The Slow Work of Change

Ten years with young people taught me that transformation rarely comes through spectacle. More often, it begins with presence, patience, and the refusal to disappear.

When I first came to Lebanon, Pa., to work with young people, I thought I was more ready than I actually was.

I had theological training, ministry experience, energy, conviction — and, if I’m honest, too much confidence in myself. I believed I was coming to help change lives. I assumed that with enough vision, enough passion, and the right methods, I could make a meaningful difference.

For a while, the work seemed to reward that confidence. My wife and I threw ourselves into it. We stayed late, led retreats, organized camps, preached, listened, prayed, and watched as some students responded in ways that felt unmistakably hopeful.

There were moments of beauty. Moments of breakthrough. Moments when change seemed almost inevitable.

But over time, the work itself began to correct me.

The first lesson: I cannot change anyone

That may sound obvious. Most people know, at least intellectually, that another human being cannot simply be engineered into wholeness. But there is a difference between knowing that in theory and having it forced on you in practice.

What do you do when a student learns that a sibling has died of an overdose? What do you do when a parent is incarcerated and a child suddenly has nowhere stable to go? What do you do when a young person tells you about abuse or trauma no child should have to carry?

In moments like that, many of the things that make you feel competent begin to collapse.

Your training is not enough. Your eloquence is not enough. Your compassion, though necessary, is not enough.

Some forms of suffering expose your limits with humiliating clarity.

And yet those moments teach something important: when there is no quick or obvious solution, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply be present.

We overvalue visible effectiveness

We live in a culture that prizes measurable outcomes, scalable systems, and immediate results. We admire what is efficient, strategic, and visible.

But much of what is most necessary in human life is none of those things.

Love is often repetitive. Care is often quiet. Fidelity almost always looks unimpressive in the moment.

One biblical line that has taken on new force for me comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

There is a difference between labor and results, between responsibility and control.

We can show up, tell the truth, make dinner, keep promises, ask questions, create structure, and extend mercy.

But we cannot guarantee what another person becomes. We cannot predict life outcomes.

At first, that realization was a blow to my ego. It exposed the limits of my gifts and the illusion that I had more power than I really did. But once I accepted those limits, I found a strange kind of freedom: the freedom to love, to show up, and to leave the results to God.

It meant I could stop treating ministry like manufacturing and start seeing it more like farming. In manufacturing, control is everything. In farming, faithfulness is. You plant. You water. You come back again tomorrow. But you do not control the weather, and you do not make things grow.

Second lesson: Faithfulness matters more than giftedness

That changed how I thought about ministry. It also changed how I thought about people.

In the beginning, I put too much weight on talents and abilities. I assumed what mattered most was the ability to speak well, connect quickly, lead strongly, and energize a room.

I still think gifts matter.

But after nearly a decade, I am less impressed by talent and more moved by faithful consistency.

The people who have shaped our work most deeply are often not the most dynamic. They are the ones who keep showing up — the volunteer who remembers names, the mentor who gives ride after ride, the staff member who absorbs another setback without giving up on a student, the cook who prepares a good meal and comes back the next week to do it again.

That kind of faithfulness is not dramatic. But it does something more important: it builds trust.

And trust, over time, opens the possibility of transformation.

Third lesson: Most real change is slow

If there is one thing our society often misunderstands, it is the speed at which real change happens. We assume that if something matters, it should look consequential right away.

But some of the deepest changes in a person’s life are only visible in retrospect.

A typical Thursday night in our youth program does not look historic. It looks noisy, messy, and ordinary. Kids come in hungry, distracted, joking, guarded. Someone asks for seconds before the line is halfway through. Someone acts as if he is not listening, then says something on the way out the door that reveals he heard far more than he let on.

If you judged the night only by its visible order, you might miss what was happening.

But then enough time passes.

And over time, the student you once knew as restless, loud, and difficult to reach is graduating from college. Another is holding down a steady job. Another is trying to build a different kind of family than the one he inherited. Another, against your expectations and perhaps his own, is still trying to seek God.

Those outcomes do not appear out of nowhere. They are often the slow fruit of years of faithful presence — adults who kept showing up, kept telling the truth, kept making room, and kept loving when the results were not yet visible.

None of this fits neatly into the triumphal stories institutions like to tell about themselves. The outcomes are not universal. The stories are not all tidy. There is no fairy-tale version of this work.

But the change is real.

Why Oasis matters

That reality has changed how I think about Oasis.

The name itself comes from the story of Hagar in the wilderness — abandoned, desperate, and convinced she and her son were about to die — when God met her there and opened her eyes to water she could not yet see. In many ways, that is what we hope Oasis can be for the young people we serve: a place of provision, presence, and hope in the middle of a hard world.

At its best, Oasis is a place where kids know the doors will open, someone will hand them a plate, someone will notice if they are missing, and someone will care enough to stay.

That may sound small until you imagine its absence.

If a place like that disappears, hunger does not disappear. Chaos does not disappear. Loneliness does not disappear. The need to be formed, guided, seen, and loved does not disappear. It is simply handed over to whatever else is ready to fill the void.

That may be one of the deepest lessons these years have taught me: human beings are always being formed. If no one is intentionally helping shape them, something else will.

A peer group will.

A screen will.

A wound will.

An appetite will.

An ideology will.

Fear will.

So much of life comes down not to whether formation is happening, but what kind is happening — and in whose presence.

What ten years taught me

Looking back now, I know at least three things better than I did when I arrived:

• I cannot change a human heart.

• Faithfulness matters more than giftedness.

• Much of what is most important happens slowly.

  
  

Underneath all three is a larger conviction:

Faithful presence matters.

That is true in youth ministry, but it is hardly limited to youth ministry. It is true in parenting, friendship, marriage, teaching, and leadership.

We are often tempted to think the meaningful life is the visible life — the life of outcomes, influence, and public effect.

But more often than we admit, what holds the world together is something quieter:

people who keep showing up.

Sometimes the holiest thing you can do is not solve a problem, but refuse to disappear.

When I first came to Lebanon, I had a great deal of confidence in what I could do.

Now, nearly ten years later, I have much less confidence in myself and much more confidence in the slow, quiet work of God — and in the durable power of steady love.

P.S. GIVE True Life

If this vision resonates with you, one simple way to show up is by joining our GIVE True Life campaign. We’re looking for 50 people who will give $15 a month to help sustain Oasis — a place where kids are fed, known, mentored, and reminded that God sees them. It may seem small, but a lot of what matters most starts small.

https://www.aplos.com/aws/give/TrueLifeYouthMinistries/GiveTrueLife