Many years ago, when I was a young pastor in a rural community, I began working with the youth of the community. We hosted a few social events at our church, we promoted church camps and conferences, we organized a ski trip to the Black Hills and we began to build relationships with the young people. Many of those relationships turned into life-long connections. We keep track of those people and their families to this day. At the time, I was encouraged to work directly with the youth. It was a small town, so we also got to know the parents and the support of the parents was instrumental to our work. The school was the other major factor in the lives of the youth, but we rarely had any conflict with the school or school schedules. The regular meeting of our youth group was Sunday evening and the school didn’t schedule events on Sundays.

I remember one occasion where we had planned a trip to attend a statewide youth rally. Our weekend trip required us to leave on a Friday afternoon. The football coach had scheduled a “can’t miss” practice that day and one of the star football players was part of our youth group. When the youth approached the coach to see what would be worked out, the coach was insistent and said that if he missed the practice, he wouldn’t play in the next game. I spoke with the youth and told him that it looked like he had a hard decision to make. I couldn’t tell him what to do, but that we would back him in whatever decision he made. It turned out that the young man attended the church event, missed the practice and, in the end, the coach backed down and he was allowed to continue playing football.

But that is the only conflict that I can remember from seven years of ministry.

How much the world has changed! A decade later, in another town, the youth used to bring calendars to youth group planning sessions so that we could work on complex schedules. There were many school events that had to be considered and quite a few lessons, sports teams, and other activities that weren’t officially sponsored by schools that were important to the youth. We continued to maintain an active youth group, but we had to work hard to coordinate schedules and we learned to get the word out quickly when we learned of an event so we could get onto our students’ schedules before another event took their time.

Even that way of working with you seems “long ago” these days. When we plan a youth event, we have to keep in mind that the majority of the youth in our group don’t know their own schedules. They’ll say “That sounds like a good idea,” or even “I’ll be there!” when they have a conflict and are not able to participate. At first, when this started to happen, I thought that the youth were being dishonest, or at least inattentive. Neither is the case. They are simply so over scheduled that they can’t remember all of their activities.

Not long ago I was trying to schedule a rehearsal for a group of musicians in our church to sing and play for worship. One young member of the group got out a cell phone and began to scroll through the calendar. “I’ve got a 45-minute opening in two and a half weeks. I’m pretty busy.”

That busy, over-scheduled lifestyle starts pretty young these days.

We have 10-year-olds in our church who are on traveling hockey teams that play out-of-town games as far away as 325 miles one way. The tournament will be over 400 miles away. Those kids practice multiple times a week to be ready for those long-distance trips.

Childhood, for many of the young people we know, is so different from the way I grew up that I wonder if I would be able to survive at such a pace. We used to build kites, skip rocks, make tree houses, go for long walks and skate for miles on irrigation ditches. We even had time to get bored from time to time. My father closed his business and locked the door for lunch hour, which took an hour at our home. After we ate, we sat and talked. And we had long and slow conversations with pauses and silences. It wasn’t natural for me to learn to sit at the table. I remember it being a bit of a struggle. But I never had any reason not to share quiet times with my family. And I knew that my desire to get to my games didn’t change the fact that eating together was what a family did - it was expected of us.

As I said, the world has changed. These days it seems that the societal standard for “good” parents is to over schedule them and fill their lives with so much stress and business that their lives are just like their’ parents’ lives. And, yes, today’s parents are as busy and over scheduled as their children.

I think we’ve become confused.

After all we call ourselves human beings, not human doings.

Part of my daily routine is to ask others how they are. I greet volunteers and church employees with, “How are you?” Often I find out a lot about their schedules and the list of tasks that lie ahead of them in the next hours, days, and weeks. I really am interested in the lives of other people. I want to hear more than how many items have been checked off of a to-do list. I long for genuine conversation.

And, I have found, I’m not the only one longing for genuine connection with others. A meaningful life, a sense of community, a balanced existence requires us to develop a new attitude toward our schedules - and probably to the devices we use to keep track of our schedules.

How is the state of your heart today? Take a moment. Put your hand on my arm. Look into my eyes. Let’s make a connection that goes beyond knowing what each other is doing.

After all, if you send me an e-mail, it might get lost in the shuffle. If you give me a gift of your time it will not be forgotten.

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