Uh-oh, here we go again

No, the title doesn't signify bad news, merely that it's back-to-back with the previous post. So if you haven't read that one yet, go do it and then come back up to this one. I feel like I owe multiple posts after a long silence.

While our plans for Friday and Saturday were restored by the grace of God, our Thursday plans fell through. We had been planning on using a couple of homes of people in our church. Well, they weren't sure whether they'd be available on Thursday because they were supposed to help somebody move, and then Jordan, my contact who also happens to be in our band, never told me for sure. Then he temporarily dropped off the face of the earth (which he does sometimes). By Wednesday night, I had to make the decision to call the filming off. It was okay in a sense, because I had kinda felt from the Lord that Thursday wasn't going to be a good day to film anyway.

We were able to use Thursday night for band practice. Daniel, Trevor, and I, that is. That's the guitar, drums, and vocals in our band, respectively. We also have Billy the old one (he's like, 30, I mean old) on bass and Jordan the young one (he's like, 15, I mean young) on congas. But they weren't able to make it, Jordan's reason of course being the whole helping-move thing, so the three of us practiced together and made some progress. There's a little Chris Tomlin ditty called "Let God Arise" that is going to ROCK at Fan the Flame. If the Lord wills. We're all pretty excited about playing that song.

In the last couple of days, sitting at home because I was off work, I was able to get various stuff accomplished for FtF. I have finally finished our skits, the ones we were originally scheduled to begin practicing three weeks ago, and I'm fairly happy with them. The last one, a take-off on "This Little Light of Mine", is the best; it has a type of humor I haven't used in a long time.

And then, Wednesday. (Notice how I kinda keep going back in time here? That's not intentional.) God has really blessed our youth group and allowed us to grow quite a bit in the last few months. We now run a solid 30-35 on Wednesday nights. I think we can easily have 40 every time if we can get a few more people that are "on the fringe" to start being faithful.

At any rate, on Wednesdays we usually start getting together at about 4 or 4:30 at the church. We hang out, maybe play some basketball or Ping-Pong, talk. Then we eat (our food being cooked by Dusty's wonderful wife Amanda and Chris' wonderful wife Dadrian, with help from some of the youth girls). And for about a year now, instead of having "class" on Wednesday nights, we basically have a full-fledged service in the fellowship hall. I lead the worship time, assisted by Daniel on the guitar (and lately we've added Caleb Melton and Jordan on the guitar as well), and then either Chris or Dusty preaches.

It's something we decided to start doing while we were at church camp last year, and I think it has been awesome, no question. I would estimate that we've seen close to thirty youth pray to receive Christ on Wednesday nights since we started doing the service. Not all of those decisions were genuine, sadly, but many were, by God's grace.

Anyways, it's straight-up awesome to be able to lead worship every Wednesday night for a group of young people. I highly encourage that all my readers do it sometime (wink). We have had some great times of worship, and the Spirit had really been moving lately. But in the last couple of weeks, we leaders have been noticing something a bit alarming.

It wasn't something earthshattering, just a small difference that we probably wouldn't have picked up on if the Spirit hadn't told us. While everything perhaps looked okay during our worship times, we began to sense that the group wasn't totally united, that a lot of the kids were holding back during worship.

That's never a good thing for a youth group. When you've got Fan the Flame, a huge event that you want God to bless mightily, coming up in a few weeks, it has the potential to be deadly. So we and some of the older guys in the youth group prayed about it before the service on Wednesday, and we came to the service ready to address the issue.

Dusty started, butting in to the announcement time (just kidding; it's always cool with me when he or Chris does that) and stating concisely that we had noticed the group as a whole hadn't been as focused lately as it should be. Then, after giving the announcements and taking prayer requests, I let loose on the group.

It wasn't pleasant, for me or for them. I nearly always try to be upbeat and positive at the beginning of the worship service, but not this night. I shared the story from Joshua about the Israelites' defeat at Ai and how the sin of one man, Achan, was responsible. It was uncomfortable. Several of the youth, especially ones who hadn't been coming for very long, were glancing around as if to say, "Is this guy off his rocker?" I began to worry that none of it was getting through, that the whole service was going to go down the drain, that I was saying too much.

It's hard not to say too much in a situation like that; there was so much I wanted to say, but it has to be God speaking to them, not me. Finally, I quit talking and started singing. We usually start with an energetic song to get going, but this time we kicked off with the prayerful "One Thing".

And we had worship. It felt wonderful. For me, it was passionate worship. I sang a lot louder than I usually do; hopefully that didn't throw anyone off. The Spirit fell upon us.

Chris then gave a hardcore message about witnessing; good stuff and convicting, for me (I think) as much as the kids. As the service wrapped up, I felt a lot better about the unity of the group. I'm not naive enough to think it was all resolved, that everything's now perfect. But I know some kids got right with God on Wednesday, and our group is better off for it.

I just pray that we'll be ready for what God has for us at Fan the Flame. Fifteen days to go.