Hanging Out with God (Wednesday Recap: 9.5)
Set List: Your Love is Everything, Enough, Shadows
Scripture Used: Philippians 2.12; 1 Corinthians 13.11; Psalm 51.9; 2 Corinthians 1.4; Psalm 119.104-105; John 14.26
Additional Resources Used: Eric Matthews Stupids (a YouTube video compiling some of Eric Matthews most bone-headed of moments from the series Boy Meets World. This was used to show stunted intellectual growth. I used 2 minutes form the video and left the rest online. If you choose to watch it beware that the person who uploaded this video is a bit loose with their language about halfway through). Boy Meets World clip from 4×01 – You Can Go Home Again, depicting Eric’s realization of what happens because of his intellectual stunting. I clipped the video myself, so I do not have a version online, but you can see the bulk of the clip here.
Evening in a Sentence: Often we Americans forget to focus on developing Spiritual habits to help our faith grow. We need to correct this by hanging out with God.
Element of Fun: Fellowship time over dinner, Egg, Chicken, Dinosaur. Everyone starts out as an egg. You find another egg and play Rock-Scissors-Paper. The winner “grows” into a chicken who finds someone else to play against. Whoever wins “grows” into a dinosaur. The loser returns to being an egg. The next step is becoming a prince or princess. If you win you become a King or Queen and you have won the game. First place received a $10 iTunes gift card, second place received a $10 Starbucks gift card.
What Worked: Tonight we were able to see more students who we have not seen much of the summer. Our new format seemed to be a good shift for this week. Breaking the music up and placing the challenge in between the first few songs really seemed to help students engage better than in previous attempts. Students really enjoyed the Boy Meets World clips, and they seemed to help the message points stick. [LIFE Group] discussion helped the individual groups begin to gel a little bit (the Senior High guys are already planning to get together next week for wings, and the Senior High girls made plans to walk alongside each other this week through one passage of Scripture). Our leaders were excited and passionate, and really engaged with our teens. Putting the building back together went fairly quickly (at least the big portions). Many students have requested journals to aid them in their Hanging out with God time over the next month.
What Needs Work: Dinner again created some unique issues for us. One student was a bit disruptive during worship. Some of the cleanup at the end of the evening took longer than I had hoped. We were not able to get started on time. I feel that the teaching went longer than it needed to, even with some of the lesson trimmed out. There were no middle school girls here this week.
Summary: Tonight was a very good evening. The community building was solid, the teaching hit students where they are at, and many see the need to develop this spiritual habit in their own life, on their own time.
Student Numbers: 14
Leader Numbers: 8
Comparison to the same week last year:
Student Numbers: 22
Leader Numbers: 6
