FUEL Recap 2/23/11

Series: Best Sex Ever

Attendance: 207 (FUEL record)

Mixer/Game: Battle of the Sexes – Feeding Frenzy

Extra fun things: We knew the night was going to be sort of heavy since we were talking about homosexuality. Because of that, we decided to make the game a little more over the top than normal. We had a guy and girl from each grade come up. The object of the game was the girl was going to be the hands/arms of the guy and she had to feed him chocolate pudding, apple sauce, and a can of Dr. Pepper. It was messy and hysterical.

Worship Set: Our God Is Love (Hillsong), Jesus Saves (Tim Hughes), Forever Reign (Hillsong), The One Who Saves (Hillsong)

Bumper Video: Christian Mingle Commercial

Topic: The G-Word: God on Gay

Scripture: Leviticus 18:24-28, Romans 1:26-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Timothy 1:15

Thoughts: Uh. Wow. That went better than expected.

I don’t know what I expected for last night’s FUEL, but it ended up being much, much better than whatever that was.

Last night was the gay talk. It was the talk that we knew was going to be awkward, uncomfortable, messy, and quite frankly weird. We have a few students in our youth group that are struggling with homosexuality and most of our students know people or are friends with people who are struggling with it.

And some of those kids were ready for a fight.

The Christian church has done such a terrible job with the entire idea of homosexuality. Many of our students, especially the ones that claim to be gay, came in to last night expecting us to tell them that it’s wrong and they’re terrible people and that God hates fags and all of these other things. We had students show up in t-shirts that said “NO H8.” Yes, we told them what they were doing was wrong, but we also reminded everyone else that they’re just as wrong when they lust after a member of the opposite sex.

My favorite part of the entire night was how Eddie closed his talk. He put up part of 1 Corinthians 9 that says:

Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
In this, he highlighted the face that sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, the greedy, the drunkards, and all of the other things were just as guilty of sin as those who are homosexual. He showed how he is just as sinful as a person who struggles with lust as the person who struggles with homosexuality. Then, to top it all off, he ended with what is going to become one of my favorite Bible verses in 1 Timothy 1:

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.

No matter who you are, you’re screwed up. No matter what you’ve done, Jesus died for you. It’s right there. None of us are any better than the person next to us.

What had the potential to be a pressure packed, awkward, and ugly night turned into a very fun night with great teaching in a way that reminded us that God loves each and every one of us and that we’re all screwed up and need a savior.

Oh, and after all of that, as if the high of things going that smoothly wasn’t enough, I found out after we ended that we had reached our goal for the spring semester: we had over 200 people at FUEL. Almost six months ago we kicked the 2010-2011 school year off with 135 people at our first FUEL. Last night we had 207. We have grown by over 70 people in six months. That’s so freaking ridiculous. I don’t know why God’s choosing to use us and to grow our ministry. It’s definitely not because we’re the best youth leaders or have the coolest or flashiest program. I don’t know what it is other than God being awesome to us but I’m loving every second of it.

A night that had the potential to go wrong in so many ways went completely right.

And that’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time thanking God for.

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