Re-Directed Vision.

Our biggest prayer these last few weeks has been, "How, Lord, do you want us to go about having a drop-in center, and if it is not your will--then where do we go?"

Our first option was to reopen "The Mud Hut," an idea which both Bronco and I were hesitant about mostly for Risk Management reasons (the facility is located on the third floor of a smoky American Legion lounge, and it was neither a healthy environment nor an easy to monitor environment.) We were also at a lack for volunteer staff and needed to take a bit of time before reopening to recruit and train.

Our second option was to join up in partnership with a local church, which has a brand-new street-level facility available and ready to perform magical youth ministry. They are in the process of building an indoor skate park and a concert stage and are ready to bring unchurched kids in the doors. It seemed that partnering with them was a great option when we met last week because we share such similar vision and passion--only, we did not know at the time--that during our conversations there had been a huge miscommunication!

It was our assumption that we would help the church run a drop-in night on a night separate from their youth group, and it was the youth pastor's assumption that we would be participating in their scheduled Wednesday night program. After realizing this, it no longer falls within the vision of our ministry to be so heavily involved in one church youth group, and it does not fall within the vision of their ministry to use the youth center for anything beyond Wednesday night youth group.

So once again, we are back to the second half of our prayer--"if it is not your will for us to be directly involved in drop-in ministry, then where are we to go?" So Bronco and I are reexamining how we will go about our jobs and what our daily jobs will look like. Suddenly, in not being directly involved in a drop-in center, my key focuses become #1--meeting and interacting with kids at Arlington High School--and #2--discipling a small group of youth girls in a home group fellowship/Bible study.

It seems like my job will change now from working at a drop-in center to encouraging the kids I work with at #1 and #2 to go to existing programs at local churches, which can certainly include the one church's youth center. Bronco described it as, "When people ask us what we do, we'll say that we meet kids at the High School and drive them to church," which is certainly not a bad or unnecessary role for us to fill--it's just a bit of a re-directed role.

The Lord is certainly directing all of it, and it's not our intent to cling to drop-in ministry just because we love it so much...For now it feels like we're relinquishing our plastic pearl necklace back to God, waiting to see if He will choose to keep it or hand us back something more refined. Either way, we're definitely supposed to hand it back to Him.