The Pride

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)

I've started leading a small group of middle school guys. The first night we met together I knew these kids were going places. It's not like they understand the Bible exceedingly well, or even well at all, but when they don't get something they immediately ask questions and they don't stop until they get it. I love that. The other college guy I lead the group with, Caleb, is one of coolest guys I know. I'm so excited about this I don't really know what to do with myself.

The first thing I wanted to do was to get the kids to pick a name for themselves. Immediately they started slinging crazy names around and for a while we almost settled on "Fish" but before it was decided I suggested we name ourselves after a word which denotes a group, like "The Mob" or "The Flock". They loved this and so I kept spouting out words until we came across "The Pride". A group of lions. The guys immediately agreed that this was our name. I was so excited I went home and made a Facebook group and added all the kids to it and even designed the logo you see at the top of this post. I then went about designing t-shirts and coming up with monthly get-togethers where we can do boy things together. I'm really, really excited. So excited that I can't even tell a proper story about all of this.

Usually I would spin a nifty little tale with more details to make it interesting and with at least one twist somewhere, but this is just too much. If I went into detail about the way heading up this group makes me feel I might explode. I want so much for these guys because I know exactly what it was like being a Christian at that age. Everything felt so superficial. My faith was secondary to everything. I'm not going to say that isn't true now, but I wasn't aware of it then. I want these kids to really see that faith can be deep beyond their wildest dreams and that God is so real he makes this keyboard I'm pounding seem like an illusion. I believe most of all that what these kids need is a translator; someone who can read the Bible out to them so that it makes perfect sense. I want them to understand the setting of the Word, how Jewish culture colors everything that happened, and how, when viewed through the eyes of a witness, Jesus' miracles were a hundred times more impressive than they first appear.

We're burning through Luke right now, reading three chapters a week instead of the usual one. The guys insisted we do this when they learned that we could read through Revelation after we finished Luke. They're really excited to learn about the symbolism in Revelation and see what it all means. So am I for that matter. I've been looking to find a text that walks through Revelation and explains it so I can have a deeper understanding of the metaphors before I go trying to teach anything to the guys. Also, we need a symbol. Something easy to draw....