Do your young people ever do nothing? Mark Yaconelli unpacks the concept of Sabbath, and argues that it should be a key part of your life and ministry.

How many kids turn 20 without having ever watched a sunset? How are young people to know the mystery of God without being given regular times to sit, nap, play, reflect and pray without an agenda? How will young people experience their beloved-ness in God if they aren’t given consecrated time to do nothing?

When we look at Jesus’ time as an adolescent the only image we’re given is one of leisure and reflection in the presence of a community of faith. Slipping away from the procession of pilgrims travelling home from the Passover festival, Jesus returns to Jerusalem. For three days he sits in the temple, his ‘Father’s house’, listening and asking questions of the elders. In contrast to the great anxiety of his parents’ searching, Jesus seems relaxed and restful. He is among the elders of his faith who seem to have plenty of time to talk with him, listen to him and delight in who he is becoming. 

The soul of a young person needs open, un-programmed time to grow. It takes time to fall in love with God, to notice the gift of each moment, to feel the beauty and suffering of each person and to meditate on the mystery of faith. In contrast to the materialistic spirituality that afflicts Western culture, the Christian faith lives in time, not space.

Prayer and study, discernment and calling, worship and community, mercy and acts of compassion - all the practices and sensibilities of the Christian life are formed in and through time.

The New Testament testifies that it is long, unstructured time in the presence of Jesus that forms Christians. Yet, for most young people the Christian life is just as stressful as the rest of modern life - harried Sunday mornings, clock-run worship services, program-packed youth meetings and somber confirmation exams. Young people today are being raised in a time-famine. There are few adults who have the time to sit, listen, talk with and be amazed by young people. There are rare invitations for young people to engage in real play and recreation without a sense of competition or calorie counting.

How are young people to mature if never given unstructured time among adults? How are young people to hear the call of God without the leisure to pray and listen? How are young people to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ if they are not blessed with regular moments to feast and celebrate within a community of faith? 

How unfortunate that most of us in youth ministry are infected by a driven-ness to keep up with the hyperactivity of Western culture. After 15 years in youth ministry I can say that most youth workers, paid and volunteer, work too many hours and allow themselves too little time for prayer, friendships, and family. As we rush to keep up with post-modern culture we’re forgetting the wisdom that has evolved within youth formation programs for decades - that young people are most available to the love of God in slow, unstructured, natural times and spaces; in camps, retreat centers, van-rides and small gatherings for intimate conversation.

One of the most important ways in which we share the Gospel is by embodying the Sabbath. We create youth ministries that offer youth a slower pace of life. We give kids time to talk, time to pray, time to sit in a field, time to dream, think, and wonder at the God within whom we ‘live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).

Reclaiming the Sabbath

‘If you wish to destroy the Christian religion you must first destroy the Christian Sunday,’ Voltaire once said, and for most young people Sundays have become an archaic practice belonging to the days of top hats and petticoats. Young people today are growing up without Sundays. Within most Christian communities the Sabbath has become a well-kept secret, or worse a blatantly ignored commandment. And yet, in a time when people are stressed out, overworked, over stimulated and pressured to do more it may be the practice of Sabbath that best communicates the Good News of Jesus.

Sabbath and youth ministry

Youth ministers who neglect the Sabbath are at risk of communicating a God who is full of anxious demands. It’s only as we let go of our agendas, our schedules, our own sense of urgency that God can love us, renew us, and remind us that we are only helpers in God’s great mission of love.

A community in which adults and youth engage in Sabbath-living will preserve the image of God in our young people. Young people will be affirmed for who they are, not what they can produce. They will no longer feel measured according to the expectations of the adult members but are more likely to sense affirmation in their identity as children of God.

Is it feasible to reclaim a sense of Sabbath in our congregations and communities of faith? Is it possible to reclaim a sense of time as an abundant gift from God rather than a scarce commodity? Can we as Christians remember that keeping the Sabbath is one of the ten commandments - that Sabbath-keeping is as important as not killing anyone? Can Christians who live within such a hyperactive culture make Sabbath a central experience in the spiritual formation of young people?

If not, then young people today may miss the central message of the Gospel, the message that Rabbi Abraham Heschel once wrote (in his book The Sabbath) is at the centre of every experience of Sabbath rest seeks to impart: ‘The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.’