Monday, February 9, 2009

Surprise Me God - Day 24 - Wednesday

Dickens + Stewardship = Confirmation

I have to believe that the Holy Spirit was working through Derek, Rick and I last Wednesday when we planned confirmation for tonight. The reason being, we were so far from what we normally do and how we normally teach that there must have been some type of spiritual intervention involved because somehow it worked. Let me explain.

A "normal" night of confirmation is centered around music, teaching, video clips, something we call "filler" that breaks up the time between teachings, prayer, quiz bowls, and blessing each other. Basically, each night is the same format with variation every week in what we are teaching on and who is doing what. This week wasn't that much different accept that we had three things to talk about under the topic of stewardship: time, talents, and treasure. Our thought was we could use the model of the Christmas story for our teaching times. We would bring in our senior pastor, he would play the Scrooge character, and he would be visited by three ghosts, each having to do with a different part of stewardship.

In previous years we have done some crazy stuff and been creative about the message we present to the kids. But I must admit, in my mind I was a little skeptical about tonight. Stewardship is not an easy topic to deal with, if it was then we wouldn't have poor people, or hunger, or shrinking non-profit budgets. We would have plenty to go around and share.

The night itself went wonderful. For lack of practice and how much we ad-libbed the evening, I thought it went well. To my surprise the effect it had on the kids was one I never expected. I actually think they will remember what we taught them tonight. I even heard positive feedback from the kids. That they enjoyed the evening. That is a rare occurrence in itself, and a welcome one at that.

To end the evening Derek and I ran out into the parking lot of the church to greet the parents sitting in their cars waiting for their children. We never see the parents because they never come in they sit in the car waiting and so we don't get the chance to interact with them...ever. So Derek came up with the idea that we should go and give people the flyers about camp sunday directly to the parents in the cars this year rather than through the youth. The one consistent comments I hear from middle school parents is "I didn't know about it, my child never tells me anything." So this running through the parking lot in 15 degree weather with t-shirts on giving out flyers is an effort to let parents know what is going on. We shall see how it works.

Most of the comments made to us were receptive and thankful along with "put a jacket on!" But the most surprising comment was this: "Is this the only way to can get parents to know what is going on?" And our answer..."No, but we have to try all we can because we are not reaching everybody." So our quest continues to reach middle school age kids and parents. It is a long one but a worthy cause, I can assure you of that."

Blessings,

dain

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