Last night I joined 48 other adults in helping launch Colwood Students #UN1TED.
Here's how things went down.
First, Little Man led me in some very important pre-game stretches (click pix):
Check-in for all students opened at 6:15pm:
Cafe and Gym were open while the Auditorium remained closed:
At 6:38pm, I tweeted that we had run out of registration cards for students.
We had made up 100 registration cards for the night.
At 6:55pm, the Countdown began and teens flooded the Worship Ctr:
The Dan Band led an army of area students into the throne room of God.
Breathtaking for all the adult volunteers present to witness and experience.
We had two surprises up our sleeve for the teens:
1) The teens did a live on-stage interview of one of our Youth Pastor candidates.
2) Everybody got a UN1TED hoodie (I felt like Oprah!):
I spoke on Matthew 16 and how Jesus is the Author of Life.
Simple Jesus Math:
Everything - Jesus = NOTHING
Jesus + Nothing = EVERYTHING
At least ten teenagers prayed to receive Christ!
Finally we made a beautiful mess by breaking the crowd up into smaller Huddle Groups:
Purpose of Huddle Groups?
For every High Tech (Dan Band, free hoodies),
there HAS to be High Touch (Huddle Groups, relationships with consistent, big-hearted adults):
Bottom-line:
This whole thing was one big experiment (combining jr high with sr high, moving into the Main Auditorium, going gang-busters in building anticipation, etc).
I had prayed for 60 teens to show up on Night 1.
And God more than doubled that prayer with 122 students.
Which increased my faith.
Although, on the lighter side, I'm a bit worried.
I had already announced that if we hit 200 students by the end of February, my hair would be shaved. And so I'm telling teenagers everywhere not to invite anyone to UN1TED next Monday. :)
Also very thankful for all the volunteers. One of our Community Groups has pledged to serve every Monday night in January in the Cafe and Check-in. Other volunteers jumped in to watch/entertain children (mine included), freeing up other adults to minister to teenagers. Amazing.
The tweets from students post-UN1TED sum it all up:
"Church was sooo fantastic tonight! especially the dan band! :D #united" - high school senior
"Over 100 students here, monday nights, united. This is crazy. This is a movement of God" - high school junior
And we get to do it all over again next Monday night!
