Youth Group Gone Full Circle

I'm helping with my church youth group now. We had a meeting tonight at church. 4 students were there. 2 couldn't make it.

We talked about breaking out of the Christian bubble (a reference to the message last Sunday in church) and genuinely caring for those who aren't in the social club, if that is what church has become for us. This discussion wasn't entirely a "pulling teeth" discussion, but it wasn't "The View" either. Let's say if could have gone better.

After the talk, we played a little game that we made up.

You see, before the talk, we hung out for a little while and several of the kids played ping-pong with one of the other adult volunteers. While they were playing, we pulled out probably 8 old messed up ping pong paddles, which raised the question of why we had so many old, messed up ping pong paddles.

I made up some lame answer, then said "there must be some game we could play with all these paddles." One of the students immediately had the idea of some form of ping-pong-paddle combat, which got shot down pretty fast. Then I found the old rubber ball - you know, the sort of reddish squishy one that at one point was attached to the rubber band which was in turn attached to one of those cheap plywood paddles?

I sent combat paddle boy to the other side of the basement, then he and I volleyed the red ball back and forth a few times until we started our talk.

After the talk had ended, and we all had some snacks, I went back and grabbed the paddles and the ball and handed out paddles. Then we invented "Peak pong" which involved a mad scramble around the church basement trying to smack the red ball at someone else.

It turns out combat paddle boy was a ball magnet, as it seemed that no matter what direction the ball was hit, he was at the end of the line drive - except for the shot to the back of the head I accidentally landed on the quiet junior high girl who was sitting on the sidelines refusing to play.

Overall the night was good. We had fun, we invented a new game that no one was seriously injured while playing, the snacks were pretty good, and we connected with the few students that were there. Last week went much better - I planned a successful activity that related directly to our talk. These activities are a pretty big gamble with High School and Junior High Students, but this one paid off.

Either way I'm enjoying being back in ministry again. I am working with a really good group of volunteers. Our student group is small, but they are young and a great batch of students, so there is tremendous potential. As we get into the new year, I am planning some team building and planning sessions for our volunteers that should bring some nice community and cohesion to our group.

The reason this is titled "Youth Group Gone Full Circle" (I'll make this fast, I know this is a long post) is that I started out in youth ministry at this church almost 14 years ago. Now I'm back. One of my former students is now one of the adult volunteers, and I have become an old fat guy with some really solid youth ministry and leadership training, a lot of life and business experience, and perhaps become a better person to do what it seems God is calling me to do.