For the Journey...: Glowsticks, Zombies, and Spiritual Growth

Hi.

It seems like it's been forever since I last wrote a blog post. So much has happened!
This past weekend I had the opportunity to serve as a leader at something called "Engage Weekend" at my home church in Springfield-- Second Baptist. It's basically a weekend full of fellowship, games, serving, worship music, and awesome group Bible lessons. This was the first time I got to participate as a leader, and it was a blast. I co-led a group of 7th grade girls with my good friend Molly.

A lot of prayer went into the weekend beforehand, and the prayers were definitely felt. Friday night started off with signing the kids in and making sure they had everything needed for registration. Then we had a typical youth group game which consisted of four kids who volunteered to eat a banana while wearing a pair of pantyhose over their face. (Classic.) We then had a time of worship, and our first group lesson, which led into our lesson in our host home later on that night. To be honest, when I was a student at Engage Weekend, the curriculum wasn't super relevant to my life, but this year the curriculum was awesome. The theme for the weekend was "Redefining Normal" and we focused on how the church for so long has beat it into our brains that we must say no to everything. Christians are so often known for things that they don't do rather than what they actually do. "Christians don't drink, don't smoke, and don't cuss." While these things are extremely important, and as followers of Christ, we are called to a different standard than the rest of the world, it seems that we only see half of the Gospel sometimes. If you take a look at Jesus' life, He wasn't known for what He didn't do. He was mainly known for what He did do. The Bible doesn't say, "And then Jesus went to his house while wearing modest clothing, and he enjoyed a G-rated movie while all of his friends were out at bars drinking and smoking." No. Jesus was out getting to know the lost on a personal level. He cared about the poor and the needy and served them. He advanced the Gospel. He was missional. Those other standards were important, but they weren't the only thing that Jesus was known for. Our youth pastor, Cory gave the analogy of the differences between a dormant volcano and an active volcano and used them as a parallel to the Christian life. Those who have merely prayed a prayer to accept Christ, but aren't active in their faith have the potential to have a faith that is beautiful, ferocious, and amazing like the Christian whose faith looks like an active volcano.

On Saturday, we took our groups to serve at the Victory Mission. My group helped sort clothing. There were a ton of our kids inside of this huge warehouse full of boxes with trashbags of clothing and other miscellaneous items. Our job was to open the bags and put the clothing into big boxes and the other items into different piles. It was awesome to see all of these middle school and high school students serving and having fun at the same time! Seriously, these kids are a hilarious and solid group. I had a couple of my 7th grade girls with me the whole time and they worked so hard. Apparently what our students accomplished in an hour and a half would have taken the Victory Mission workers almost two months! What a blessing it is to be a blessing.

After this, we took our church vans back to Second and geared up for our big group activity: Humans vs. Zombies. This was basically a giant game of tag throughout the whole church. Our groups were our teams, and each team was given a different kind of bandana to be worn as an arm band. We were also given a book of missions to complete and a backpack full of weapons such as finger rockets and nerf guns. (Two words: Hunger Games.) Four leaders were designated zombies at the beginning. If a student got tagged, they went down to the basement and exchanged their ID cards and moved their bandanas to their heads, because they were now zombies as well. It was hilarious to see our adult leaders and kids limping around like zombies. Such a fun time.

Later on that night, we got word that a family whose kids went to one of the public schools in the area had just died in a plane crash. Several of our students knew them personally, and it was extremely rough on them. My 7th grade girls had a hard time seeing the older girls all torn up about it, and a few of them actually knew the girl who had passed away. That night, our lesson was on hope, which wasn't an accident. God knew that that would be just what was needed, and Cory was able to speak truth to our students who were hurting and upset. It was a time for crying and comforting and support from fellow believers. It was amazing to see how our students grew closer together through this tragic accident. (You make all things work together for our good.)

It seems that in moments like these, when we are so in tune to God, He is able to use little things to speak to us. We had an incredible night of singing worship music to the Lord, and one thing that stuck out to me was this: there was a group of guys who was clapping loudly throughout an entire song, even at the end when things were getting softer. It was during the line "Christ has died and Christ is risen, and Christ will come again" that something really hit me. This should be our anthem. Just like these young men were continually clapping throughout that line, so should we continually be about the fact that Christ has died, risen, and is coming again. It's what we live for. It is why we are alive, and what keeps us going.

And so, I am thankful that I got to be a part of something awesome that included lots of glowsticks and bandanas, a little One Direction and Justin Beiber, a few zombies, and a lot of spiritual growth.