Last night at Catalyst was a great night! It was unfortunate that I had to leave so early (please see previous post) and I hardly got to talk to any of my friends. I was able to chat and connect with a couple of Jr. Highers that I don’t usually have the opportunity to talk to. I think that because it was a small group night it really opened up the verbal highway and helped me and the “kids” feel like we were on the same level.
Let me start at the beginning. When I got to church last night I was feeling more frazzled than usual. I had a basic outline of what I was going to talk about from the Company 320 (Catalyst leadership) meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was mostly about Earth Beat. I wanted to use that as an avenue to talk about giving. Since the main theme of our (Peter’s and my) small group, Complete, is about equipping the Jr. Highers to become complete adults and complete Christians. I think that I should note that this was my first time (with this small group) leading the discussion. I’ve lead small groups before, but usually with Complete I co-lead. Anyways, I had printed out 6 verses about not just giving money, but giving of your gifts, and the right attitudes to go along with giving. Mainly since most Jr. Highers don’t have jobs and don’t have a lot of access to cash. But, of course I had forgotten to bring the extra print out with the verses on it too church. I had to have the always helpful Hosh make a copy of mine, then I had to spend a few minutes remembering where I wanted the verses to go in the outline and cutting them up and numbering them. I completely missed pre-service prayer, which is where I gather my focus and energy (I hope that doesn’t sound too weird) for the evening. So, going into worship I was still feeling frazzled and focused on myself rather than God and the ones that He wanted me to reach out to that night.
As usual though, through the AMAZING Catalyst band, by the end of the second song, I felt like I could sense God’s presence, but I was still struggling to put away my thoughts about my stressful living arrangement (helping Peter’s dad get back on his feet by sharing our small apartment) and my crappy day at work. Then something AWESOME happened. Between the 2nd & 3rd songs, Peter got up on stage and told everyone why he worships God and encouraged others to fully enter into worship. He is Rad-Sauce! I had to make sure that the others that were standing around me knew that that one’s mine! I was so proud of him! Back to worship…The band struck up with, How He Loves Us. Best. Song. Ever. After the 1st verse, I was able to put away all of my “me” thoughts. Close to the song’s ending, Pastor Ben got up and prayed that God would come into our lives and distract us and pull us away from the things of this world, not only things of this world, but distract us from ourselves and our own selfishness. I was earnestly praying for that to become my own prayer when I felt God tell me that I would be doing a really selfless thing right now (by opening up our home to help some one in need) if I wasn’t being so selfish. Talk about my heart turning “violently inside of my chest”! He opened up my eyes about how if I would stop letting myself feel so uncomfortable and stop complaining about every annoying thing that Peter’s dad does I might allow me to step out of myself and be closer to God.
Then it was time for small groups. Until recently (last Wednesday night) there have been 2 separate Jr. High groups, but they’ve now been combined into 1 group. We had about 20 to 25 “kids” in our group last night. The icebreaker I opened up with was, name, grade, how long they’d been going to Catalyst, and their favorite thing about Catalyst. There was the one kid who said that there wasn’t anything he liked about Catalyst, but aside from him, I was surprised at how many of them said that small group was their favorite part of Catalyst! I didn’t even say my favorite part of Catalyst was small group AND I LEAD IT! Ha!
I think that most of them interacted well in the discussion, and once I felt like I had gotten off subject, but it was totally God because it brought a few more of them into the discussion. THEN! To close up the group, I had every single person say 1 prayer request. Once we got around the entire circle, I announced that everyone was going to say a prayer for the person on their right. Of course that was met with some groans, but I told them that all they had to do was say at least one sentence and they didn’t have to be nervous because they can keep in mind that they are just talking to God and He hears every word that comes out of their mouths anyway. I also told them that before we started they needed to take it seriously and to be respectful of God and respectful of the person praying, which meant no chit-chatting while we were praying. I cannot tell you how stoked I was by the time we finished! There was only one girl who had a fit of giggles while praying, but aside from that it went really great! I was happy with the entire night! God is SOOOO good!
I apologize for how long this post is. I always start off thinking that I have nothing to say and by the end I feel like I’ve written a novel!