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...