Making Sausage

Lately I've been thinking a lot about The Creek and our effectiveness as a youth ministry. I know God's desire for us is to see students come, experience the love and presence of God in worship, hear his voice for their lives out of his word and become active parts of The Creek - serving God with their time and talents. That's a pretty decent summary of what a good youth group should look like. But there's a catch...we are dealing with people.

Now if we were making sausages on an assembly line, all of the above would be pretty easy: Get 'em in, shape 'em up, ship 'em out. Easy as 1 - 2 - 3. But people change the equation. People show up with expectations and needs that can make our little "making-people-like-Jesus" assembly line explode in a cloud of smoke and flames.

That's why we have to change our perspective a little bit. The people who visit The Creek are not there by random chance. God planned for them to be there. He looked down from his giant lazy boy in heaven and decided that this person needed to be at The Creek on this specific night for a specific reason - so they could know him. We have to see this because we need to recognize that every Wednesday night we are part of a plan that God set into motion before we were even a twinkle in our daddy's eye. He designated us to be a part of leading this person to Jesus. So when you come to The Creek tomorrow night remember that God put you there to make someone else feel welcome, to feel God's love.