In an essay entitled, “Talking about Bicycles,” C.S. Lewis describes four ages of enchantment: the Unenchanted age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age. Lewis uses the four ages to describe an individual’s experience with bicycles: “As a little child I was unenchanted by bicycles. Then, when I first learned to ride, I was Enchanted. By sixteen I was disenchanted and now I am Re-enchanted.”

Lewis states that these four ages can be applied to nearly everything. I like his essay, because I think it clearly applies to our work with young people.

The journey of a youth worker is an endurance race. Sometimes we can hold our own and stride with ease. Often, our sides ache, we’re hot, and we can’t breathe. There are no magical ways to make an endurance race effortless; however, understanding these “ages” we go through can keep us aware of the limits of our endurance, and it can open us to God and the possibility of being re-enchanted again with our calling to student ministry.

Moving Towards Enchantment
Lewis says that the unenchanted age is the time when we are unaware of the wonder of the thing. Though we may be aware of its existence, we have not yet encountered its beauty or magic in our lives.

For Lewis, this was a time when bicycles meant nothing to him, “They were just part of the huge, meaningless background of grown-up gadgets against which life went on.” For the youth worker, the unenchanted age refers to the time when youth ministry meant nothing, or next to nothing; it was just part of that confusing world of church work, which only pastors understood.

Similar to Lewis’ description of discovering the joy of riding a bike, the time comes when the idea of giving one’s life to impact young people for Christ is, in a word, “enchanting.” There are many different understandings of what it means to be “called” into ministry, and there are countless ways in which God brings people to the place of enchantment. Vocation, or calling, matures and develops.
Author Parker Palmer writes:

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

Vocation evolves as we experience changes in our life circumstances, as we mature emotionally, as we grow older, and as we see ourselves and our world differently.
I cannot think of a time when I did not love the church. The people of the church were my family—my spiritual caregivers—who partnered with my parents to raise me in a community of faith. The church has been the story of my life, running parallel to many of the most memorable events in my life.

My first kiss was in the church. My first fistfight was in the church. My first (and only) vocal solo was in the church. My first starring role in a play was in the church. My first job, ironically, was mowing the lawn at the church. I watched my parents serve and lead in the church. Since my mom was the church secretary and my dad was an elder, my brothers and I had unlimited access to the church gym.

The most memorable first in the church was my first experience with calling. One Sunday, my second grade teacher and family friend, Wes Poor told me, “Andy, God will make a pastor out of you someday.” I may have loved hanging around the church, but I was not about to become a pastor. It was the last thing I wanted to do with my life. Yet, that conversation is as vivid today as the day it happened. Perhaps that was the moment at which enchantment took hold of me.

The Disenchanted Age
Alas, as wonderful as the enchanted age is, it does not last. Lewis describes his experience of the age of disenchantment as revisiting the prose of cycling, and that his bicycle became to him what an oar is to a galley slave. What once filled them with joy and passion can become a boring routine and may even lead to feelings of resentment and bitterness.

My personal arrival into the disenchanted age was just as Lewis described. My enchantment with student ministry slowly died, and left in its place were feelings of resentment and bitterness.

I was convinced that my call was to middle school ministry. I always loved that middle school ministry was misunderstood and unchartered territory, but I used that as my identity. I had reduced my calling to a career. I could no longer be myself because I could not differentiate myself from my job. I had constructed a false self that was substantially empty—incapable of experiencing the love and freedom of God.

I operated with a false view of myself and projected that to people around me so much that I started to believe it myself. I stopped living out my vocation, my true self, and began believing my own press. I have always been a person who internalizes everything, and takes things too personally and seriously. I am often hurt and struggle with self-doubt. I tend to focus on what is missing, always longing for what is not there. When my false self takes over, I withdraw and become self-absorbed, feeling that no one understands me.

Eugene Peterson—pastor and author of The Message—talks about this trap of ego-driven ministry in his book, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration into Vocational Holiness. Peterson explains:

In our zeal to proclaim the Savior and enact his commands, we lose touch with our own basic and daily need for the Savior. At first it is nearly invisible, this split between our need of the Savior and our work for the Savior. We feel so good, so grateful, so saved. And these people around us are in such need. We throw ourselves recklessly into the fray. Along the way most of us end up so identifying our work with Christ’s work that Christ himself recedes into the shadows and our work is spotlighted at center stage. Because the work is so compelling, so engaging—so right—we work with what feels like divine energy. One day we find ourselves (or others find us) worked into the ground. The work may be wonderful, but we ourselves turn out to be not so wonderful, becoming cranky, exhausted, pushy, and patronizing in the process.

