Tonight I find myself asking, "would God be pleased with my frustration about ____" and this time I'm really not sure. I think that it was righteously based, but I never know the extent where it becomes worldly instead of righteous.
A few of our students tonight were really hard to work with. I'm used to them, of course, but something about tonight was just different. We were setting up for our church's annual harvest party that is tomorrow (on halloween), and there was so much going on. We had students working on different projects in the fellowship hall, in the foyer, etc., but we had more students than projects. That was interesting. It was crazy to try and direct them to what needed to be done when we were running out of stuff for them to do, and the ones doing something asked questions while were trying to keep the others out of various accounts of mischief. Seeing this made me question how to instigate relationships between our students that are in high school and middle school. There are some awesome friendships, but some of them function more along the lines of the older student being an instigator to get the younger one in trouble. Our goal is that our students wouldn't do that.. but instead the older students would be an example. That's how everyone thinks it's supposed to go anyway; regardless if the relationship is created at church or not.
Working with the students is great, I'm just not quite sure how to communicate effectively to them in a way that will create not only respect amongst themselves and leaders, but also an understanding in our material and that we want them there and love them. There's a fine line to walk between being their friend and being an adult that's in charge. Sometimes I don't think either side knows how to walk that line effectively. It's definitely a learning process.
Our staff is also fantastic. We've been having meetings before youth group to lay the whole night out ahead of us and get our game plan. It's also a good time to relay messages about what we've done throughout the week involving our ministry, give a heads up about certain stuff, and all get on the same page. It's hard though, especially when some of the leaders can't make it, talk the whole time, talk over each other, or we just don't stay on task. We have a limited amount of time, so focusing is one of the hardest things for us =] There's so much to talk about, but we just can't fit it all in. We're working on that.
Like I said, it's a learning process. I just hope that my lack of knowledge during that process doesn't hinder or harm the growing of any of the students in any way. Some of the things we encounter get so frustrating... I could go on and on, but that would do nothing except stir up more thoughts of frustration and make things fester, and I don't want to do that. I don't want to be frustrated, and besides, who does? No one. I'm just trying to take everything in stride and remember that it doesn't take much for righteous anger or frustration to turn into bitter, hateful, worldly frustration or anger. Our focus is our students, not each other. We just have to learn how to connect with these students in a way that is helpful to them. And as staff, we need to learn how to connect with each other in order to dismiss some of the things that come up before we even encounter them. We need to learn how to keep our mouths shut, our ears open, and to have/keep a heart of understanding. We're all learning.
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