a good night with middle school students

Our pastor has called us as a church to a focused week of prayer, asking God for a breakthrough. There are a number of special events planned this week, and the adult population has responded like crazy.

That got me to thinking about how to bring students into the mix.

I believe that students can and should be part of the overall picture. After all, they aren't the church of tomorrow--they're simply part of the church. If adults are called to pray, so are teens.

Tonight was our middle school night, which we call XStream. (I'd post a link to our really jazzy website here, if there was such a website...I need some help with this)

We've recently brought in a new group of 6th graders, and they are learning all sorts of new things as they acclimatize to life in XStream--worship, small groups, etc. It's not all radically different, but it's a change to some degree for them.

Tonight we took our middle schools out into the neighborhood around our church to prayerwalk. There was some amount of anxiousness, as most of the students had not been on a prayerwalk before. I intro'd the topic, gave them a framework of how and what kinds of things to pray about, then we sent them out in their small groups to pray. We prepped them with this acrostic:

B--body: pray for health, wholeness, strength, healing, protection
L--Labor: work, income, security
E--Emotional: joy, peace, hope
S--Social: love, marriage, family, friends
S--Spiritual: salvation, faith, grace

So how did the night go? The students had a blast. We heard so many great comments, and our leaders' prayer time after XStream was maybe the sweetest it's ever been! We are joining our voices with the rest of our church, asking God for a breakthrough. We are believing God to move in our community, to pour out his Spirit, to make his presence known, to bless people in unmistakable ways.

I can't remember being more excited about what God is doing in the lives of our students, our leaders, and our community!