Generosity

This past Friday the youth group that my husband and I lead in a little dinky rural town of 900 people, we had a fundraiser. It was a mystery dinner. Let me explain. We had a chef prepare some amazing food, but we made the menu names very mysterious and a tad bit risky. Diners at our restaurant had to order every detail of thier menu from cutlery to dessert. We had elders in our church eating spaghetti with a skewer and a soup ladel. It was absolutely hilarious.

We did this as a fundraiser to go to an up-comming youth conference in our area. Our goal was to raise $1000.00, which we thought was a bit high, but we really wanted to make a dent in our expenses. To make a long story short…we quadrupled our goal!

We worked really hard to prepare for this dinner, and the youth did a tremenous job of serving, hosting, cooking and cleaning up afterward. But the one thing that stuck out in my head when the night was over was “WOW, People are generous!”

Some of the people who came have never stepped foot in a church before…but they gave. Some people were born in that church….and they gave. Some people just sold a multi million dollar company…they gave. And some people smiled as they gave the last small change in thier wallet.

Why?

Was it the cause that people got excited about supporting? Was it the kids? Did people need a quick tax write-off? Were some people tired of being asked to help, so they decided to do thier good deed by donating?

I refuse to believe that anyone there gave out of guilt, pity or through gritted teeth. Each person left with a smile 4x the size they walked in with and no one was clutching their wallet as they ducked out the doors. The were truely cheerful givers.

That impresses me.

So, I guess my challange now is “how do we pay it forward?”

Any idea’s?

Passion

This past weekend I returned from YC ( a huge youth conference) with our youth group. I had been to YC many times before, but this was my first time going as a leader…with actual responsibilities. Scary! 

The weekend was amazing! We had one student in our group make a first time commitment to God and several others make renewed comitments. Very cool stuff. I had never really been involved in someone’s spiritual growth like that, so it made me all jittery inside.

One of the most interesting things that I observed was how our christian youth acted when they were surrounded with other christian teens. There were three types of kids; a) The Absorbers b) The To-Cool and c) The Wishers.

I will start with the “To-cool” group because they are the ones that drive me absolutley crazy. These are the kids that walk around like they are better than everyone. The sing quietly in thier little row and refuse to have any amount of fun in fear that they will look like those… (gulp)…christian kids. And how embarassing that would be since they spend all their time trying not to look like them. But wait…are they not supposed to be christian teens themselves? Uh ohhh.

Then there are the “Absorbers”. These guys are the sponges of all sponges. They sit there and soak in as much of the “Christian” atmosphere as possible in hopes that it will fuel them until the next dousing of good clean peer influence. It is almost comical to watch these ones because they have this permanent grin plastered across their faces the entire weekend. The coolest part is that you know that God is blessing their socks off, and they are loving it! You often hear these people say ” THIS IS SOOOOO COOL” and make life changing decisions based on the fact that there are other kids out there who go through the same daily struggles.

The “Wishers” are another interesting breed. These are the ones who enjoy themselves, but get bogged down in the “perfect world” idea of things. Life, for this group, would be so much easier if they had a group of christian kids surrounding them all the time. I hear these guys saying stuff like ” It would be so much easier if I had christian friends like this in my school, town , church, etc…” all the time.

Its interesting that I know all three of these types of people so well, but its because I was at each of those points at different times in my life.  Being a Christian in high school is tough stuff. I think that adults somehow forget the struggles that are involved. Somehow we forget that during those 4 years the world revolves around 3 basic things; Friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, and either clothes or food (depending on if you are a girl or guy). If any of those get jeopordized, the world will crash down on these kids (definite sarcasm). 

So how do we help these kids? 

We keep taking them to things like YC and we pray that they would meet God in a place where passion for Him becomes their greatest desire. When they get to that point he will take care of the “coolness” factor and the envy and even the nervousness. Im excited to see this. Im confident it will happen. God is Big!