Whew, what a weekend! I almost had to cancel my youth group’s 30-Hour Famine event this weekend due to Dana and I both feeling pretty sick. We’ve had this headache/congestion/tiredness thing going on for the past couple days, but we continued with it as scheduled because I really wanted the kids to go through this experience right before Thanksgiving. Plus, the students were all excited and looking forward to it.

Thank God the event itself went very smoothly despite my sickness. Here are the highlights:

• We spent Friday night in a rough part of downtown Dallas feeding the homeless, which is always an eye-opening experience for the first-timers. Three of the jr. high girls talked extensively with one homeless man who ended up receiving Christ with them!
• Friday night back at the church we had a time of worship, writing letters to God, singing, talking about our downtown experience, and prayer.
• Saturday morning we helped a local organization sort used clothes, toys, and other jobs in preparing to sell the items. All proceeds went to benefit needy people in our community.
• All Saturday afternoon was spent playing the game Tribe that comes included with the 30-Hour Famine leaders kit. I hadn’t played it other years because it looked too complicated, but I gave it a try this year and had a blast! We learned a lot about the struggles in Uganda along with scriptural implications for our own lives.

If you haven’t tried the 30-Hour Famine event with your own youth group, I highly recommend it. It’s always a noggin’-scratcher why students look forward and invite their friends to an event where they can’t eat anything for 30-hours. It seems so contradictory to all the other events we do throughout the year. I think it’s because students feel that they’re finally given a chance to make a difference in the world, the potential to literally save the lives of an entire African village. For more information about it, check out www.30hourfamine.org.

If you’ve done the famine before, what’s been your experience with it?

Breaking the fast with veggies, fruit, bread, Jello and tortilla soup!

[tags]30-Hour Famine, World Vision, youth group[/tags]

Last week I came home and found some material from [tag]Watchtower[/tag] stuffed in my apartment door. It’s interesting the see their approach to evangelism and how they communicate their religion to “unbelievers.” One paragraph in particular sticks out to me:

False religion tolerates immoral sex: In Western lands, church groups ordain gay and lesbian members of the clergy and urge governments to recognize same-sex marriages. Even churches that condemn immorality have tolerated religious leaders who have sexually abused children. What, through does the Bible teach? It plainly states: “Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men… will inherit God’s kingdom.” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10) Do you know of religions that condone immoral sex?

While many evangelicals are shying away from this issue due to social pressure and “tolerance,” I find it ironic that [tag]Jehovah’s Witnesses[/tag] are making it loud and clear in their outreach material, of all places. I’m not really sure what to think about this.

Every once in a while I stumble across www.exchristian.net and read through some of the testimonies people submit about why they left the Christian faith. It always breaks my heart, but I continue to read the stories because they teach me so much about how to respond to people like this in my own life.

This lady tells a pretty moving story about why she became an Atheist. Throughout the account of her life I see bad theology coupled with un-addressed and unanswered pain. I learned a couple things:

• Build a relationship before blindly forcing theology on someone. Learn about what’s going on in their life and intentionally connect Truth to it after earning their respect.
• Actions really do speak louder than words. How we live our life communicates a lot about our theology.
• Avoid trite “Christian-ese.” Maybe it’s a boost for our ego to use big “meaningful” words, but it’s not worth alienating people.
• Listen more than talk.
• Be willing to ask the hard questions with people searching for answers. Questioning is a search for discovery, not an offensive threat.
• Perhaps the most important question someone can ask is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Don’t blow it off or give unsatisfactory Sunday school answers.

Having answers and knowing theology are so vitally important in youth and children’s ministry today, but it can have a negative affect if approached inconsiderately of the audience that hears it. Teaching theology is necessary, but maybe publicly living our theology for all to see is even more necessary today. Maybe theology should be caught more than it is taught.

Off the top of my head, I dream three things for youth ministry:

1. Students who are growing in depth and insight of God’s Word.
2. Students who genuinely worship God both publicly and privately.
3. Students who have a burden for lost souls around them.

I look at that list and think, “Hmmm, do I even measure up to that list personally?”