Oh, what a night.

There are two words that strike fear into the hearts of even the most "tried-and-true" youth minister. Lock in. As you shriek back in fear, understand that I do the same. I HATE lock ins! Yet, I am a softy and let my kiddos talk me into doing one. Our last lock in was okay. We planned for 20 and we had 40. That was a big adjustment because I planned for 20. When you double your number, you double your stress. My group is pretty laid back and you don't have to plan much to keep them entertained. But we made it through the last one. But that was last time.

Early Friday morning (the day of) I started hearing rumblings that this lock in was to be a huge one. Aparently kids who weren't even friends of our kids were planning on coming. I had concerned parents calling and wondering how we were going to handle this load. I didn't think much of it. I am a pretty even-keeled guy and I don't like to get too flustered about anything. Maybe I should have. As the lock in was starting, kids were coming 15-20 at a time. We ended up with 100-120! I had to send some home! We weren't equiped to handle that many. A lot of kids thought it was a fifth quarter after the football game. They didn't know it was an all nighter. So I got rid of about 15 or so. But I still had 100 to deal with. My kids from my church were freaking out! We had a lot of kids there from the "wrong side of the tracks". A lot of those kids cussed and were mean. That is all they knew. Once we set ground rules, they were all okay. The coolest part of the night was the worship at 1:30 in the morning. 100 kids worshiped God and learned about Jesus. That was the best part to me. They came to us. We preached the gospel. I hope they were affected in some way.
The rest of the night went okay and we had a really good time. I got to meet a ton of kids I have never seen before. As a matter of fact I saw a bunch of them today at the middle school. I hope God can use it. I am sure he will.
The biggest thing that struck me was our apparent inability to minister to those who were not like us. Our kids were truly scared about spending 8 hours with a lot of these kids. But, once we got to know them, they were really cool. It is amazing how we will only minister to someone if they look like us or talk like us. So for our kids, middle class whites are the name of the game. I am probably being hard on these kids(and myself) but we have to be willing to go to the rough areas of town and minister to the sick. I really talked to my kids frankly about it. They learned a lot, I think. Now we have to see what comes of it.

Anyways it was a crazy one. Just thought you should know about it.

Later