A Pick-Me-Up Monday

I love Jr. High students. Yes, they sometimes don't wear deodorant and they forget to shower regularly. Yes, they can be very awkward. And yes, their small attention span makes it hard to keep their attention longer than 30 seconds.....but....I love them! I don't know why God has wired me this way, but I'm glad He did.

We had our kickoff for fall programming yesterday, and it was awesome! There was a lot of energy and a lot of students! We had a biggest crowd ever, the students were excited to be back at LIFT. Cody (the youth pastor) and I decided to start the year of with a little bit of vision casting for our students and what we want our student ministry to be about this year. As we thought about what to name our series, the term WEIRD came up. It just seemed perfect for our students and what we want to accomplish. We want to create an environment where students can come and feel like they belong. The way we presented it to our students is that the normal thing to do in life is to surround yourself with people just like you and can offer you something in return. The weird thing is to let everyone in your circle of friends no matter who they are!

Yesterday after I was able to talk to our students about this idea of us being "Weird," we had them break out into groups and come up with ideas to make new students feel welcome in LIFT. We gave each group a poster board and a sharpie and told them to write down their ideas....and here is a list of things we got from them....I guess this is what we get for giving middle schoolers a sharpie and blank poster board. Remember, these ideas were supposed to make students feel welcome at LIFT.

- Say “Ello’ Governor” and run over them with a British taxi.

- Throw them out a window.

- Creepily stare until they talk.

- Beat the living snot out of them

- Taco

- Hold their hand

Now if these were the only ideas we got from our students, I would say we would be in big trouble (and so would anybody who decided to visit LIFT), but these were the minority. I just had to write them down because they made me laugh! I have another list about 5 times bigger with great ideas about making first time visitors feel like they belong.

Its a Monday, and so that means you just try to get through it the best you can because they drag on forever! I hope this helps a little and gives you a quick laugh like it gave me. Love you guys!