how to kill enthusiasm

how do you kill enthusiasm? it's actually quite simple. let me use a story to illustrate... mind you, i'm still processing this, so bear in mind...

You see, i came home from our youth ministry last night excited. We just had our new class of youth come up for the first time last night- it was good- 3 of our 4 new students were there. We had a fun time, and we were finishing up a lesson series about how to read the Bible- different types of books in the Bible, etc. And as we finsihed with Revelation, I told our students to bring in their questions for me for last night.

there were a few questions, which i tried my best to handle- and eventually that died down. I already know what our next series will be for the youth, so I offered it to them to throw out some questions that they would like to talk about in youth over this summer, maybe the fall- when it comes up kinda thing. And I got some great questions! Great- I mean, one student asked me this "what is God's plan for saving the world?" !?!?! I was stunned, and yet i'm so excited because our youth ministy is moving past the stage of a handful of students and focussed on the fun every week- we're moving into something that i think can be great!

And so as we talk about the basics of our faith over the next few months, i'm totally stoked to talk about God's plan to save the world next week... Because that means i get to tell them that the plan is... THEM! God's instrument is the church! That's exciting stuff for me...

and then i walk into the church this morning and discover that we may be losing not only a potential 5 of our youth, but an amazingly fun and great family from the church- which may or may not include a bunch more families connected to them...

i don't even know what to do right now.... maybe i'll do something mindless like cleaning the church...

ouch...