February 25, 2002
Waco youth kick off year by slowing down
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___WACO--Wade Smith took a different approach to kicking off his youth ministry this year. Rather than revving his kids up, he slowed them down.
___Using Richard Foster's book "Celebration of Discipline" as a guide, a dozen youth and five adults learned about the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, Bible study and meditation.
___One focus for the 33-hour event, dubbed Fast Break Weekend, was fasting.
___The group had its last meal together at 10 p.m. Friday night and then ate ice cream just before midnight to begin their fasts. Saturday, participants consumed only juice at breakfast, lunch and dinner, in addition to water throughout the day. The retreat ended with a breakfast meal at 9 a.m. Sunday.
___"One of the cop-outs that is often used is that fasting is something you don't talk about because it's a private thing," Smith said. "But if we don't talk about it at least enough to teach it, how will these kids know?"
___The goal for the weekend was to introduce the young people to spiritual disciplines that sometimes have been neglected.
___"The temptation in youth ministry is to do it bigger, better and louder and forget that sometimes we just need to be still and commune with God," Smith said.
___To help the group slow down, no watches were allowed and all the clocks were hidden. "Part of what the kids were learning was just how to sit without a lot of stimulus. It made them tired. Some of them went to sleep. And for the most part, we just let them do that if that was what they needed," he said.
___"We feel like we have to have all these programs and activities and if everybody is not having just a really great time that something is wrong," he said. "But this was an important time for these young people."
___Participants had been asked to come to the weekend with three issues in mind that they wanted to work through with God.?One girl brought the prayer journal she had kept for the last year and read through it during the weekend.
___Since spending quiet, contemplative time with God was a new thing, teaching sessions were spread throughout the day. One of the ideas discussed was the difference between reading the Bible, studying it and meditating over it.
___The number of participants in this event was much smaller than most youth events at the church, Smith acknowledged. But he doesn't believe that decreased its value in any way.
___"We hope it will have an impact on them individually, but also that it will have kingdom purposes as their lives begin affecting others," he said. "We've got a pretty full program for the spring, and we thought building a core of youth with the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, Bible study and meditation active in their lives was a great way to kick that off."
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