By Kurt Rietema
The 12 kids gathered around the tables for ImagineX were about the same as any other group of kids that I’ve led through our youth social entrepreneurship program. It was a mixed group of Latino kids, Black kids, and white kids–all from working class families, all from Kansas City, Kansas. Even a third of them came from our neighborhood in Argentine. The only difference was that these kids were marched in wearing government-issued, yellow jumpsuits.
The kernel of the idea for doing ImagineX at a local juvenile detention center came from Alex Mathew, who heads up the Youthfront Pathways team and has been doing ministry with incarcerated youth for more than a decade. About six months ago, Alex and his team joined our staff at Youthfront, and they have been an invigorating addition to our ministry, especially to those of us on the Youthfront Neighborhood team in Argentine. It doesn’t take long to develop that certain kind of solidarity and understanding that comes from working with youth in hard places. You share the knowledge that these kids are playing against a stacked deck. Good News can be elusive in these environments. It’s far from guaranteed. You celebrate the wins like there’s a hole in your pocket. In one, careless minute, redemption can slip away and they’re lost again.
That was on the front of Alex’s mind when he learned about ImagineX. The Youthfront Pathways team has witnessed beautiful stories of God’s redemption happen to kids inside the walls of the jail. But when those same youth get spit out into the world without the structure and focused intention of the ordered world behind secure doors, all bets are off. “They’re living a kind of monastic experience,” Alex told me. “Their days are ordered, their freedoms are limited, they do their schoolwork, go to their cells, they study the Bible and pray with us. They’re with other kids who, like them, want to get their lives back on track and live rightly. But then they get out and they don’t have a community pointing them to the good way anymore. That’s how recidivism happens.” One major hurdle to accountability is that for reasons of confidentiality and parental consent, the correctional system can’t share released juveniles’ contact info. To date, there have been few ways for Alex and his team to maintain connection, provide support, and lead them to green pastures and quiet waters.
Then a door opened. A decade of ministry in the JDC earned them trust and the state offered Youthfront Pathways an opportunity to become an official community partner. Present a plan for an aftercare initiative and if approved, judges can refer kids to Youthfront Pathways as part of their probation. That unlocks parental consent, contact info and even the potential of state funding to pay for it. The attraction of ImagineX was that not only could this process help design that aftercare plan, incarcerated youth themselves could be architects in its blueprint. That would set this apart from any other plan in the justice system. No one–no one–ever asks incarcerated youth what they want.
For the first activity on the first day of ImagineX, I asked the kids my typical questions–their names, their interests and what they can’t wait to eat when they get out.The kids named the usual suspects–pizza, fried chicken, any of mom’s home cooking. But then someone broke form. “I want to try one of those Chicken Big Macs.” The confession unleashed something. These kids don’t get many freedoms, but television is one of them. While McDonald’s ad dollars might fall flat for some of us, they go far with incarcerated teen boys. Suddenly all the answers flipped. They wanted Chicken Big Macs. Like a wild strain of yeast the baker hadn’t intended, an idea had snuck in to ferment.
When I think about why ImagineX has seen such success in the faith formation of young people, I believe it is because it attempts to operate on the level of desire rather than logic. Where most programs focus on the “what,” we tend to focus more on the ‘why.’ We work to captivate the imagination more than the intellect, because that’s how our visions of the good life are actually formed. Ultimately, how we act and behave in the world isn’t shaped by what we think or believe about the world (in our minds), but by what we desire and love (in our hearts). It’s why Jesus spoke in parables more than propositions. It’s why learning what it meant to follow Jesus was taught more through stories told on the backstreets rather than through sermons in the synagogues. Around tables gathered with motley characters or picking heads of grain in sun-drenched fields or crossing tabooed borders to come close to lepers, to the demon-possessed, to meeting a foreign woman from long-standing enemies. The quality of life that characterized the Kingdom of God couldn’t be described in rules or principles to live by. Jesus brought God’s future into the present through encounter, through wonder, taste, and revelation. Jesus captured our imaginations that another world was possible.
The French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” This is what we’re trying to do through ImagineX. We don’t rebuild from the rubble of a broken world through needs studies, focus groups, and empathy maps. We close our eyes for a moment and imagine what it looks like when heaven comes close. We dream dangerous dreams where the rule of the present forces in our world cannot reach and instead, step into a world where the generous, life-giving realm of Jesus rolls like a river and God’s righteousness flows like a never-failing stream.
The next week when Alex and I returned to the juvenile detention center, we didn’t come empty handed. While we passed through the metal detectors, a dozen Chicken Big Macs crawled their way through the x-ray machine. A succession of heavy metal doors slammed behind us. The boys processioned in and took their seats around the table, ready for another round of exercises, but unprepared for what came next. Alex spoke a few brief words reminding them what this program was all about before slipping into the guard’s office for the McDonald’s bag. You remember that look on people’s faces from 1980s television when they heard their name and the words, “You are the next contestant on the Price is Right”? That was the look of slack-jawed surprise on every one of these boys.
J. quickly stood up and said, “We gotta pray.” There was only one proper response to this deep-fried, special sauce-laden manna: gratitude. As the boys settled in, the Google reviews started to trickle in. “Better than the original.” “It’s like two big Chicken McNuggets.” “11/10.” But the best one came from Jz: “For a moment, I forgot that I was here and I felt free.”
I don’t know what it was that made him say that, but the catch in his voice suggested that there was an element of transcendence where the divine irrupted inside the prison walls and transported him to another reality. The taste of an overgrown nugget, sandwiched between a sesame seed bun gave him a taste of the kind of freedom that God longed to bring to him, to these boys, and to the whole, wide world. It couldn’t be reasoned. It couldn’t be explained. It had to be experienced.
About Kurt Rietema: Kurt is the Senior Director of YF Neighborhood at Youthfront. He holds a Master’s in Global Development and Social Justice from St. John’s University. Kurt is also an adjunct at MidAmerica Nazarene University and at William Jewell College. Kurt and his wife Emily live with their sons, Luke, Perkins and Leo in an under-resourced neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas called Argentine.
