Fall Practicum Week 4
Week 4 (9/28/08)Record of Ministry Activities
Plan and Coordinate Youth Events on Tuesday (1 ½ Hours)
Lock-In (7:00pm – 7:00am = 12 hours)
Total Ministry Hours: 13 1/2 Hours
Personal Reflection on Ministry
I've never quite been able to understand the point or torture known as lock-ins. So let me get this straight. The idea is to take 50 high school students, put them in a large building with tons and tons of hallways and crevices to hide in, and then give them gallons of energy drinks, and hope that nothing gets broken? This seems backwards to me. And no matter how backwards it seems, we do it about twice a semester. FUMCY decides that the lock-ins are one of our greatest outreach tools, and so we do them quite often. The problem with this philosophy is the fact that we end up paying so much to fix all the things that we break during lock ins. I don't even want to think about what goes on that I cannot see or don't know about. But it is a funny thing that when we hold a lock-in, we double the size of our youth group. We usually run about 25/week. But lock-ins bring in about 50-70. Not all of them go to church or even know what Christianity includes. But we are just happy that they are in a church building. Whether they see a group of our regular students going through the prayer stations or maybe they run into one of us sponsors, they will feel Christ's love. That is our intention and hope for lock-ins, no matter how dangerous or expensive they are. So the lock-in was tiring, but fantastic in terms of relationship building.
Spiritual Reflection
On a spiritual note, things kind of dipped low on the graph yesterday. You would think that after seeing so many students at our youth group all being inside the church would be a spiritually charging experience. But for some reason, I found myself frustrated. I would see some of the students not really care or respect some of the spiritual stations that we had set up. There was no respect for the building as a whole, which was extremely disheartening. The church is such a beautiful church and one that has lasted for many years. In fact, the actual church itself just celebrated its 175th anniversary. While the building may not be that old, there is certainly a history and respect there that I can feel. It is a shame to see people not respect that same feeling. And spiritually, I wonder how much these kids are desiring a change or anything like that. Sure, they are in a church, but I wonder how many of those kids respect that fact. Based on my observations, not many actually respect the religion. Most of them are there for the fun and not the relationship. It makes me wonder how we can change that mindset. A mindset of “I don't care” to a mind set of “maybe I do care”.
posted by Tyler Murphy @ 9:40 PM
1 Comments:
Tyler, aren't lock ins the worst. I totally agree with you it does not make sense. I feel that if a lock in is not fully supervised we end up doing so so so much work and at the end we are twice as dead as the kids. I have found that the best way to keep them all under control and not have to search for them is to keep them busy. Continually have games and things to keep them all in the same room make them want to stay close. That is a very hard thing to do being that they are in high school and they just want to run around the church with their friends and not hang out with the youth leaders. but it is hard when they do not respect the building and that is just something they have to be taught, but keep it up my hat is off to you for doing a lock in we have one coming up in the near future any advise to help me survive?
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