Energizing An Initiative

Want people to get excited about something?

Get some kids and youth involved! 

Yesterday our Student Ministry (for students grades 8-12) baked goodies for a baking fundraiser for our new building project. They came together for 3 hours and baked up a storm, and then today after our church service they gave their goods away by donation. 

People young and old were eating it up (pun intended). They thought it was so cool that our students were involved in this project so they wanted to support it. In fact they raised a couple hundred dollars more what I had projected for us to raise. And this was because our students were excited about what they did and their excitement for the project was contagious.

I'm pretty sure anyone wanted to bring excitement to a campaign, cause or initiative of any kind, if they just found a few young and energetic people who were passionate about the cause and then brought them on board they would have far greater success than they originally projected.

So think about it, how do you incorporate young people in what you do?

Beautiful Unique Girl

Last night we had an amazing event. We brought in a team from the Family Life network to run an event called Beautiful Unique girl. The event was Pajama Party themed and involved singing, dancing, with a pizza party and chocolate fountain.

The event it self was a dream for a youth pastor. You are just required to book the venue, feed and billet the girls and that's basically it. The team came in, did all their own set up and take down. It really was quite nice.

The best part of the night however was hands down the message. They talked to the girls about self image and their identity in Christ. The message was timely and needed. The best reminder of this was during the night itself. While I wasn't able to take part in the evening (as evident by the pillow that said 'No boys allowed") My wife told me about it. Each of the girls wrote on one piece of paper the things they disliked about themselves and tore it up. On the other piece of paper they wrote what they liked about themselves.  Unfortunately, my wife ended up picking up a few of the 'like' papers and finding one of them had the words "nothing at all" written on it.

Reading this broke my wife's heart, hearing this broke mine and I can only image how God feels knowing one of his children feel this way.

It's a reminder that this is a lesson we need to keep sending. We have a lot of conversations saying that God loves you and your identity should be found in Christ, but are we really doing the best job we can?