Head Shaking Youth Ministry Moments

It was late at night and my high school students were in a prank war. It was more like the guys had pranked the girls a few times and the girls really hadn’t retaliated very well yet the guys wanted to do an end-all prank on this mission trip.

In the war room [the guys sleeping quarters] we were brainstorming pranks that would be hilarious. Most of the ideas were typical and involved shaving creme, smelly things, loud noises in the middle of the night, goldfish, or rearranging rooms. But I had one student, a senior, with a glimmer in his eye and a smile on his face. So I asked him his idea.

Let’s wait until 2 AM… we’ll all dress in black. Then we’ll sneak into the girls room and kidnap a freshmen. We’ll blindfold her, tied her up, and lock her in a closet… no, we’ll drive her around in a trunk all night!  That will scare her to death… that’s so funny!

All of the guys stared at him with jaws to the floor.  Looking at him I could see that he was serious and that he thought it would be funny. After several long seconds my response was, “How about we come up with an idea that doesn’t involve a felony?”

If you’ve worked with students longer than 30 minutes you have a moment when you were left shaking your head… share it! Leave a comment with your story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.