European Youth Ministry 101

I'm often asked what the difference is between youth ministry in America and youth ministry in Europe. The following story will illustrate one of the unique differences . . .

Tonight, I took our teens to an indoor beach center to play indoor beach volleyball. Twelve people from Word of Life Germany joined us, and we brought about 16 of our own people. We've been to this place 3 times now, and it's great! Nice sand, beautiful facility, etc. Usually, we rent a court or two and a conference room in which to have our "youth group" time. We were unable to get the conference room for tonight. Instead, we asked if there was any other space available where we could meet for 15 minutes. The person running the front desk told us that no one was in the sauna and we could use that for 10-15 minutes. Perfect!

After playing volleyball for an hour and a half, we directed everybody upstairs to the sauna, where we concluded by hearing the testimony of one of the Word of Life students. You can kind of see in this picture of the sauna that I found on the beach center's website, that a little hallway leads you from one end of the sauna area to the other. Our group met in that far end. Almost everybody fit in the sitting area (where the trees are pictured), but a few of us overflowed into the hallway. I was one of those people. This meant that I had a view into the sitting area where our group was, but if I turned around, I had a perfect shot of the opposite end as well, which is where the sauna opened into the showers.

During the testimony, I happened to hear a noise and turn my head to look behind me. The noise was someone opening the door to the sauna. This happened several times and each time the door made a loud creaking sound when it opened and closed. This was distracting enough that I turned around more than once . . . unfortunately just enough times to see men AND women walking from the sauna to the showers, some wearing absolutely NOTHING! Shocked, I whipped my head back around (my jaw nearly on the floor) and happened to catch my friend Andrea's eye. She had also looked at just the right time and had witnessed the complete nudity. She began laughing so hard she was shaking and wiping tears from her eyes. Thankfully, only the adults sitting in the overflow section in the hall were privy to the peep show occuring behind me. The teens were blocked by the wall. Once the testimony was over, I directed the teens and students to QUICKLY exit the room, keeping their gaze left (toward the wall and away from the sauna). Thankfully, there were no further "sightings".

Note to self: No matter what the management tells you about the occupancy of the sauna, DON'T MEET THERE!