Afer a while....

Ok...so it's been a little while.

Today I attended a child protection training session. I'm feeling a bit more "official" in my role now:-)

Thursday night Troop is in a bit of a fragile place, coming off a kind of tough night. My thoughts and plans for the group weren't so well accepted and we had to have a chat about some things relating to the transition phase.

When the church here started looking for a youth pastor they seemingly didn't include the youth in much of the process. These young people started this group out of an alpha course that was done 2 years ago and they have felt strongly about it being "their group" ever since. While they have had adults sit in and give direction it is a very different program approach to what I was trained in. A bit of a hard point for me to not take some of what they said that first of 2 disscussion nights personally. But the more I thought and prayed about it, I realized they don't really have grounds to know me or my life in Chicago, and God had to say "HEY! chill, it's not about you, it's about them and you need to listen to them and gather as much info as you can on the back story here". So the next week I asked DJ to come and help facillitate a discussion on how they feel. It went very well and this past week we had a social night led by Sara. This next week some of the members will take the welcome, the worship and the word time of the night.
Simalliar moves are being made with FOAM on Wed. nights. They want to have one night a month where they have a more active role in the group. So looks like my high and mighty training (or pride) needs to take a back seat and I need to learn to give some things away while at the same time providing direction or helping them stay on track with the focus of the night. If all that makes sense...

A bit of a challenge, but at the same time I feel a bit less pressure to come with something every week. Jess and Kate have been amazing here as well in helping me see the subtle differences between US youth culture and UK youth culture.

I do feel a bif of pride needs to be swallowed as well in the sense that the novelty of my arrival has worn off. So that's been a bit of a challenge.

This last week I met with a student at McDonalds here for a chat (he's from Croatia and is struggling with being a teen at the moment) and I met with another guy at Subway yesterday (he's almost 17 and his parents moved to the states without him and he's probably not going to see them for a year or so so he's going through a lot with learning to live on his own). So I'm seeing that my role is taking on a lot of discipleship aspects as well. I do like hanging out with these guys and just chatting with them about life.

This past week we started a university age small group. We meet again this week and I'm pretty stoked about it all! Please do keep praying for Troop, FOAM and the new house group. It's still challenging but I'm looking at it with some new ideas, and we could use all the prayer we can get.

I'm missing home and wish I could be there....I've dreamed of church and in my dreams no one has changed a bit! I still see the carpet in the sanctuary and the stage and all the chairs...even the lighting is the same...a bit dim at times but a warm place nonetheless...
That's life in a nut shell. Please do drop a line and let me know all that I'm missing!
Paul