Marshmallow Baseball

Tomorrow at our youth gathering, I'm introducing one of my favorite games: MARSHMALLOW BASEBALL. It is a game that was thought up from the bowels of youthwork at The Grove. It involves hitting marshmallows with a baseball bat, while others retrieve the mallows and throw them at the person who hit it. There's also the element of eating the marshmallow after it's been hit and scooted across the dirty floor and through some dirtier teenage hands.

I'm a little nervous introducing this game to my new youth group. It's kind of like saying "I love you" for the first time to your girlfriend. Will they accept it? Reject it? This game is such a deep part of who I am as a man...as a follower of Christ...as a human being...and as a barista. I guess I just have to put myself out there and hopefully they'll return the love.

The youth ministry has been good so far...challenging in some ways, and exciting in others. We currently have about 500 people in our church, and about 10-15 youth (6th-12th grade) that show up for the youth gathering. I've decided to take us all through the book of John these first few months. We're looking at WHO Jesus is, what He SAID, what He DID, WHY He did it, and asking HOW should we respond to all of it.

We had our first leaders meeting at our house last Sunday. There are about 10 great adults who are committed to these young people (10 adults and about 20 youth...pretty cool ratio, eh?). Trevor, the youth director before me, did a good job of recruiting some great people to work with these youth...I'm thankful for these people. Today, one of my leaders, Eddie, took some of the youth to a place called "Sky High". It is a huge room of trampolines. I couldn't make it with them, but it's so cool that he initiated this event.

Think of us tomorrow around 11am as we smack white puffs of sugar around a dirty gymnasium floor...