Sunday, January 23, 2005
Patience and Prayer
Some of my volunteer teaching experience at Woodlands paid off this Friday in the WAY. We had prayer path, and Angela's instructions (after her explanation of the different "stations") were something along the lines of: get into groups of three and share about your week and pray together, then feel free to go to the different stations as the Spirit leads you.
So Angela and David and Alan went off to prepare the worship set at the end of the program, and I stuck around, mostly keeping an eye out to make sure no one set anything on fire (candles and WAY kids aren't the safest combination)! I told myself that once the groups were all set up I wouldn't say anything to the kids, but let the Spirit actually lead them. Boy, was that ever a lot harder than I thought it'd be!
They started off pretty noisy, which I expected somewhat, but when fifteen minutes or so had passed and I didn't see many groups actually praying, I started to wonder if this prayer path would work--what if they all just stayed in their groups and chatted all night long? I wasn't totally freaked out because I could hear a lot of the conversations, and I know some groups were talking about the tsunami, and how it took a disaster to get people to pull together to help, whereas things like AIDS initiatives got shafted, or how someone's witness affected them, but I was worried because a lot of other groups seemed to be just joking around, not even sharing about their personal experiences of the week. Then too even the groups that had already prayed weren't actually making moves to any of the rooms, but were still sitting around talking.
But here's where my Woodlands experience came in handy: I learned the importance of NOT micro-managing classes from observing all the teachers I worked with. A lot of the time the teachers let small talk, etc. carry on even when students were supposed to be doing work quietly, and not only did this save the teachers a lot of stress from not having to maintain perfect silence a lot of the time, it also allowed for a lot of surprisingly course-related discussion. So remembering the importance of not micro-managing, and keeping in mind that the night was supposed to be Spirit-led, I kept my mouth shut and instead prayed for all the groups.
I prayed that the Spirit would be working in all the conversations--the "small talk," personal updates, and even sharing along with the more "spiritual" conversations--and that, preferably, at least some of the groups would be led to the rooms, since David and Angela put so much work into preparing the materials for the different sections. And I prayed for myself, that I would ease up and have faith in both the Spirit and the kids to make the night work.
It took a little more than half an hour (from the start of the program), but eventually the groups did start going to the different sections, and I was greatly relieved and thankful. I think it was a good lesson in patience, faith and trust for me.
Some of my volunteer teaching experience at Woodlands paid off this Friday in the WAY. We had prayer path, and Angela's instructions (after her explanation of the different "stations") were something along the lines of: get into groups of three and share about your week and pray together, then feel free to go to the different stations as the Spirit leads you.
So Angela and David and Alan went off to prepare the worship set at the end of the program, and I stuck around, mostly keeping an eye out to make sure no one set anything on fire (candles and WAY kids aren't the safest combination)! I told myself that once the groups were all set up I wouldn't say anything to the kids, but let the Spirit actually lead them. Boy, was that ever a lot harder than I thought it'd be!
They started off pretty noisy, which I expected somewhat, but when fifteen minutes or so had passed and I didn't see many groups actually praying, I started to wonder if this prayer path would work--what if they all just stayed in their groups and chatted all night long? I wasn't totally freaked out because I could hear a lot of the conversations, and I know some groups were talking about the tsunami, and how it took a disaster to get people to pull together to help, whereas things like AIDS initiatives got shafted, or how someone's witness affected them, but I was worried because a lot of other groups seemed to be just joking around, not even sharing about their personal experiences of the week. Then too even the groups that had already prayed weren't actually making moves to any of the rooms, but were still sitting around talking.
But here's where my Woodlands experience came in handy: I learned the importance of NOT micro-managing classes from observing all the teachers I worked with. A lot of the time the teachers let small talk, etc. carry on even when students were supposed to be doing work quietly, and not only did this save the teachers a lot of stress from not having to maintain perfect silence a lot of the time, it also allowed for a lot of surprisingly course-related discussion. So remembering the importance of not micro-managing, and keeping in mind that the night was supposed to be Spirit-led, I kept my mouth shut and instead prayed for all the groups.
I prayed that the Spirit would be working in all the conversations--the "small talk," personal updates, and even sharing along with the more "spiritual" conversations--and that, preferably, at least some of the groups would be led to the rooms, since David and Angela put so much work into preparing the materials for the different sections. And I prayed for myself, that I would ease up and have faith in both the Spirit and the kids to make the night work.
It took a little more than half an hour (from the start of the program), but eventually the groups did start going to the different sections, and I was greatly relieved and thankful. I think it was a good lesson in patience, faith and trust for me.
