“The trick is take being unserious very seriously” ¹

Let me tell you a little about Kelly’s Mermaid Institute for Not Being Too Cool. Kelly is a middle school girl, who, on a trip with her family, wound up having some downtime in the hotel where they were staying. Her younger sister and cousins were with them, and the little girls invited Kelly to come join them in the pool and play mermaids. Kelly, who is at a life stage much more defined by fashion, beauty, scrolling, and trying than playing make believe, rolled her eyes at first, but eventually decided to join the girls. And she had a blast, splashing her imaginary tail, diving for “treasures” (pool toys), flipping her hair as she came out of the water, and more. 

Playing mermaids became an unexpected highlight of her trip, because it allowed her to live into that part of herself that still deeply was a child, and have the kind of un-self-conscious fun that children can have. She thought about how many of her friends worked so hard to grow up so fast, and missed out on all the ways they could still be kids. She thought about how God calls us to joy, to community, to childlikeness, and even made Leviathans just to splash in the water.² 

That got Kelly thinking, what would it be like to teach every middle schooler to let go of the temptation to think they’re “too cool” for playing together, for playing mermaids, or astronauts, or pirates, or whatever it is that they still love but feel like they have to hide as they enter middle school. A whole generation of young teenagers who could play again could change their relationships, their self-esteem, their mental health, and even their futures, keeping them more creative and innovative, longer. 

Here’s where I would link you to Kelly’s mermaid institute, but it was only thought up on Tuesday, so unfortunately, its not up and running yet. You see, Kelly was playing mermaids on Monday night, so this is pretty fresh. 

I met Kelly because, earlier this week, I had the opportunity to lead some workshops with middle school students at the General Assembly of the Disciples of Christ denomination. I came in with the idea to lead workshops that built on each other, the first helping children identify meaningful moments and what they mean for where God is speaking to them, and then the second turning those messages into action. 

The middle schoolers, who didn’t know me at all, and had no idea what I would be talking about, were very skeptical of this project. So they did exactly what a group of 30+ middle schoolers might be expected to do, and turned the whole thing into a joke. The honest, tender answers that students gave me in one on one conversations – about their experiences at the Civil Rights Museum, or the fear they felt seeing people openly carry weapons on the street, or the discomfort at encountering poverty and homelessness – were swamped out by jokes about Popeyes, napping in sessions, and, yes, playing mermaids. 

This is pretty typical middle school stuff, with vulnerability, taking something seriously, being about the most embarrassing thing imaginable. Its layers of irony and jokes and memes paired with a deep longing to be understood. Instead of redirecting the answers, I made a choice: I was going to take them seriously even when they didn’t take me seriously. 

One girl said that the best part of her trip was sleeping, and everyone chuckled. I asked, “Do you feel like you don’t get enough rest at home?” 

“Uhhh… yeah I guess not.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know, just doing stuff” (more chuckling)

“What was different about this place that allowed you to rest more?” 

“Well, like, I don’t know, I didn’t have homework or practice or anything, so when I was done with the day I didn’t have to worry about anything and could just chill. I think that was different.” 

Are you starting to hear it? The real thing behind the joke? The deeply serious thing masked in something deeply unserious? We all know adults (we all know pastors) that can use the most serious sounding words, the most convincing delivery, and its not until you sit with it for a minute that you realize that they said nothing at all worth saying; it may have sounded profound, but there was no real meaning. 

Teenagers (young ones in particular) are often the opposite. What they say sounds like jokes, like memes, like unintelligible “brain rot,” but their brains are firing on all cylinders, and there is always more than meets the eye. 

I decided to keep on my original plan, to take their jokey answers, and push them all the way through the process. If you’re familiar with our ideation and refinement work at an Incubators on-site, this means yes-and, it means blow up your idea (a real winner), and wagon wheel. It means treating this ideas with total seriousness, and investing in developing them as worthwhile insights.

And it was incredible. The farther I pushed the kids, the farther they went with me. The jokes about McDonalds turned into a non-profit focused on providing delicious, warm meals to everyone, with people of every economic bracket eating together (all sponsored by LeBron James, of course). The jokes about seeing a cool rock turned into a collective gratitude journal app, where everyone submits things they saw that were beautiful, and yes, the jokes about playing mermaids turned into Kelly’s Mermaid Institute for Not Being Too Cool. 

It was fun, easy, energetic. Not a single one of them got stuck in the way things had always been done. They needed an occasional push, but there was more than enough energy to go around once they felt like they had permission to share it. Young people are WIRED for innovation, for leadership into new and uncharted waters. They have a sharpness, a lack of nuance, to them that is not just a hindrance to their adulthood, but crucial to the well-being of the church. We need them. They are the body of Christ’s toes and knees and nose, the pointy front edges that are always reaching out to where the body is going next. 

The sixth grade boy (Marcos) that had the plan for the LeBron James sponsored McDonalds giveaways gave his whole pitch (beginning with the moment that inspired the idea, through the cultural and theological underpinnings, and his pain point and solution, concluding with his vision) to the group and everyone clapped and cheered for him. I looked at him and said, “That was really good!” He looked at me, and, in the most honest, unfiltered moment I had gotten all day, said “Really?” 

“Yes. You have really good ideas, and you shared them in a way that got everyone excited. You are good at this.” 

He lit up. Over the course of the afternoon, they all did. They all got wrapped up in the excitement of innovation, of inventing, of believing that maybe the ideas they had could really do some good for the world. And they were good. 

These kids went back to their churches, their communities, their families. I am pretty confident that Kelly’s Mermaid Institute, the LeBron James Free McDonalds Day, Popeyes & Pals, The Little Things Gratitude App, and more, will never become real programs. 

But Marcos’s next idea might. Because now he knows how to do this, to walk a single powerful moment into a strategic plan, informed by his faith, his community, and the call God is placing on his life. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe they won’t remember any of this

… and maybe LeBron James will be handing out Big Macs come this time next year.

1. – Poster Journal (Anonymous Graphic Artist) ↩︎
2. Psalm 104:26 ↩︎