Rite of Passage

What a fun night tonight! Our church had thier annual youth choir final concert and we met with most of our 8th graders afterwards for one last hurrah together. This Sunday, they move into the high school group. and for this group, they are my first complete class, as I came to First Church three years ago. So I've had these guys during thier whole middle school years. Pretty cool.

Nevertheless, it's a very bittersweet thing to move them up into high school. So a couple of our youth coaches and myself got together and invited the students out for a late night movie and ice cream.

But first...we had a tornado warning. Nice! We had the concert and then huddled in the basement waiting for the Tornado warning to end.

after that, we raced to the movies and watched Prince Caspian. (I had expected the movie to stink as it got a bad review on sfgate.com. But I thought it was really good! I love it when my expectations are so low!)

After the movie we went to McDonald's and got some ice cream.

You know, there is just something about middle schoolers that we, our team of adult volunteers, we just love. and it's fun to listen to them joke around and have fun. I love that our team of adults thinks these middle schoolers are actually funny! They are! Our kids are so great. And they are fun. And we are going to really miss them.

So while we are prepared for the new group of 6th graders to come in this Sunday, we will miss our 8th graders. I did encourage them all to continue growing in thier faiths and invited them to come back in a couple or three years and lead our small groups.

That has been one of my most favorite things in ministry...to have my old middle schoolers lead thier own small groups of middle schools students.

so much to say...I just absolutely love my job and am honored to play a small role in the spiritual development of these kids.