Wed. Night Impact

Last night, we had a pretty good Wed. night. We were down in students last night, and I'm not sure why. Many of our regular kids and adults were gone. I spoke during the Jr. high service and Jerry spoke to high school. Jerry also led worship and turned 50 yesterday. He was supposed to do 3 songs, but forgot to do the last song, so I got up pretty early which made me end up finishing 10 minutes early too. Luckily, Jerry had come back up and played a couple of more songs for the kids: "Brother, Friend" and "Jesus is my Rock."

I spoke about cliques. I began by calling up 10 volunteers. I had nine of them get in a circle, and I kept a sixth grader up on the stage with me. I gave him these directions: You will have one minute to get into the middle of their circle. I don't care what you do, but just get in the circle. I could see the kids in the circle making plans of how they were going to keep him out. I said go, and Dane took off to the back. And the kids had locked arms and kept using their hips to block him. Dane tried to force his way in, he tried to squeeze in, he tried to go under legs, and he tried to go over the top. Unfortunately, Dane wasn't able to get in. They all came back and sat down.
Dane said that it was hard and they kept pushing him out. Then I made this comment to the circle. "Did I ever say for you guys to keep him out?" The answer was no. Sometimes, without meaning to, we instinctively form walls to keep people out of groups (cliques).

I said that cliques are natural. We're never going to break them from happening. However, there are good ones and bad ones. The bad ones are ones that discriminate and exclude people. The good ones include others and are welcoming.

I used to scriptures, James 2 and 1 Corinthians 5:15. One says don't show favoritism. The other says that Jesus died for everybody. I told them that we are to look at similarities that we have with people rather than focusing on the differences.

I ended with a few applications. 1. Be purposeful about including others. 2. Be purposeful about initiating the conversation. 3. Be purposeful about joining others. Sometimes you're not going to get people to do what you want to do all the time. You can't say, "Well, I asked them to play dodge ball and guitar hero and they said no. So, that's all I can do." Maybe they like to eat pickles or paint pictures. Whatever! Just join them in some stuff they like. Christians really have no business being exclusive. I hope when people come to our youth ministry they feel included and a part of things (Even though I know that some haven't...but we're working on it).