It Worked!!

Ok, I know what you're thinking. What a slacker, this guy promised a follow up post and it's been over 2 weeks! I know, and I apologize. But you guys know how ministry is. It's busy and many times things come up that we have no control over. My encouragement to you is to keep on trucking and make ministering to your people the main goal of your ministry. Even when you need to blog.....

I'm sure by this point the suspense is killing you so bad that you can't take it. You want to know how our worship kick off went. It went great! And 2 weeks in to doing worship with our students it's only getting better. Here's how we introduced it:

I knew I had to start off in a neutral location. I had to create a new environment for my students to step in to. Trying to introduce worship without changing anything at all could have been a bust. Our current youth space is a large room with plenty of space for us. But when I first came to serve here, I created a monster. Because the students had never had anyone take time to help them take identity of their room, I came in and tried to spruce it up a bit without much thought. What we ended up with was a large room with a ton of activity space and small bible study area crammed in a corner. We had game tables and a futon, and a large open area for games. This atmosphere was just not conducive to worship. So, the first week we took it outside. We created an intimate environment with candles and tiki torches. We led them to this area blindfolded and then revealed to them the new way we were doing Wednesday nights. We sang just 2 familiar songs and I delivered a lesson reminding them of why we gather together each week. To experience God and grow closer to God. I also reminded them that this wasn't the end of fellowship and fun. I wanted them to realize that we need a balance of true worship and authentic fellowship. Numbers were low that week and I was tempted to be discouraged, but I knew God had brought the students there that he wanted there.

The following week I knew I had to change our youth space in order for this to continue down a helpful path. Things have changed and our environment needed to be inviting and also helpful for our new direction with worship. So I simply rearranged our room. Instead of lots of space for games and a little for bible study it became a large worship area with a little room for activity. It completely changed the attitudes of our students as they walked in the door. We lowered lights and lit candles again. We took distracting things out of the room such as game tables and food. And more students showed up and they sang even louder. It really went great! This did not cost much money. We didn't have to paint or build a stage. We simply changed the focus of our room and it made all of the difference.

I'm thankful that God laid all of this out before me. I had no idea how to introduce worship and God made it work. I give Him all of the credit for this and most importantly I am glad tat our students are finally experiencing what it means to worship Jesus for what he has done for them. Week in and week out we will worship Christ because He deserves every bit of it!