Trains are a wonderful way to travel. Although they are restricted to two metal rails, they are very freeing for the passenger.

I love trains. I learned to love them during the years that I spent in Europe. When I lived at RAF Alconbury in the United Kingdom, I would often catch a train from Huntingdon to London. The train ride took just over an hour. I loved to sit on the train and watch people come and go. As we would near Kings’ Cross Station in London, I would anxiously peer out the window and dream of the adventures that the day would hold.

I was amazed at the rows and rows of houses that the train would snake by as it got closer and closer to London. It was here that I learned how trains wound through the back alleys and hidden byways of a city. Sitting on the train, gazing out the window, I was surreptitiously transported into the secret, hidden world of those who lived by the tracks. There was a surprising intimacy involved in gazing into the secreted gardens, into the very lives of the people who lived along the tracks. The backyards were often bare, or messy, or filled with junk. They were not meant for the public eye.

One day, as I left the station, I decided to walk along the streets in front of these houses. These very same houses exuded wealth and family and neatness from this perspective. Many had well kept flower beds, fresh paint and neatly placed lawn furniture. There was something nagging me inside as I headed toward the tube stop to take me to central London. I ended up around Westminster Abbey. I headed across the street to a modern Methodist Church that had a well-stocked tea room in the basement that I had visited on prior trips.

As I sat down to a pot of steaming hot tea (tea like only the British can fix), I began to reflect on this contradiction. I began to think how those houses on the tracks reminded me so much of youth ministry. It was on the second cup of tea that it hit me. The youth I worked with were like those houses. There was a public face that was well kept, full of neatly placed emotions. But there were back alleys and hidden byways that told a much different story.

The reason I knew better was myself. I was also one of those houses. My life looked great to the public. But deep down, for those who knew me best, for those who took the time to gaze into my life, there was a much different story.

Youth ministry is not about walking down the main roads, the front-door roads of students’ lives. Youth Ministry is about taking the trains, taking the routes that build relationships, build roads into all the ugliness, all the dirtiness, all the brokenness of students’ lives. Youth Ministry is about riding the trains of a student’s life, one track at a time. Only then, will the depth of relationships allow an honest, intimate sharing of life together.