Monday night

One of the blessings of my life is that I serve as Co-Director of Advance Conference which is our camp for young adults. Last year I realized that many, many of these young people live in Columbus.

So, I made a suggestions to Jennie (a natural leader!) that I would be willing to host a Bible study in my home. And she checked around and found that Mondays at 9 PM was the best time for the group. At my suggestion we moved it up to 8:30 and I led the first Bible study of 8.
After that I told them tha someone else would lead and they did. At the question of how often to meet - weekly, monthly, every other week? The answer - weekly. And so my life changed.
Because practically every week at 8:30 - from 8 to 17 young people come into my family room to study the Bible.

I am in another room - right now the family room. All I provide is the place and the snacks. And the snacks have gotten easier as I learned that bottled water is what everyone wants. Over the past year I have tried all kinds of things - from popcorn, to chips and salso, potato chips, brownings, oreos. Right now as I type this it is chocolate chip cookies and pretzels.

They start every evening with an ice breaker question. Tonight's was - what name would you have (or like to have) if you had been born of the opposite sex. Good question. Then the Bible study and then at the end they share prayer concerns. Sometimes they have listened to music or watched movie clips or even a part of the Simpsons. Sometimes they have questions about the BIble and ask me what I think. Sometimes I don't have a clue and sometimes I have some wisdom for them. I am not in the room but sometimes I overhear the prayer concerns. Over the past year I have heard a lot about job seeking, job changing, financial concerns and family, health and relationship issues.

I cannot overstate how blessed I feel that they are here. To be able to host young people who are hungry for community and for spiritual understanding is awesome. And it speaks to the need for providing space for that. Some of them go to my church, some to some other churches in town and some to no church. In fact, this may be their church right now.

My life changed because I had to change my day off because they are meeting here. And after 15 years of having Mondays off it is really different for me. The rhythem is not the same in my week or in my body. But keeping MOnday as my day off and not being able to go anyplace on Monday was not working either. The other change is that after they leave I am always wired and cannot go to sleep easily. I don't know why.....is it the HOly Spirit keeping me up?

This whole thing has something to do with the Christian journey. Something about a willingness to be open and vulnerable and change. And none of it is easy. But definitely worth it.