Someone saved my life this summer!

“Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is an emergency procedure that combines chest compressions often with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest.”

Many of us may have done some CPR training and as well as being able to save someones life we now know many of the lyrics to ‘Staying Alive!!’

I found out the longest time spent giving CPR was 5 hours 44 minutes! An Italian hiker fell into a ravine and rescuers were unable to reach him for hours. But even after such a long time of emergency intervention the man left hospital and has fully recovered, a miracle! CPR is such a significant skill to learn because it can literally save a life – how amazing is that, that we have the ability to bring someone back to life!

So why am I talking about CPR? Well we have just finished our first youth residential for over 18 months, it was called ‘BackToLife’ – this was utterly the hope of our gathering. We wanted to help people come back to life, we wanted to breathe life into them, we wanted them to breathe life into one another, we wanted to help them find something new to replace what they had lost over this past year. Our aim for the week was simple, to spend unhurried time with one another. To enjoy reconnecting, to laugh, to play, to eat meals, find space, to worship, share stories, listen to one another, breathe deeply and embrace simplicity.

Some young people needed their hearts restarting, they needed their breathing to begin again or get into a better, stronger rhythm. Some responded to CRP swiftly, for others it took time. When we have not done something for a while it takes time to adjust. Being in community, laughing together, having space away from home and school, enjoying food together with friends; these activities have been strangers to us and so it can take a while to discover again the joys and benefits of these life-giving times.

Have you ever been skiing or ice skating, wearing those special boots is hard work. When you took them off did you walk funny for a bit? It’s because of the pressure put on the foot holding it in a certain position, almost stopping us use out feet ‘normally’.

We’ve had a sort of ‘pressure’ put on us this past year – it has meant that it’s strange when things change and some of that pressure leaves us. We have to get used to a new way of living, we have to adapt to life after all we have experienced and gone through. The most simply activities, like being together, are harder work than we imagined. We aren’t sure about how we feel being so close to people. How strange it is that something that came so naturally to many of us two years ago can now be an incredibly uncomfortable for many of us. It took time to adjust because of what has been taken from us; community, physical connecting, unhurried time together, time with friends round the meal table. So many things that were part of what enabled us to breathe well and experience full life.

Why did ‘BackToLife’ work? In short, ice cream – having the surprise of an ice cream truck turning up was one of the most joy-filled bits of youth work ever. Never did I imagined spending £100 on ice cream would bring such joy and celebration. But this is it, the simple joys of life have been taken from us and we need to start giving them back to one another. Once we had got over the logistics of being together; multiple flow tests and risk assessments, we were then free to begin reconnecting our community of beautiful but wounded young people. Each morning I saw a little more life coming back, a little more community being lived out through sharing, laughing, loud games, lazy times on sofas, multiple cups of tea, competitive sports, crazy dancing, nail painting, late night basketball, friendship bracelet making. All, in fairness, pretty simple straight forward youthwork, but because we haven’t been able to it, each simple element had an almost hidden power to reconnect us.

But ‘BackToLife’ is more than 5 days at the end of July. We want this idea of ‘bringing one another back to life’ to permeate all our ministry over the coming year. Wherever we spend time together we want to be aware of one another’s journey, what each of us have lost, what each of us can give to one another to allow life to return to a healthy rhythm. Our time together in July was almost the trailer for our Netflix series ‘BackToLife’ – each episode over this coming year will be different. There will be heroes and villains, there will be joys and challenges, success and stumbling. But the whole theme of our coming season is to walk together, finding new peace, new breath, new communities, new ways to embrace life in all its fullness. As we cautiously wander into this next term we will no doubt continue to perform CPR on one another, we will have times when we again will lose our breathe and our heartbeat becomes irregular. This is why ‘BackToLife’ is more than a one-off event, we want it to be a culture, a behaviour, a habit, a service we provide to all we meet.

More than ever I believe our youth ministry should be, at this time, about people not meetings, about community not services, about being present rather than turning up.

A season spent simply breathing life back into one another will be a season of deep investment. It might not look cool, it might not be what some people think we should be doing as youth leaders, it might not be even what some parents want. But trust me, and I’ve shared this quote before:

“We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.” ― S. Kelley Harrell.

We all need time to heal, we need to be kind to ourselves and not rush full speed into another term of busy schedules and demanding much of our young people.

How we live and serve and spend time with people in this next season could be CPR to those around us. Consider how you can pour your time and simple acts of joy into the life of someone – it may be the life-giving breath they need. I found myself looking at Genesis 2 and the moment God breathes Himself into man. It’s not science or biology that brings life, it is God and we are called to be His breath and life.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”