Question...Anybody have an good teaching ideas about what it looks like to be a Christian? I'm realizing that many of my students pray and read their Bibles, but they don't realize that this makes a difference in the way they live. I want to do some teaching on how Jesus changes things, and I'm thinking about working through Mark...any ideas???
Prayer Request...We have a student who's causing us fits...We're going to confront her tomorrow...Please pray for God's grace in the situation...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Anger and Grace
This past weekend we took almost 50 students to Winter Blitz, a Kentucky Annual Conference sponsored event in Louisville. While the conference was not as good as I hoped (I'm fairly critical of things...I work hard to do my job well, and I expect the same of others), we had a good weekend with our students, until Saturday night. Throughout the day on Saturday, students showed extreme disrespect towards the leaders and towards each other. By the time Saturday rolled around I was tired and fairly annoyed with my students. Then, I found out that 14 students had been hanging out in the upstairs of church (something that the church had specifically asked us not to do). I was livid, and at 1:30 in the morning the students saw my wrath. For the first time, students saw angry Matt. I read them the riot act and sent them to bed. That night, our adult leadership team sat around and tried to think about what the appropriate response was. See, the issue wasn't that students went upstairs...it was a culmination of disrespect that I had experienced all day...Finally, around 4 AM we came up with a plan...
The next morning I announced new bus lists. On the church bus with Beth and I were the 14 offenders. You can imagine their faces when we announced that they would be with us. When we arrived at the Convention Center, I turned around and Beth and I began to talk to the students. We talked about how disappointed we were, and how we expected them to behave better because they were our leaders. We told them that we loved them and that we were hurt by their blatant disobedience. And then we let them talk...they apologized and they began to get it. We were angry, but then we got to offer grace...
It's fun to offer grace and forgiveness. It's amazing how offering grace can transform students (when we arrived home, students jumped to help with EVERYTHING!!). It's amazing how much it helps to call students on the carpet and then offer from forgiveness...It was good stuff, and although I didn't get much sleep on Saturday night, I'm glad it happened. I got to offer forgiveness and grace and that made all the difference...hopefully I can do that with EVERYONE I meet...
The next morning I announced new bus lists. On the church bus with Beth and I were the 14 offenders. You can imagine their faces when we announced that they would be with us. When we arrived at the Convention Center, I turned around and Beth and I began to talk to the students. We talked about how disappointed we were, and how we expected them to behave better because they were our leaders. We told them that we loved them and that we were hurt by their blatant disobedience. And then we let them talk...they apologized and they began to get it. We were angry, but then we got to offer grace...
It's fun to offer grace and forgiveness. It's amazing how offering grace can transform students (when we arrived home, students jumped to help with EVERYTHING!!). It's amazing how much it helps to call students on the carpet and then offer from forgiveness...It was good stuff, and although I didn't get much sleep on Saturday night, I'm glad it happened. I got to offer forgiveness and grace and that made all the difference...hopefully I can do that with EVERYONE I meet...
Anger and Grace
This past weekend we took almost 50 students to Winter Blitz, a Kentucky Annual Conference sponsored event in Louisville. While the conference was not as good as I hoped (I'm fairly critical of things...I work hard to do my job well, and I expect the same of others), we had a good weekend with our students, until Saturday night. Throughout the day on Saturday, students showed extreme disrespect towards the leaders and towards each other. By the time Saturday rolled around I was tired and fairly annoyed with my students. Then, I found out that 14 students had been hanging out in the upstairs of church (something that the church had specifically asked us not to do). I was livid, and at 1:30 in the morning the students saw my wrath. For the first time, students saw angry Matt. I read them the riot act and sent them to bed. That night, our adult leadership team sat around and tried to think about what the appropriate response was. See, the issue wasn't that students went upstairs...it was a culmination of disrespect that I had experienced all day...Finally, around 4 AM we came up with a plan...
The next morning I announced new bus lists. On the church bus with Beth and I were the 14 offenders. You can imagine their faces when we announced that they would be with us. When we arrived at the Convention Center, I turned around and Beth and I began to talk to the students. We talked about how disappointed we were, and how we expected them to behave better because they were our leaders. We told them that we loved them and that we were hurt by their blatant disobedience. And then we let them talk...they apologized and they began to get it. We were angry, but then we got to offer grace...
It's fun to offer grace and forgiveness. It's amazing how offering grace can transform students (when we arrived home, students jumped to help with EVERYTHING!!). It's amazing how much it helps to call students on the carpet and then offer from forgiveness...It was good stuff, and although I didn't get much sleep on Saturday night, I'm glad it happened. I got to offer forgiveness and grace and that made all the difference...hopefully I can do that with EVERYONE I meet...
The next morning I announced new bus lists. On the church bus with Beth and I were the 14 offenders. You can imagine their faces when we announced that they would be with us. When we arrived at the Convention Center, I turned around and Beth and I began to talk to the students. We talked about how disappointed we were, and how we expected them to behave better because they were our leaders. We told them that we loved them and that we were hurt by their blatant disobedience. And then we let them talk...they apologized and they began to get it. We were angry, but then we got to offer grace...
It's fun to offer grace and forgiveness. It's amazing how offering grace can transform students (when we arrived home, students jumped to help with EVERYTHING!!). It's amazing how much it helps to call students on the carpet and then offer from forgiveness...It was good stuff, and although I didn't get much sleep on Saturday night, I'm glad it happened. I got to offer forgiveness and grace and that made all the difference...hopefully I can do that with EVERYONE I meet...
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Cigarette Smoke in the church
On Tuesday nights when I go to Disciple, our church smells like cigarette smoke. Why? Because on Tuesday nights our church hosts the local AA group and the room down the hall is filled with people who never set foot in the church otherwise. I love the fact that our church smells like cigarette smoke on Tuesday nights, but at the same time it bothers me. Why does the church only smell like smoke on Tuesdays? Why not Wednesdays? Or *gasp* Sunday morning? See, here's what gets me...all week long our church is used by a variety of community groups...AA, a quilting group, a ESL group, but as all these groups make their way through our building, we do very little to engage them. They use our space, and we're proud of ourself that we let some outside people in the building, but we don't do anything show them anything of the people and the spirit that makes NUMC what it is. What would it look like to run Celebrate/Recovery through our building? What would it look like for my friend Adam who is a teacher and a fluent Spanish speaker to help teach many of the immigrants English and offer them Jesus? What would it look like for us to run Angel Food through our building and offer low cost, high quality food to people in the area? Why don't we smell like smoke all the time??
I bet Jesus smelled like smoke, because Jesus hung out with some smoky people....I sure hope that we do, too...That Jesus will call us to a new level of smokiness that drives our custodian crazy...
I bet Jesus smelled like smoke, because Jesus hung out with some smoky people....I sure hope that we do, too...That Jesus will call us to a new level of smokiness that drives our custodian crazy...
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