Our ministry runs a pool hall in our downtown area. It’s a place for the Middle and High Schoolers to hang out after school. And as one of them put it, ”it gives me a place to go, so I don’t get in trouble.” It’s a way for us to invite them to a safe place. It’s not really their turf, but it’s  neutral ground. It has been one of our best points to begin relationships which leads to furthering ministry.

Something interesting happened the other day. One of our guys was leaving early and I asked him where he was going. He told me to come and see for myself. So we walked a few blocks away to where a bunch of middle schoolers were building a tree house. It wasn’t pretty, but it was theirs - made from mainly scrap wood they found around town.

And when I thought about it, I was honored. As a youth worker, we try to enter their world to reach them, but rarely do we get to truly enter it. I hung out with them for a while, helping them to building it. They used me to haul the heavy wood they couldn’t carry. But something more happened that day than just carpentry. I was given the invite into their world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 7:18 am and is filed under Adam LaRoche, Blogroll, Christianity, Church, Uncategorized, christian, christians, kids, tree house, youth, youth ministry.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.