Appreciation Dinner
Since coming to the Czech Republic four and half years ago, many things have changed. The people who regularly attend the youth group have changed. The people who help with the youth have changed. Even the formats of our meetings and lessons have changed. But one thing hasn't changed. Each year we have had a Progressive Dinner. I brought the idea from my experience back home and shared it with the people here in Poruba and since then it has been one of the highlights of the year for the youth. Although most of the families from the church here live in apartments, which don't have the space of the 3-4 bedroom houses in the suburbs back home, people have still been willing to open their homes year after year and serve these young people. It has been a wonderful blessing to me and youth each and every year. In the past we have always thanked our hosts that evening and acknowledged them publicly the Sunday afterward, but this year Táňa had an interesting idea. She asked if we could have two Progressive Dinners this year, one for the youth (as we regularly have) and one for the families that have served us over the years. The other leaders and I thought that this was a wonderful idea and when we shared it with the other youth, they thought it was a great idea and were ready to jump on board and help in anyway to make it happen. The name that we came up with for the event was the Appreciation Dinner (I was really tempted to call it the Regressive Dinner). We individually invited each family from the church that had helped with any Progressive Dinner in the past four years to join us at the church on a Friday night for several hours. Táňa led the organizing of the event and the responsibilities that needed to be handled for the event. Each youth took on some responsibility from preparing games to help people connect, to preparing appetizers, a main dish, a dessert, or a size dish. The youth handled everything that needed to be prepared or cleaned up so that all of the adults and families that had served them in the past could just relax and enjoy a nice evening. It was great for me to see the youth serving in this way and really engaging the adults instead of doing what we so often seeing young people today doing, reluctantly responding to questions from adults or just ignoring them all together. I feel as though each family left that evening feeling blessed and I think that the youth were very happy to have served them in this way. I would expect to see this happen in the future. Here are a few pictures from the evening. Please pray that God would continue to bless these relationships between the youth and these families and that more and more often the youth would be led to love and serve others through the Holy Spirit, without the prompting of parents or youth leaders.
Ministry Feedback
Several months ago, while praying and thinking about the youth group, I had an idea. I thought that even though we have a smaller group, it is rare that I or any of the other leaders have the chance to speak one on one with any of the teens for an extended period of time. Because of the format of our youth meetings now we are almost always all together and it doesn't really allow for any meaningful one on one conversations during the regular youth meetings. So I made an announcement to the group one Friday night that I wanted to take each person from the group out to lunch or coffee and get a chance to talk one on one. Everyone there said that they liked the idea.
Initially, because of a very busy schedule around the holidays I was unable to do this, but in the last few weeks I have been able to meet with several of the youth. This has included people who are very involved, people we see every week and also people who we don't see very often for one reason or another. It has been my aim with these meetings to show each of them that they are cared for as individuals and that as leaders we want to make their experience when the come to Youth Revolution as good and helpful as it possibly be. I also wanted to have the chance to speak with each person about where they are spiritually, without them having to worry about what their friends might think. I also wanted to get some prayer requests from each of them so that we as leaders can pray for them more effectively. Each meeting that I have had so far has been great for my relationship with each of them. They have given me a better understand of what's going on in their lives, things that they think work well during the youth meetings and revealed needs that we need to consider moving forward to make the youth ministry here better. And I have also gotten a much better understanding of where each people is when it comes to their relationship with God. Please pray for me as I continue to meet with these young people. Pray that God would continue to be glorified in these meetings, that each person would feel loved, heard and cared for, and that these meetings would help me and the other leaders understand how best to teach, pray for, support and disciple each young person that God has entrusted us with.
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