Experiment gone right?

So, tonight at youth group we had a "campfire".  It consisted of some candles on the inside of our circle and a picture of a campfire projected onto the screen.  It was good stuff.  The students played along, which is always helpful.  Why did we have a fire?  Well, because you can't tell a story without a fire, obviously.  Let me explain.

Last week at youth group we hit on the idea that worship is our response to what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do.  Well, I think another way to put that is that "worship is our response to God's story".  So, tonight we all gathered around our makeshift campfire and dove into the Story of God.  It was pretty interesting.


Quick aside:  One aspect of doing youth ministry at the same time as Seminary is the large amounts of theory and ideas that I learn about different ways to approach youth ministry.  I always have the urge, and am actually encouraged by professors, to experiment with nontraditional ways of doing ministry.  Try things that have never  been done and find out if they work or not. 

I must confess, tonight was one of those nights where I decided to experiment a little bit.  I've never heard of anyone ever trying to tell the entire Story of the Bible in one night of youth group.  Now I know why.  It is very difficult to do.  There is just so much material to talk about in the Bible, and to chronologically tell the story in one night is REALLY hard!  While planning for tonight I had about a page worth of notes and I was only halfway through the book of Genesis.  Tonight, we skipped a lot of stuff and flew through the things we did talk about.  It was most definitely a crash course on the Story of God. 

Now, this is not to say that it was bad.  In fact, I think it worked quite well.  Or, at least, I hope it did.  I hope that the students were able to see how the Bible contains the overarching Story of God's redemptive love through history.  If nothing else, it didn't totally bomb.  And I think that is the interesting part.  It wasn't a total failure.

So, in order to keep it from becoming a really boring time of me talking A LOT about the events in the Bible, I constantly asked the students, "And then what happened?" whenever we got to another event in the Scriptures.  Not only did it keep the kids engaged - for the most part - but it tested their Bible knowledge.  We all learned (themselves included) just what their Bible literacy was.  It can be helpful to know that you don't know much.  But I digress.  We flew through the entire history of the Bible in one 35 minute sitting.  It was really fast, and slightly jumbled, and definitely lacking a bunch of stuff, but it seemed to work. 

So what's the point?  The point is, what would be the response of a semester, or a full year even, dedicated to a narrative look at the Bible?  A set amount of time of telling the Story of God.  I think it could be intriguing for a few reasons.  First, if a haphazard, one night go of things seemed to connect slightly with the students, how would a well planned, comfortably spaced account be received?  I'm willing to bet it would go over well.  Second, I'm always concerned with my students reading the Bible on their own time.  What better way to get them interested in reading it then to give them a complete framework from which to read it.  Give them a base from where they can begin reading.

Things to ponder.

Suck it, Devil! God Wins!

Tonight was an interesting night at youth group. It was good, in fact I think it was one of the best nights we've had in a few weeks. And I think the fact that the night turned out so well just made it even more interesting. Tonight I am willing to say there was a bit of spiritual warfare going on. Now, I am not one to talk much about spiritual warfare, or the devil, or anything along those lines. Not because I don't believe in it, I most certainly do. But because I am of the disposition that feels why give the enemy any airtime? Why talk about him when, in reality, he's already lost? Let's not even give him the time of day. Let's focus on what really matters.

With that said, I have experienced some pretty dramatic moments of spiritual warfare in my life before. Tonight was not necessarily dramatic, but it was - in my mind - a blatant attempt to disrupt a night dedicated to the worship of Christ. The only reason I feel it is something to share is because it didn't work. Yet again, God won!

So what happened? Well, we were starting a series on worship tonight at youth group. Going into tonight I was a little frazzled and jumble-minded. I had my message prepared, but I was just scrambling to get everything else ready to go for tonight. Basically, even though I had checked all equipment and instruments as always in preparation for our worship time, when it came time to start singing, a number of the instruments simply weren't working. Period. And if they were working they kept cutting in and out (my guitar). And to top it all off I had forgotten to bring my guitar capo and pick with me from my office, so I was playing the songs in the normal key, but with chords I had never played the song before. Not good.

Needless to say, it was probably the worst worship time I have ever led, musically speaking. But despite all of that the students were singing louder tonight than I have ever heard them sing during worship. After we battled through our 3 songs I closed in prayer laughing and acknowledging how awful that just was, but thanking God that even if we think it sounds bad (and it did) He thinks it sounds amazing. They all laughed along with me and we moved right along.

Again, tonight we started a series on, of all things, worship. Honestly, I have been disappointed with my own messages recently. They just haven't been good. But tonight was much better. The students really seemed to be engaged in it and were responsive to what I was saying. I even had one student come up to me and literally say the words, "your message tonight was good". That just doesn't happen, ever. So I was quite pleased with how things went.

So, at the end of the night, as I was cleaning stuff up I thought about everything and realized what really just happened. I mean, everything that possibly could have gone wrong did, but also everything that we ever want to go right did. The devil was trying his best to screw up our night of worship, but God just wouldn't have any of it. God wins! In the end, no matter what, God wins!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

On football, music, and procrastination

Today was a Saturday.  And what does Saturday in October mean?  That's right, football.  Before I moved to Mississippi I thought that I was a pretty avid sports fan, giving my fair share of support to football.  Not even close!  The people here in MS are absolutely crazy about their football.  CRAZY!!!  It is actually quite nice, now I'm not the only guy around with an unhealthy devotion to college athletics.  Granted, for me basketball is still king, but here, football is life.  So much so that I have to be sure to plan youth ministry events around the big games of the football season, both high school and college level.

Now today was a rough day in my football life.  My beloved NC State lost, which dashed our hopes of starting the season 5-0.  And to make it even worse, all day I've been thinking about an assignment that I have to do for school that I didn't realize needed to be done so soon.  Awesome.

But on a good note, I am going back to Raleigh for fall break this weekend.  I'll be going to see the Avett Brothers in concert, going to an NC State football game and will be ignoring school work all weekend.  I'm pumped.

Amazing how the emotions of a weekend can be so drastically different from the emotions of the very next weekend.  So fickle.