Kids These Days

Catching the rising generation in the act of doing good.

Each generation tells itself stories about the next. “Kids these days,” is a refrain passed down like an old favorite family recipe. Today, we often think of kids as being distracted, disengaged, glued to screens, and simply uninterested in anything beyond their social circle.

Headlines reinforce it and we repeat what we read or hear along the way. These assumptions become familiar — easy to think and say. And we forget to question whether they’re true.

Spend a Saturday morning at the Love INC warehouse with a youth group, and you’ll see those assumptions fade.

A CCC student greets one of the Stuff The Truck donors

At Love INC’s first Stuff the Truck event in 2024, tweens and teens of Christ Community Church (CCC) Zion served their community in a different kind of takeover. They greeted donors dropping off linens, gathered information, organized items within the truck, and essentially kept the operation moving.

Pastor Leo Barnes, who leads the youth group, shared how surprising and gratifying it was to watch all of this come together quickly. “It wasn’t what we had planned for,” he said, “but it was awesome. That moment where we stepped back and said, okay — they’ve got it.”

A Relationship Built Over a Decade

Christ Community Church’s connection with Love INC started ten years ago when their youth group’s regular highway cleanup service project engaged fewer students than Leo hoped for. Sometimes ten or twelve showed up; sometimes just three or four. So Leo started thinking about what was missing.

“We wondered if students would engage more if they saw how the work they did helped people around them more immediately.”

As they began to serve through Love INC, the students began to experience firsthand the impact they brought to their neighbors. And as they did, they became more enthusiastic about the service opportunities.

Capable of More Than We Give Them Credit For

Members of CCC serve together during their Convocation Week Day of Service

With two sons in CCC’s youth group, Christine also leads the church’s annual Convocation — a week of missions celebration that, last year, turned its featured Saturday into a full-scale community service day, with roughly fifteen different service projects dispersed across the area, including one at Love INC.

From a parent’s perspective, watching her boys serve has been one of the clearest windows into who they are becoming.

“When these projects are presented, I can see them maturing as they are put in situations where they think outside of themselves. They are doing things that are sometimes uncomfortable, and outside of themselves.”

Her boys have served on Love INC projects with the youth group; assembling bedding, seeing the Zion community up close, realizing they have a real part to play in meeting real needs. Christine describes the task-based format as satisfying in a concrete way: there is a job, you do it, and when it is done, you know it.

But what she is watching for in her kids goes deeper than task completion. She is watching for leaders.

“You can know who the future leaders are,” she says, “which is really exciting. You see that they are capable of more than we give them credit for, often.”

She has a dream for her kids that goes beyond any single service project: that the things they are doing now become so woven into who they are that it just continues. That they stay plugged in as adults and thinking outside of themselves becomes second nature.

The CCC youth group isn’t the only place you’ll find students who are serving their community.

“You can know who the future leaders are,” she says, “which is really exciting. You see that they are capable of more than we give them credit for, often.”

Christine, Christ Community Church

How Can I Teach My Kids?

Across Lake County at CrossLife Evangelical Free Church in Libertyville, dads in one life group began to include their kids in service to their community.

Scott is a retired Marine and father of four. During COVID, when things slowed down, he began volunteering with his church’s furniture ministry team. A couple of months in, it occurred to him: there was no reason his kids could not come too, so he brought them along.

“As a parent, I often think about how I can raise kids that are better than myself. And so I thought: how can I teach my kids that there are neighbors who are close in proximity but live fundamentally different lives and could use a helping hand?”

His son has joined him in service ever since, along with several other kids from the life group. By Scott’s count, about five dads and fifteen kids have served with Love INC through this informal, cross-generational crew that shows up together on the third Saturday of every month.

Dads and kids from CrossLife EV Free Church deliver furniture together.

What he did not anticipate was what he would see in his son along the way. Walking into homes not far from their own, his son would naturally gravitate toward the kids in the households they serve. In one home, he talked with a four-year-old boy about Marvel, Star Wars, and superheroes, moving on to a lightsaber battle in the living room.

Scott also tells a story about the last Saturday one of their life group families spent in the area before moving. Nearly every dad in the life group — and their kids — showed up for their regular service day together. The final image of that send-off was a photo of the kids sitting on the back of the Love INC truck. Two years later, the kids still talk about it.

From the Students Themselves

Parents will tell you what they see from the outside. But the students have their own story to tell.

Lydia is one of them. An incoming high school freshman and a veteran of several CCC service projects, she was part of the youth group crew that ran the first Stuff the Truck event with Love INC. It was a long day and hard work, but what she remembers is how fun it was.

CCC students serve with smiles at the Stuff The Truck event

“It was cool to see how many people came and gave so many pillows and so many blankets — that people would be so willing to give to that.”

For Lydia, service projects have also offered opportunities of personal growth. She describes herself as introverted — not someone who naturally jumps into conversation with strangers. But Stuff the Truck put her right in the middle of it, talking with donors, learning where they were from, what they brought, why they came. She did it anyway. And she would do it again.

“I would definitely encourage a friend to come. It is a good growing experience. Getting to know your community and to know you’re helping your community and part of something bigger is really cool.”

The Bigger Invitation

Love INC exists precisely for this kind of collaboration; ready-made, as Leo puts it, for churches who want to serve their community but are not sure how to start. Especially for youth pastors and life group leaders who are mostly volunteer or bi-vocational and do not have bandwidth to build something from scratch.

“You just call them up,” he says. “Tell them: ‘I would like to find a way to serve the community with my youth group. Do you have any ways I can do that?’ I have never had Love INC turn me down when I have asked that question.”

Christine puts it simply: just come and see. Walk into the Love INC warehouse and look at the lists of the names, real people, with real needs. It doesn’t take long to understand what is happening here.

“It is a worthy organization to be part of. And the best part is it is in the name of Christ. That is the best part of it.”

And as for kids these days? Scott — the retired Marine who has spent six years watching his son and a truck full of teenagers show up to serve their neighbors — says it clearly:

“Kids are doing some really cool things. You just have to look for it.”

“Kids are doing some really cool things. You just have to look for it.”

Scott, CrossLife EV Free

Stuff the Truck is Back October 3rd

CCC students relax in the donated bedding bounty

This October, the CCC youth group will bring their can-do attitudes and willingness to jump right and lend a hand to the next Stuff the Truck, joining Love INC’s effort to collect 1,500 pieces of new linens, pillows, and bedding for neighbors in need.

You’re invited to catch kids doing good while making a difference in the community through this year’s Stuff the Truck event on Saturday October 3. You can: