Happy Tuesday!

This past Sunday we ate some lasagna, pranked a pastor, and spent some time reflecting on how we can worship with our lives!

Last Friday was the Pastor’s breakfast at West Side and I happened to sit with a group of students who were especially interested in finding a creative way to say “thank you” to pastor Eric for the candy that he brought. After floating several ideas from garden gnomes to lawn flamingos Dylan Buys asked, “What's the largest bag of balloons you can buy on amazon?”

Turns out you can get 1200 balloons for just under $50.

Being the responsible youth leader that I am, I did NOT purchase 1200 balloons. When Dylan arrived to youth group and discovered this betrayal, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask Julie Amshey if kids min had “a few” balloons that we might be able to put in Eric’s office. As luck would have it, our supply closet had well over 1200 balloons, AND a powered balloon inflator.

I could describe the chaos that ensued, but pictures are always better.

After transporting an entire bed sheet full of balloons to Eric’s office, we settled down for some prayer, and jumped into Colossians 3 to talk about worshiping with our lives! Sometimes it’s easy to forget that worship is more than just singing, but the Bible tells us that showing compassion, being kind, humble, gentle and patient are all ways that we can worship God.

We spent some time reflecting on what we are passionate about (or “obsessed” with) to see if we might accidentally be worshiping something other than God. The objects of our worship are things that we tend to make sacrifices for, and the only worthy object is God.

We broke into our small groups for debrief time and did our best to think of practical ways that we can worship God intentionally, even if that looks like blowing up balloons to prank our pastor :)

Next week we will be jumping into a new series on the Holy Spirit! We’ll focus on who He is and how He guides us!

Have a wonderful week

Good morning parents!

Last night the middle schoolers ate some hot dogs, Eli led us in worship, we talked about the importance of sharing our stories even when it's scary, and ended the night with some dodgeball!

After we all had some food and gathered up, Eli challenged us to worship authentically. Sometimes worship can feel like we are just reading words from a screen, but it is so much more than that. After singing “yes and amen,” Eli led us in some prayer and we hopped back into our series on spiritual habits.

This week we looked at Mark 16 and reflected on what it must have been like to be one of the 11 when Jesus appeared to them. Before he went to them personally, he appeared to Mary and she went to tell the disciples about it, but they didn’t believe her. Jesus appeared in a different form to two of the disciples, and when they went back to tell the others they didn’t believe them either!

Finally, Jesus appears to all of them while they are eating and challenges them to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. We talked about how that challenge still applies to us today, and how sharing our story is a powerful way to share Jesus with others.

We broke into our debrief groups, and finished off the evening by playing some dodgeball!

Next week we will round our series out by talking about worshipping with our lives!

Have a great week!