A little over a year ago, I suppose, our church started doing a sweet weekly newsletter. It’s like a mini-newspaper. You can check it out here. The staff was “encouraged” to add content and use the paper as a resource. But seriously, I have really fought it because:
1. Writing articles for the church newspaper is not my idea of a good time
2. I have a really hard time writing
3. Writing takes me sooooooo long
However, our Director of Education, Libby Eaton, from the start has tried (and I think succeeded) in having something in the Light (our newspaper name) every week. And being a dad, I love to see my kids in there. And I was impressed at how much response she got out of the paper and what it communicated to the people who never even step foot into her ministry area.
So maybe 6 months ago…probably less…I tried to steal some of the spot light from Libby. I have definitely not been as diligent as her but I have tried, especially all summer long, to get something in the Light once a week to spotlight middle school ministry.
Then two cool things happened:
A couple weeks ago I was having lunch with one of the people from our congregation and he says, “Man, your student ministry is really booming!!!” How did he know? Had he been with us on a trip? No. How about in Sunday School? No. Had he heard from a parent? Nope.
He read it in the Light!
Here’s the second cool reason…it’s a bit longer.
I get this phone call yesterday from this sweet little old lady named Carol. She tells me that her daughter doesn’t attend church but has two boys and mom is considering bringing them to the parent meeting later that evening. Carol is obviously sad that her daughter doesn’t attend church and has “fought and fought” to keep her daughter on the mailing list and now that she’s coming she wants to make sure they have a very pleasant experience and that she’ll be praying the whole evening. Nothing like a little pressure.
So we’re eating dinner before the meeting and there is a woman there with two boys I’ve never seen before. Low and behold it’s Carol’s daughter and her two boys are in middle school! So I’m talking to her and she offers up this statement: “Every week I read the paper and there’s something about middle school. Middle school this and middle school that. I figured that I needed to check out this middle school thing for myself!”
Wow….As someone who readily understands the pain and prayers of having a loved one disconnected from the church, it’s humbling to think that my toiling out stories about middle school for a couple hours each week could result in a doorway to reconciliation with the church and an elderly woman’s years of answered prayers.
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