I experienced, in the disenchanted age, that vocation and career are not the same. I became increasingly incapable of stepping outside of my identity or call. Jobs come and go, but vocation has a sense of permanence. It is not something that we choose or that someone else can give us—or take away from us.

Calling, vocation, passion, enchantment—or whatever you want to call it—comes ultimately from God; it reflects my fundamental identity. God gives us temporary roles to serve at a particular time, but they do not represent our fundamental identity. We learn to embrace our vocation as we come to terms with ourselves, as we journey through the four ages.

The Re-enchanted Age
Lewis says, “The question on which all hangs is whether we can go on to Re-enchantment.” Lewis describes this age of re-enchantment with riding a bicycle as bringing back to him a “delicious whiff of memory.

The beauty of this age is that it can actually be more fulfilling than the initial age of enchantment. We grow in our appreciation and knowledge of a thing for having gone through the periods of disenchantment with it. Becoming re-enchanted is remembering the little things that made us first fall in love with something.
I believe we can recover the memories of the second age by being in community with friends and family who offer up “delicious whiffs of memory.” We find and fulfill our calling in community. Our loved ones help us identify our gifts and challenge us to move outside of our comfort zones. They remind us of the things that made us fall in love with our calling in the first place.

My experience with re-enchantment was birthed by being around people who reminded me of my love for students and the good memories we shared doing ministry together. Lewis quotes Owen Barfield, a member of his tight-knit writing community known as the Inklings, saying that each great experience is a “whisper which our memory warehouses as a shout.” I know that as a junior higher, Wes Poor’s prophetic statement meant very little to me; but as an adult writing this article, that memory is deafening.

John challenged the church in Revelation 2:4 to not forsake its first love. I often get caught up in the business of doing church and forget I am there in the first place. I must remember the very things that made me fall in love with the church: The love, care, service, and worship of the Christian community.

My graduate program at Wheaton College put me in a place where I could smell those “delicious whiffs of memory” again by sitting in class with professors and students who shared their life with me. Much like Paul’s words to the Thessalonians, the people were so dear to me because they shared not only the truth, but their lives as well (1 Thessalonians 2:8). I became surrounded by dear friends who spoke into my life and challenged me to get back into youth ministry.
The people with whom I have journeyed through this program have changed my heart. Listening to Jeff, Barrett, Kevin, Aubrey, Dan, and Jerry talk about their passion for people and the life-change they were witnessing in the church served as a delicious whiff of memory. Three years later, I find it absolutely crucial to my survival in ministry to find people who provide delicious whiffs of memory.

I am indebted to a group of middle school youth workers I meet with once a year for fellowship and enrichment, for sharing their lives and love for the church that would not let me escape the aromas of my past. Not only did these men and women help me conjure up my love for young people and the church, but also they shared their own lives in a way that gave me peace, hope, and love for my future in ministry.

Ebb and Flow
It is my contention that we all must experience some form of disenchantment if we are going to grow as ministers and as followers of Christ. The fourth age is one that we never permanently inhabit. As Lewis says, “I am in it now, or rather I am frequently in it.”

Lewis said that he is frequently in the fourth age, implying that he lives in a kind of ebb and flow between disenchantment and re-enchantment. While none of us can go back to that initial stage of enchantment with our calling, we can move on from our experiences of disenchantment to something that is, in a sense, better and more fulfilling than anything we have tasted yet!

After being fired from a church, I left youth ministry for a few years. I was terrified of going back to full-time ministry in the church. A big hurdle to returning to ministry in the church was my fear to move on—to have to start fresh at a new church—my fear of being disenchanted again.

I knew all the good and bad at my former church. I had been enchanted, disenchanted, and re-enchanted. Returning to my calling to serve young people in the church, I have to expect to be disenchanted on a regular basis. The fact is, the church will disappoint us again and again.

I am a sinner, a broken human being, and I am pretty confident that the rest of the church is full of broken people as well. Yet, I look to be constantly re-enchanted by the little whiffs that my community presents me with that remind me why I am passionate about students.

The challenge for all of us is to put ourselves into community where we are continually reminded of us of our calling and why we fell in love with the church and young people. In the ebb and flow of disenchantment and enchantment, we must strive to learn and grow through each experience. It is not enough to remember the “good old days.” We must reflect on how God worked through those whiffs of memory.

After three years at my current church, I am convinced that it was worth the risk to continue in my calling in student ministry; because God is, even now, taking me through the processes of enchantment—and also reminding me that I truly am enchanted with God’s love for students.