epicdialogue.com » camp http://epicdialogue.com/blog richard hamilton: youth worker. blogger. futurist. geek. father. sojourn. community organizer. Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:59:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Praying the Beattitudes…with Middle School Students http://epicdialogue.com/blog/2008/07/09/praying-the-beattitudeswith-middle-school-students/ http://epicdialogue.com/blog/2008/07/09/praying-the-beattitudeswith-middle-school-students/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:14:19 +0000 Richard Hamilton http://epicdialogue.com/blog/2008/07/09/praying-the-beattitudeswith-middle-school-students/ I was the dean of a Jr High week of camp in southern Ohio last week. Tuesday Night, we set aside some time for the 36 Jr High students to go through 9 prayer stations based on the teachings of Jesus from Matthew 5:1-16. Much to our surprise, this took about 5 hours. Not because it was set up poorly or not run well or overly complicated (I’m sure those things could be said about this prayer experience, but that is not what lengthened the event). It took so long because the students really got into it. Jr Highers. Praying. 5 hours. It was awesome.
I thought this experience was important enough to include in the week, but I was not expecting the response we got.

Prayer is undervalued by a lot of Christians. This seems to be even more the case among teen Christians. I don’t know if this is because they don’t see prayer being lived by the Christians they encounter or if the way prayer is portrayed to them is limiting and unappealing. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Who knows. What I do know, is many of these teens prayed. They read Jesus’ words, they looked beyond themselves, they tasted, they touched, they reflected, they prayed. And it wasn’t just the girls; the [Jr High] guys got into it too. They were asking questions and spending time with each experience. It was interesting to be there for it all.

This left me with one big question. Do we expect too little of young Christians?
I believe it is altogether possible that teens can set the pace for other Christians.

Matthew 5:7 Matthew 5:14-16

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