Making Connections

Criminologist Travis Hirschi is credited with a popular idea known as Social Control Theory which proposes that people’s relationships, commitments, and values encourage them not to break the law. This theory grew out of his belief that social bonding with family and positive peer groups was essential to successful youth development and would therefore prevent juvenile delinquency. In other words, kids need to make connections. (We needed a scientific theory to tell us that?) As we work with youth in detention centers, we often see this social bonding theory at work in a negative sense. It doesn’t take a sociologist to anticipate the kind of social bonding that typically occurs among antisocial youth placed together in a non-nurturing environment. This is the backdrop for a simple but monumental connection that we witnessed last week.

One of our new programs is designed to provide another connecting point with kids in lock-up while at the same time rewarding them for positive behavior. The facility’s behavior modification program is a point-based system of rewards and fines by which youth advance up a 4-color card ladder with gold being the highest. Last week we held our first weekly “Gold Card Luncheon” which simply means we treat the gold card kids to fast food and hang out with them in a designated room at lunch.

There were six young men on gold card last Tuesday, and Dee, Cam, and I couldn’t wait to connect with them and celebrate their success. They came in and seated themselves with typical teenage enthusiasm as they eyed the pizza and brownies on the table. We were busy scooping ice into cups and pouring drinks when suddenly the room got quiet. What happened next was one of the most beautiful moments in my memory of Crosswalk’s history. We looked around just in time to see these six young men make a circle, touching their fists and bowing their heads, as one of them prayed aloud to bless the food. I couldn’t help but think of the story where Martha was busy with all the details of preparing the food while Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

These boys instinctively sense their need to make connections, but perhaps we needed the reminder that the social bonding happening between us and them is for the sole purpose of helping them to make the most important connection of their lives—a connection with a loving Father who desires and pursues them relentlessly. I don’t know where Hirschi would put that in his Social Control Theory continuum, but I know where God puts it. That special moment was no doubt captured and broadcast for all of heaven to celebrate, and I trust it also warms your heart to know that your support enables Crosswalk to be about the business of connecting kids to the one and only Source of deliverance and redemption.

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