Last weekend was worth its weight in gold. Now you won't hear that falling from the lips of many student ministers, especially after sleeping with a seventh graders knee in your back all weekend, but I am here to tell you, we had a great time at Ridgecrest!
First the funny stuff.
What I failed to mention in my first blog was the Youth Worker Dance Off on Friday night. There were about 1600 students representing 64 churches in upper East Tennessee at this shindig. At the opening session an adult representative from each church was asked to come to the stage. We had no idea why and I almost sent one of my adult volunteers, but at the last minute I went. When we got down to the stage we found out that we were going to have a dance off. If you know me, you know that I wasn't too scared.
The music started and we all got our groove on. They quickly cut the numbers to 10 and I made it. Then we went to the individual dances. I was to be the last to go and I was quite confident as I sized up the competition. Then it happened. The guy right before me was a volunteer from a church where a friend of mine is the student minister. When it came his turn he started dancing like an extra from the movie, "Breakin'." I mean this guy was good. He busted out the whole can. I knew I had my work cut out for me. They said go and I started by bouncing my pectoral muscles to the beat of the music. I was trying for an edge. I went through my repertoire and then commenced a few dances that I would probably not allow a student to do, but I was desperate. When it was all said and done, I was clearly in second place, but I had well represented my church and fat guys everywhere.
Now to the more serious stuff .
As I had indicated in my previous post, the theme of the conference was "influence." It dovetailed well with some of the things regarding disciplemaking that I had already been teaching since I came to Indian Springs. In essence, we as Christ-followers are to try to influence our unbelieving friends for Christ while erecting safeguards within our relationships with unbelievers so that we would not be influenced toward "the dark side." Last night, I reiterated the topic in our lesson so that I could help get those who did not go to the conference on the same page with the rest of us.
Now one of the drawbacks to ministry is the fact that sometimes it can take time before you can begin to see the fruit of what you have sown into your disciples. It can take years in some cases. For whatever reason, however, God has seen fit to show me some immediate affirmation. Tonight as I sat down to dinner I got a text message from one of my students. He had just mustered up the gumption to talk to his friend about Jesus, which led to a conversation, which led to that friend praying to receive the gift of salvation from our Lord Jesus Christ. HALLELUJAH! My dinner was even better.
To see a student beginning to live the faith he or she talks about-- really putting it into practice-- well, to steal from an old beer commercial, it doesn't get any better than that!
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