I Survived The Church Lock-In

Friday night, our church did the unthinkable. We hosted a Jr. High and High School Lock-In. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, a Lock-In is a youth event where a handful of adults and a bunch of teenagers hunker down for the night in a church building. For 9 hours or so we eat a lot of pizza, banana splits, pringles, and various other forms of health foods. In between the eating we play fun, quirky group games, sing songs, talk about our faith, study the Bible, and worship God. Oh yeah, you don’t sleep either. At least that’s the idea.

This was a surreal experience for me. I grew up in this congregation, and when I was a teenager our youth group had about 5 people in it and we were scattered throughout 5 different grade levels. Until I went off to Harding University, I had no concept of what a youth group was, much less youth group activities. This might come as a shock to some of you, but the first Youth Group Weekend Retreat I attended was the one I planned for my youth group when I was a Youth Minister.

You can imagine my surprise when 22 kids showed up for this Lock-In Friday night (the first lock-in in our congregation’s history). 22! That may not sound like a high number, but trust me for our little church this was a milestone. Only a handful of that number were kids from our church. The rest were friends they invited.

God is doing some big things in our little church, and this was just one example. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

 

Share The Load

We all carry burdens. Some are large and some are small, but nevertheless they are there. When I was in youth ministry, I learned a great deal about burdens every summer when we participated in Wilderness Trek. Trek is a week-long hiking and backpacking trip in the Rockies. Each person carries everything they need for the week on their back (usually anywhere from 40-60 pounds). Every year there would always be at least one person who would struggle with getting their pack up the mountain. During those times, our guides would stop everyone and tell us that we needed to help carry the load of the person who was hurting. I would always stand in amazement as these kids would literally take the bulk of the load from that person, and they would distribute it out to each other and take the load on top of theirs. We left no one behind and we climbed that mountain as a group, even if that meant carrying each other’s burdens.

How many times do we come across others who are hurting and carrying burdens that they can’t handle on their own? Daily? Weekly? It’s one thing for us to feel sorry for them. That’s easy. It’s another thing all together to help them carry the burden. Jesus is our ultimate example. He didn’t come into the world saying, “I feel sorry for you.” Instead, He went to the ultimate extreme and he took our sins (our greatest burden) upon Himself. He took the punishment that we deserved.

Look around you. Are there burdens that you can help carry? Are there people around you who are struggling and hurting? Sometimes the best way to deal with our own burdens is to help others with theirs. When we take the time to carry each other’s burdens we show the world who Jesus is and what it means to truly follow Him.

Galatians 6:2
“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” NIV