and that is not ultimately sustainable. Relationships that judge you based on your occupation or your income, based on the number of children you have or the amount of power you've accumulated, break down in the light of the new life we know through Christ.

The One who is the good shepherd, who lays down his life for each of us equally and for all of us together, overturns the standards whereby we would judge one another and makes us participants jointly in the new kingdom. You and I and all of God's children are in this together, and so the way we treat one another is a sacred matter.

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” The writer of 1 John picks up on this reasoning and says, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How can God's love even abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”

Brothers and sisters, John says, “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Let us take a step back, for if we cannot give our neighbors, and our enemies, the space to be who they are and to share their experience of the world and what God has laid on their hearts, how can we ever imagine sacrificing our goods for them or laying down our lives on their behalf?

Youth ministry—Youth Sunday worship services, Pentecost Retreats in Virginia Beach, mission trips to San Diego—are all about the relationships. I hope you sense, like I do, that week to week those relationships are growing to more closely resemble God's love for God's people. Everything we do, from the silly photographs we take to the converting conversations we share, aims to develop in a new generation the ability to see our sisters and brothers who are in need (that's not always easy, you know) and to help in the name of Christ, even when it means stepping back, laying our own lives aside, to seek something new.

For this and for all that God is doing to make all things new in this place and in every place, thanks be to God! Amen.

DV: Hey, let's check out our fortunes.
BV: I don't usually get one.
DV: You get empty cookies?
BV: No, it's usually like commands or something.
DV: Well, what does it say?
BV: "It's not the best who are always the happiest, but the happiest who are always the best." What about you?
DV: "The mood is right for a friendly chat to lead to romance."
BV: Let's switch.