I had the incredible privelege of teaching Todd's discipleship class yesterday morning. Besides the fact that I was fighting sleep when I got to church, it went really well. One thing I'm discovering more and more about myself is I LOVE to teach. In an environment where kids want to listen. Sometimes my class gets pretty crazy- wait, who am I kidding? It's every week! It's been a frustrating experience because I want to encourage them and show them kindness and compassion they might not receive at home or at school. So up until this week I have kept my cool and just taught as much as I could get in, even if it was only five minutes.
This week was a little different.
I went in there and of course it was chaos- there were soda bottles flying through the air and someone was turning the light on and off, among other things. The first thing I did was clearly state that we had to keep it really orderly in there because there were probably 25+ guys in there, and most of them enjoy farting just so that everyone has to smell it, for example. So after I said that, things stayed the same, and I just knew that I had to let them have it so we could get some order and we could talk about things that would encourage/challenge them spiritually.
There are five or six kids in particular(all from my class) that are the worst of the worst and I wish I had a picture of their faces, because they were pretty surprised. Well after I said my piece about the same kids disrupting every week and how parents were going to be contacted if it didn't stop, 50-75% of the kids became perfect little angels. Of course, the bad group of kids kept at it, and I had to kick one of them out (I HATE doing that because they miss out on the lesson and I don't want them to feel rejected). It was rough going the rest of the way, but we got to have a great conversation about being a Christian and how you need to know what the Bible says about living God's way to be successful. I know that kids their age don't memorize a lot of Scripture, but no one could give me a single verse that gave a practical way to live the Christian life. That says something.
I think that it has something to do with American culture. You need to be 18 to be an adult and responsible for your actions, and not too much is expected of you before then except for going to school and staying out of trouble. I don't think that parents are challenging their kids to dust off their copy of the Bible (if they have one) and really find out what/who God calls us to be as Christ-followers. Maybe some parents are trying and their kids are just stubborn- I don't know. But it's really apparent that regardless of the circumstances, the Bible has yet to become personal to many of these kids. I take some responsibility for that. God just had to wake me up to get me to realize this.
After all was said and done and class was over, there was a kid that came up to me and talked to me for the first time. I had earned his respect for standing up for myself in class.
IT WAS ALL WORTH IT.
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