It's been a little bonkers these last few weeks at youth. Everyone seems to have been a little out of sorts. It's the kind of thing where you look around and you know that nobody is getting "it". Everyone seems to be off.
You ever have those nights?
Well, tonight we changed the schedule up a little bit.
We set aside time for students to share. Sure, there was lots of awkward silence. But that was ok. We gave them permission to be awkward. And they went with it.
And it was beautiful. They talked. They sat there. They looked confused. They started to share stories of life. Sure, some of it wasn't the most profound. Most of it wasn't that deep. But it was students starting to open up.
We had also planned to do some shoe box building tonight for Operation Christmas Child. With the recent mood, I was prepared for the worst. I thought we would be lucky to fill a handful of boxes. I was saying 4-5 tops. And that's me being optimistic.
Can I just say, that my students kicked ass tonight. Can I even say that? I hope so, because they did. They absolutely hit it out of the park. They blew my mind.
We actually had to drop the "teaching" time to build the boxes. Then we prayed over the boxes.
The students prayed.
This is big, because these students are normally silent when you ask them to pray.
It was a beautiful night.
Thanks for indulging me.
5 comments:
That's awesome! Nights like that are what keep you going back for more. No indulging required, that was a great story to hear.
Glad to hear you had such a great night. God is working.
Did you really say the kids "kicked ass"? I wouldn't have thought that this was part of operation Christmas Child.
Apart from being too old to be part of your youth ministry - I would love to participate in an event where I can send my size 12 boot against the backside of some underserving person packing a shoe box.
You have always had the best ideas :-)
*on a more serious note
hold on to nights like this. These are nights where there are "wins". The more "wins" you have the more you keep going.
Keep up the great work ... or get fired and come to Calgary :-)
On another topic - my mailbox at church has been "full" for the past couple weeks or so. I checked into why this would be full b/c there was no new messages in it. It turns out that my box was full b/c I neglected to erase the longest voice mail EVER from a certain 7 oaks alliance church pastor who tried to get a hold of me.
It made me laugh.
@brad...i should point out that at no time during wednesday night did i do any kicking. it's great when you don't have to! ;)
as for your voice mail, you really should listen to your messages more often.
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