From Robert Fuller-Lynch,

The pandemic has upended life, TYGMOS (This Youth Group Meets Online Sometimes) included. In this time, one analogy that I have found helpful to frame my thinking about TYGMOS and youth ministry in general is the idea of a blizzard, the winter or an ice age. In a blizzard the advice is to hunker down and wait it out. The expectation is that the inconvenience is temporary. I spent a lot of the spring and parts of the summer in “blizzard” mode. I hunkered down and kept TYGMOSians safe by not meeting in person.

When the winter comes around, we know it is here for a while. We can proceed with our prior activities, though with some modification.  We still get to go about our daily lives but we make adaptations to what we have done at other times. We change our clothes, or our tires. We shift when we go outside or for how long. TYGMOS is currently in “winter” mode. We are working on adapting and modifying TYGMOS traditions. We are finding ways to try and carry on in a similar manner to how it used to be with some adjustments for physical distancing and the online venue. One way we are adapting is our virtual meetings. We are meeting less frequently and for slightly shorter to help avoid Zoom fatigue. Just as there are some activities, like skiing, that are much easier in winter then other times, we are branching out. We are including youth from St. Luke’s in Woodland and other friends from the social networks of the tygmosians in our Zoom meetings.  Another way we are adapting is by softening the “program year.” TYGMOS is now running on the same schedule it will run on for the foreseeable future. We are meeting online on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month at 1:15pm. We won’t be having a big kick off at the start of school, we are going to continue meeting twice a month during this literal and figurative winter.

And then comes the ice age. For an ice age humans aren’t just adapting previous patterns and ways of life, they are creating entirely new ones, getting rid of some old ways of doing and being, and migrating to different climes. I don’t know what TYGMOS in an “ice age” mode will be like but I do know it will be different.

While thinking about change and difference is hard, everything about the pandemic is hard. The pandemic is challenging. The pandemic can be exhausting. It is unlike anything most of us have ever been through. Only it is not so foreign after all — we, as Christians, have 3000 years of Abrahamic and Christian tradition to draw on.

For me, I am thinking about the different scriptural connections that might be relevant.  I am reflecting on the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and how the “normal way” of doing things got upended. I also see parallels to the Babylonian exile. The whole way of worshiping and being Jewish was taken away. The people of God had to figure out completely new ways to worship and to be Jewish. These times were marked by immense theological creativity, people of God wrestling with God and their relationship to God. A lot of new ideas were tried–making a golden calf, trying to store manna for later–that just didn’t work out. They seemed like reasonable ideas at the time and ended up being powerful learning experiences for the people of God.

As St Martin’s, and TYGMOS in particular, moves into youth-formation during an “ice age” there will be changes. There will be choices that in hindsight might have been clearer. There will be things we try that will fail. And I hope, like during the Babylonian Exile, there will be a flowering of new ideas. I invite you, as a child of God, to imagine what youth ministry could be like in this entirely new time. Do not worry that things might not work out, we have no need to hoard our manna, God will provide. If you, TYGMOSian or not, want to share your ideas or have questions, please reach out, I’d love to chat.

Shalom & Aloha,

Robert Fuller-Lynch

TYGMOS (Youth Group) Leader