Building a Roller Coaster

Have you ever designed and built a roller coaster? Last Thursday (February 5), I had the opportunity to work with a group of middle school students on exactly that project. Let me explain.

As you know, if you have been following this blog at all, one of the things I do on the Thursdays that I spend in Sebewaing is to spend some time volunteering at the high school with the Alternative Education Program. Because of a snow day and my two weeks of vacation in Florida, it has been a while since I visited these students and I had kind of fallen out of the loop.

As I was checking in on Thursday I found out that a couple of the guys were helping with a group of middle school students, and they invited me along. Our job was to help the teacher in charge to assist the students through a team-building exercise. The goal of this exercise was to help the students learn to work together to name a fictional theme park. From there they were to name and design the roller coaster for that park. The coaster had to have at least two hills and a loop.

This was not the first time I had been through this process. A number of years ago I worked with, and then judged, a group of high school freshmen on this same project. The neat thing about helping this time was that I got to go on line with the group to a web site designed to walk us through the project. The interesting thing about this project for me was watching the students interact. (This is, of course, the real purpose of the exercise.) There was one student who insisted on his way and thought everyone else's ideas were stupid. There was another student who was trying to keep peace and keep the project moving forward. Then there was a third student who seemed to have some great ideas but was too quiet to share them.

I couldn't help but think about the parallels between this exercise and what we see in the church. You see part of my vacation was spent at a Church Planters' Retreat, and because that was on my mind it caused me to be tuned in to the similarities.

The first student seemed to be a picture of what God was telling the group of church planters during the first portion of our retreat. During an extended time of prayer, the idea of humbling ourselves and listening for God really took center stage. Always as we work for the Lord we need to put self interest behind. As Paul said we need to "die to self daily."

The second student was no doubt the peacemaker and the one trying to accommodate all the ideas and plans. One of the things that I learned during the retreat is that sometimes we need to be careful in this role because if we begin to elevate people over the purpose, they will be doing the will of the people and not the will of God. The two can be very different.

The third young man really was the one that intrigued me. One of the things that occurred to me was how many times we might struggle for answers because we don't include everyone. God often uses people who would not seem to have the right stuff to accomplish his purposes, and maybe we need to make sure to listen to everyone.

Praises:
Two weeks of vacation that have really energized me again
To be back doing ministry
The fruit I am seeing from my Life Transformation Groups

Concerns:
Direction as the LEAD Team and I decide if we are going where God wants us to go in this disciple making process
New ways to reach others and begin getting them plugged in
For the health of some: John and Rhonda, they were sick and we did not meet last week.