a couple of wednesdays ago, i tried something with the belief that i knew how it would turn out, but, to my surprise, i got a somewhat different result than i had anticipated. let me explain.
this sunday, we're taking students to see the new movie "Facing the Giants". (i love football movies, so this was an easy one for me to get on board with). the three sundays after the movie, we are going to play off of the theme and do a discussion on "facing the giant topics". the idea is that we let the students decide what we talk about, and, as we address the issues of their interest, use a discussion type format to get their input on what we tell them from the Bible. so a couple of weeks ago, we distributed half sheets of paper with a home made illustration, and asked the students to list the three topics they are most curious about. of course, like jeremy says, i anticipated the topics to be something like "sex," "the end times," and "sex during the end times." when i filtered through the results later on, sex and end times were listed, but they only accouted for 5 of the 45 or so serious responses. as it turns out, our informal survey says the students are most interested in topics like friends and relationships (including boyfriends and girlfriends), school and grades, and who God is and His love. family and parents, identity and self-worth, choices and peer pressure, and putting God first all were mentioned just as many times as sex was, and some students even asked "what is considered sin" and "what exactly is racism."

the impression i'm left with knowing that the most requested topic has to do with friendships is that, even with everything else going on, students still want to be known. there's still a basic desire for real community. maybe that's the real driving force behind things like MySpace and other virtual communities. maybe behind all the shocking content and unbelievable comments, there's a question of "can i tell you who i am, and will you still love me if you know?" "is it ok to be me?" the point is, God wired us for relationships, and no matter what we look like on the outside or what we do or what we say, we all feel the need to be connected. i pray that our student ministry, and our church as a whole, will be a place of genuine acceptance. i hope that everyone we find contact with will, at some point, find themselves connected to God (the giver of life) and connected to people (the sharers of life).