If you are reading this, you haven't done that. You see promise and depth where others see little of either. I would like to count myself in your company, at least to a certain degree. I am one of the pastors of a church where the majority of its leaders are under 25 years old, and I am just in my late 30s myself. So, as a church, we are accustomed to seeing God do amazing things through unlikely people.

My church (New Life Christian Fellowship) and the community that surrounds Virginia Tech walked through the largest university shooting in United States history almost three years ago. NLCF has hundreds of Virginia Tech students, graduates and faculty who attend. Three of those who were killed had attended. Literally hundreds had friends, professors, resident advisors, boyfriends, girlfriends … who were among the dead and wounded.

The bulk of the leaders who walked our church through that horror, the majority of the leaders who led their small groups so wonderfully, were students in their late teens and early 20s. The first evening after the shootings, students who were still unsure whether their friends (or friends of friends) were safe, were meeting, praying and preparing to walk their individual groups into a nightmare.

During the next several months, they displayed a grace, poise and faith that most onlookers would have assumed they were too young to possess; but those onlookers were wrong. They were looking at the outside and missed the powerful move of the Holy Spirit that was at work on the inside.

If you are reading this, you haven't done that. Yes, your job is very hard. One day you can help someone build a wall to strengthen their heart only to find out the next day they tore the wall down. The next, they moved the rubble around; and weeks later come to you in tears asking you to help them build it again.

So, you do.

In Should We Fire God?, I wrote a great deal about how emerging generations are challenged to even greater degrees to reconcile the love of God with a world that seems to be coming increasingly unglued. Tragedy can seem to be so much more apparent than beauty. The youth you work with have seen dead bodies floating down the streets of New Orleans. When you talk to them about the goodness of God, those images are likely in the back of their mind -- the challenge of all that has scared many people away from youth ministry.

Not you. You have raised up a generation of leaders. Some of them came to Virginia Tech. Some of them came to NLCF and walked with us through a literal hell. They did it with courage, grace and faith. That is why I am deeply grateful to you.

"Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Gal. 6:9, NLT).

Should We Fire God? releases on April 8, 2010, (Hachette FaithWords) and addresses how to maintain faith in spite of calamity.