Taking a "Break"

Some of us at Ignite spent this last weekend facilitating the youth part of a church's weekend away (aka  church retreat). It was a group of about 10 kids, most of whom had grown up in the church, and it was great to work with kids from a semi-similar background. It was a breeze to play games and teach lessons with them because they know how you are supposed to act in church, so we had to do hardly any crowd control. The most we had to calm down the over-enthusiastic 11 year olds!

I was in charge of the games for the weekend and I was super pumped about that! I love playing games, especially the games that can make anyone look like a buffoon (you know, typical youth group games). And this group was great because they would actually volunteer to start the games, they would bring up games they'd played in the past and enjoyed and they all actually participated! While I love the kids in TYC, they are not very good at involving themselves in anything they are not familiar with. It's a challenge just to get them to play a simple game that they already know. They typically just stay on their phones.

For each session we would start with maybe a quick game, then we'd read a portion of scripture. Then we separated the group into 2 teams and had each team reenact the Bible story we just read. We had some of them weeping at "Jesus'" feet like the sinful woman with the perfume and we had them acting out Peter walking on the water. During the latter scene the narrator read that when Peter started sinking that Jesus quickly grabbed Peter's hand and pulled him up, but the boy who was playing Jesus had this disgusted look on his face like touching "Peter's" outstretched had might get him leprosy, so he gingerly pinches "Peter's" arm with two fingers and gives it a slight pull. Not exactly like a friend helping a friend, but it was mostly for humor's sake anyways.

It was great to work with such a well behaved youth group again. It was like taking a break from the hard work we do at the TYC and the GYC. 

We are about to start off on a Bible course called Thrive that Ignite is doing. It's basically digging deeper into the Word for ourselves and not relying on the faith of our parents or church to get us through our Christian walk. This course is focused on young Christians of ages 16 to 21, and since I am still 21, I will be partaking as a student not a leader (now that's a change.).

Thank you all so much for your prayers. Until next week...God bless!