Remembering Shane
The Shane I Remember
I spend five years teaching Shane. He wasn’t part of our youth ministry when I first started. Born in 1986, he was still to young in 1995 when I first began youth ministry at the Decatur Trinity Church of the Nazarene. But when I left Decatur in 2002, he was a long time member of our youth group and one of the kids I could count on to be at every event. By then, I could hardly imagine a youth ministry without Shane in it.
Now almost seven years later I find I’m going to have to start imagining a world without Shane in it.
It’s still not really clear what really happened, at least not to me. Apparently on Friday night January 16, Shane (22) went to the hospital with some breathing problems. By 7:30 the next morning this young man was dead.
And so last Friday I climbed in my car and headed back to Decatur, IL to attend his funeral. This was a new experience for me. I’ve been fortunate. After 14 years in youth ministry, this is my first funeral for someone who was or is a part of my youth ministry. I realize that many of my colleagues have had to face tragedies like this before. But up until now, I had not.
And so, as I made the four hour drive back to Illinois, I did a lot of thinking and, understandably, a lot of it about Shane. I began to realize that while I had spent five years teaching Shane, Shane had been teaching me. Here’s what I learned:
