Last Night at Contagious

Last night we had a great group of students hanging out during Hang Time.  I went up and chilled on the balcony with some of the students, including a guest who is checking things out.  

The Contagious Band kicked off Contagious with the song, We Shine.  It was rockin and a great song.  It's interesting to watch and see if the students are going to engage in worshipping in music or not.  We are new to having a band so some of the students are just getting the hang of it.

I taught the second lesson in the Thirsty series.  We looked at David, Moses, the nation of Israel, and Jesus.  One thing they all had in common was the fact that they had some wilderness experiences in their lives.  It seems that God often uses the wilderness times to teach us to thirst after Him and to strengthen us.  When in the wilderness we need to:

Stop - Students lives are busier than ever

Go to the Bible - we learned this from Jesus' wilderness experience

Pay Attention - Like Moses, God is trying to get a point across and prepare us for His use.

This coming Sunday I have reworked my lesson notes into a small group experience and the students will do the entire lesson in their PODs.

I hear stories from other youth pastors who serve in churches who don't get it.  They want youth group to be all about fun and games.  I love the fact that at Contagious we are able to accomplish both.  We have fun and we learn from God's Word, sometimes we do both at the same time ;).

I like doing lessons in a series because an important topic or subject can be picked apart and unpacked over several weeks.  The bummer is when a student misses a week they miss out on a key puzzle piece to the overarching theme and lesson.