Celebrating Your Event

Our HS guys serving at D-Now

Over the last 4 years of serving at Crossroads, I have had the privilege to see our church morph into a mission minded body of believers.  We hosted a Mission Fair last Sunday night that highlighted 12 different service opportunities this year through Crossroads from here in Marshall TX, all the way to Ethiopia, and a lot of choices in between.

As a youth ministry, we also try to embrace service.  We dedicated the Saturday afternoon time of our Disciple Now to serving, we do monthly Serve! projects, we go on mission trips, we've even gone to mission camps.  In July, we are taking a group of leadership students to the inner city of Houston to serve with a great group called Center for Student Missions.

Each one of these events is incredibly impactful.  You may have the same experience with mission work.  Serving God is incredibly moving and usually creates some period of growth.  If you're like me, you get all pumped up about what God is doing and let that feeling carry the ministry for a while.

We go home and talk about it for a little bit, but we soon move on to plan, pray, and prepare the next event.  We forget to celebrate the week or weekend.  We need to remember those victories.  I heard a great quote a few days ago by Johnny Scott, program director for Christ in Youth

"It takes as much planning to reap the rewards of an event as it does to pull one off."

The truth is, the physical needs will still be there after you leave.  The leaves will fall again, the person you fed yesterday will need food today.  The fact that they raked or brought food will be remembered, but the greater thought will be, "I served.  I made a difference in that little kid's life."  A student will realize that they went beyond their comfort to be a part of something so much greater than themselves...to share an incredible story of hope through Christ.  That is what we have to remember.  When planning the followup of an event, here are a few questions to consider:

• How are we going to remember this in a month?
• How will we going to celebrate what God did at this event?
• How can we keep the students heading in the same direction?
• Do I have followup lessons and similar serving opportunities locally?

I think we can totally maximize an events impact by putting a little (or a lot) more thought and energy into the celebration of an event.  What have you done to celebrate an event in your youth ministry?