A Thunderous Roar

This past weekend the CSRA Youth Ministry Network hosted the 2009 DNOW for our local area. Typically each student ministry that participates in the local DNOW schedules a fun activity on Saturday morning/afternoon for their students to have a little fun as a group. This year we wanted our students to definitely have fun, but we wanted to use this weekend where we had 700+ students’ attention to engage them in opportunities to live beyond themselves and to invest in the lives of other people. After all, the theme was “Your Kingdom Come” and it seemed very appropriate to initiate service projects for the students to participate in.

I am a firm believer that a huge part of our spiritual discipleship has to do with our engaging in ministry and actually doing the things that we’ve been told in scripture to do. Studys have proven that the stuff we learn has been retained in our memory based on 1 part data and 6 parts emotion, essentially we remember what we experience. Therefore when we talk about discipleship, I don’t think we can remove elements that provide experience in what we are learning.

Saturday night was dynamic! The praise coming from this group of students sounded at times like a thunderous roar. In all of the local youth events, I cannot remember students so in tune with who God was at that moment in their life. I truly believe that Matt Papa is anointed and we had the privilege of having his band lead us in worship, but I mostly believe Saturday night had a lot to do with the response from earlier in the day where students were engaged in what God is all about, living sacrificially and loving other people.

I believe this picture with my buddy Steve White best sums up what the day was all about…