The Heath Mullikin Project

Figuring it all out one day at a time

Columbine

12 Things that have changed in 12 years of Youth Ministry

In 1997….

1. Cell Phones were scarce, weighed 20 pounds, and came in bags.
2. Dial Up internet was still somewhat of a luxury.
3. There was no such thing as an MP3.
4. No one had heard of Columbine or Michael Moore.
5. Checking in at the airport took about 5 minutes.
6. When you talked to your students about cutting it was because they had been skipping class.
7. I only knew a few people who owned an Apple computer and didn’t understand why.
8. I was single and moved into an apartment closer to the church so it wouldn’t be long distance for teens to call me. Now, I live in a town I hadn’t heard of then.
9. I had never heard of Rick Warren or Doug Fields.
10. My IBM computer had 4 MB of Ram and a 12 MB hard drive.
11. It was still okay to play “Chubby Bunny.”
12. Wednesday afternoons were spent making sure we had overhead slides for all our songs.

What did I leave out?

Next, I will be looking at 12 things that haven’t changed. Thanks for reading.

Remembering Columbine

I was in my office on April 20th, 1999 when the mother of one of my teens walked in to drop something off at the main office.  On her way out, she stuck her head in my door and asked if I had heard about the gunmen who were shooting students in Colorado.  At that point, authorities had no idea how many gunmen or victims there were.  I went home and watched CNN the rest of the day.  Later in the day it was released that two students had planned and executed the massacre before taking their own lives.  There seemed to be a rash of school shootings in that 2-3 year period.  I remember one in Kentucky in particular.  I remember our youth meeting that week.  There were alot more questions than answers.  Sometimes we can never no why things happen.  USA Today has been doing a series of articles on the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy.    Here’s the link.  Turns out we were wrong about some things.  The story about one of the killers asking a female student if she believed in God and then killing her after she answered “Yes”:  not true says the FBI.  Here’s the wikipedia story on Cassie Bernall.  Waco, Oklahoma City, the Lincoln Assassination, and Columbine all happened between April 14-20.  Puts a downer on an April 18th birthday.  In a world that has seen such atrocities as the Holocaust, we still seemed to be shocked by evil deeds.  Evil is not some entity floating around picking and choosing its targets.  It’s in me and it’s in you.  It’s that spirit of the evil one, the adversary, the accuser, the devil that we are born with and but for the grace of God it would destroy us all.  It’s the sin nature.  Another Columbine won’t be prevented with lectures, marketing, student summits, rallies, or awareness although these are all good and proper.  Evil is prevented only by the transforming power of Jesus Christ working in our lives.  It’s about every Christian sharing that power through the telling of our stories and the actions that bear the fruit of them.  We tend to shy away from using the word,”evil”, unless we’re talking about someone far away or a long time ago.  We like to call it “kids being kids”, “sowing your wild oats”, “choice”, “preference”, “lifestyle”, “bias”, “mistakes”, etc.  As long as we  treat evil as a joke, he will continue to get the last laugh.