Heaps of grumpy old men or something like that

Youth is really coming along. The one young lady that I was really frustrated with that might be leaving the church came and talked with my after service. She went somewhere else but came to our service to talk and I think it really helped. I’m not 100% sure what is going to happen but I’m feeling that she really needs to be plugged in with a woman in the church for mentoring and I have the perfect person in mind if this person will say yes. Anyways, it seems to be working out and I’m feeling much better about it all.

For specific numbers, we had like 4 visitors tonight plus a few of our semi regulars showing up for a grand total of 52. The sign in sheet makes it easy to know how many people are there since I never think to count. I’m a really bad pastor as far as that sort of thing goes. I’m also bad at over estimating how many people are there. Everyone that signed in stayed, but the one that skipped out last time didn’t come tonight. The whole thing is working pretty well right now.

I felt a little overwhelmed though because we were down a few leaders. The main outside leader was out of town on business and two other leaders weren’t there, one for work and I’m not sure what happened to the other. Also last week was the last week for one of my leaders. This means we had about as many students as we’ve ever had with 4 fewer leaders than we have had in the past 3 months. Despite that things went really well.

I also started the first phase of getting my students more involved tonight by having one of the students doing announcements instead of me. It was nice to not be the only one talking and I’m expecting to get more involved. I asked the girl that I was really impressed with over the weekend and she did a great job. I’d like to try and have some of the students put together stupid little skits and stuff for some of the announcements. That would be great.

Tonight was also phase 2 of the transition to a stronger Bible study type environment. The end goal will look like this; I’ll read a Bible passage and give some explanation of what it means. Then small groups will get together and discuss questions related to the subject then we’ll meet together again for my review of the questions and a sermon of sorts. I did this before and I think it works really well. The big change for tonight was I had a series of questions that I asked and get input from the students as a whole. It worked well and I was very happy with the responses the students gave.

Of course the most fun I had all night was early on in the evening. The grumpy old man that threatened a student a couple months back and who hasn’t been coming to church on Sundays since was there. He is still teaching the Rangers and I am concerned about that on many levels but I have bigger things to deal with right now. He is basically ignoring me though, which amuses me. Any time I see him I try to be nice and say hi and ask how he is. I’m a southerner. We can show courtesy to our worst enemy. He tends to pretend he didn’t hear me though. Sure he is old and hard of hearing, but in the past he would ask what I said if he didn’t hear, now he just walks the other way. Now I could let it go but I much prefer another approach. Loud kindness. It drives him crazy I think. Not exactly why I do it, I want to show that I live what I preach. Still, I enjoy the look of frustration on his face when I ask again “have you had a good day?” as loud and joyful as I can possibly be. If you want to really mess with people that are angry with you then pour on the kindness. Grumpy people can’t stand when they are doused with joy.