The main thing that has been keeping me so busy over the last month has been the youth group at the base chapel - also known as Cross Training. One of my new year's resolutions was to stop wasting time on random volunteer opportunities and instead pour myself into my true passion of mentoring young believers.
The Cross Training meetings are every Monday night from 6:30 to 8 pm. We provide dinner for the kids and they have time to socialize and eat at the beginning. Then we do a game or ice-breaker, worship, and have a lesson and discussion. It's a lot of fun and we've got a great group of kids - about 30 on average, ranging from 6th to 12th grade.
After two weeks of simply showing up and helping out, I was asked to step up and take charge while the usual leaders went on vacation for 3 weeks. It was a bit abrupt but I was excited to really step it up and flex my leadership muscles again. Thanks to a lot of prayer, the meetings went pretty well and the kids responded very positively. It was A LOT of work - planning a meal to feed 30 teenagers, plus picking relevant worship songs, coming up with a game, and writing a 25 minute talk each week. But it was totally worth it.
In the past they've just watched a 10-15 minute video and had a short discussion afterward. But my computer doesn't work with the chapel's old projector so I had the freedom to teach the kids anything I wanted. The videos are entertaining, but I felt like the lessons were lacking depth - so I took this opportunity to really challenge the kids. Amazingly, they listened, spoke up when I asked questions, and were clearly hungry for more. It's been SO exciting seeing the wheels turning in their heads and catching a glimpse of what God's doing in their lives.
When I stepped up to lead, they had just finished a series on friendship. So my first lesson took that one step further and we talked about loving unlovable people. We discussed how it's not easy, but we need to do it because Jesus loves us in spite of our own unlovable, sinful actions and attitudes. The next week we went back to the basics and took a deeper look at God's incredible love and why He is worthy of all the sacrifice we'd talked about. I kept emphasizing that night how all of that info can be found in the Bible, and that we can discover those promises and encouragement if we just read it. But it struck me later that too often we tell kids to read their Bibles but never help teach them HOW to study the Word. So last night I devoted the entire night to equipping them to get the most out of their personal Bible studies and quiet times. That was a particularly fun night to prepare for. I created a hand-out that describes four separate Bible study methods that I've learned from the various youth groups I've been involved with. It was fun to see them trying new things and beginning to understand that the Bible is not just a rule or history book but something that can speak to them about what they're going through RIGHT NOW. =^D
The normal leaders are coming back this week so I'll be returning to my support role next week, but I'm going to talk to them about ways we can make sure we're continuing to give them lots of depth and are challenging them each week. We now have 6 regular youth leathers - 3 men and 3 women - so I'm thinking that maybe breaking up into small discussion groups after the video might be a great way to get them talking and processing, while giving us a way to get to know them better.
I've also started up a small girl's core group with three 8th graders from the youth group on Wednesday afternoons. They're all very spiritually mature for their age and I look forward to our discussions and watching them grow over the next couple of years! It's so great to be serving and inspiring young people again. I'm praying for big things to begin happening on this base! =^D
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