Recently, I ran into my junior high youth pastor – I haven’t seen him since I was in junior high! He left our church to be a senior pastor just as we were leaving his youth group. It was awesome to see him and catch up.
Among the things he said that totally blessed me was
this: You’ll never know how influential
your junior high group was. So many of
you had a call on your life. You guys
were amazing – you would sit on the floor for 45 minutes and worship every
Wednesday night…
It reminded me of another time I was talking with a
children’s worship leader at a conference, and I was reminded of my
grade-school days. God gave me a picture
of the amazing things going on in the sanctuary of our church – things were
exploding (not literally, of course) – and downstairs, the basement was packed
with kids lifting the floorboards above with praise and worship. The work upstairs was built, to some extent,
on what was going on downstairs. My mind
was blown.
These days, at our church, the youth group is on fire
(again, not literally, although they are called the FIRE Squad), and our youth
pack the front rows – THE FRONT ROWS – and throw all they’ve got into worship
every Sunday morning.
I’ve heard from the youth leaders that some of these kids
come from rough homes; they bring broken hearts and require a lot of love and
care. It’s our job, as a church family, to
embrace them and love them and release them to do God’s work.
New wineskins? Check.
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