Before we went to meet our FCHS friends, Ben and I grabbed some pizza and talked about our plan for the evening. We decided not to tell the kids much about what club would be like. We wanted them to be surprised. We wanted them to experience it without any preconceived ideas of what it would be. We told them that they would love it, and it would be one of the best nights they'd have in a long time. But most of all we talked about how amped we were for how the Lord was working. Here we were a little over a month in with a group of kids wanting to drive 45 minutes away to see something that they have no idea about. We were encouraged.
So we met in the parking lot and all six of us climbed into Ben's car and began our excursion. As you can see from the picture, we took two girls and two boys. As of now we don't have any female leaders in the area so to have two girls be interested already is huge. I don't want to say it was 100% because of Ben's rugged good looks, but from the picture in the previous blog I think you can deduce yourself that it was a larger factor. We found the address without much of a problem and walked in together to a house smack dab in the middle of suburbia.
Hidden Valley holds their Young Life club in a house. The house was big and beautiful, and as we walked in we quickly found ourselves in a sea of shoes. We took off our own to add to the pile trying to wrap our heads around how many people must be here based on the shoes. We heard loud music coming from somewhere downstairs and we followed some fellow club-goers down the stairs into the biggest club I've ever seen.
At the end of the night, Fetzer told me there were about 140 kids there including us. As we waded through the throngs of people, trying to find a place where I could talk to our group we had tons of kids introduce themselves to us. By the time we reached the back, the one area of the room that was even remotely open, Fetz came around the corner and introduced himself to all of us. Fetzer is the face of Young Life in Roanoke, and more specifically he runs the Hidden Valley club. Fetz is a rock star at getting people to buy in to whatever is going on. As he sat there and explained to our kids what club would like that night I felt blessed that we were hearing from someone who knew Young Life backwards and forwards. Our kids were all about it.
For the next hour or so we sang stupid songs at the top of our lungs, played games, watched skits and other things that sound absolutely lame when you try to explain them. I think if I told a kid we would be singing Taylor Swift songs at club it would be a great way to prevent them from coming. But I remember looking around the room seeing kids go absolutely nuts. The quarterback of the football team singing with an arm around some random freshman kid belting out "You Belong With Me". Ridiculous. And at the end Fetz gave a quick talk about Jesus and His calling of the disciples. He likened it to the football team and how you would expect Jesus to call the best and the brightest. If you were to put a football team together you would go around finding the biggest and most skilled guys. If you were trying to change the world you might do the same. But Jesus was different. He used what was ordinary to show that He was the real deal. He took a handful of fisherman, tax collectors and zealots. He calls all of us, no matter how we look at ourselves. And at the end he said a quick prayer and invited all to Bojangles, a HVHS Young Life tradition following club.
As we drove home we got to talking about everyone's favorite part of club. For some it was simply how crazy it was, for some it was how welcoming everyone was and for some it was the talk. They wanted to know when we could start this. How could be bring this to FCHS? Where could we have it? They wanted it bad. I told them that we could start meeting and looking at what this might look like for us. To say the least they are on board.
But the highlight of my night came when Ben and I got to tell them why we wanted them there. We didn't want to just show them an awesome time, we wanted them to hear what Fetz had to say. We got to tell them that we didn't just want to run a program, but that we wanted to give them a chance to hear the best news the world have ever known. The Gospel. That was the reason Ben and I were going to football games. That's why we were at FCHS as often as we could be. We didn't want them to get lost in the hype of club and miss the message.
So moving forward, we've got a lot of work to do. We have an incredible group of kids that is ready to get rolling. They want to go again in a week or so and bring their friends. They want to start meeting, a meeting we will call campaigners, weekly and going deep into what all of this means. The Lord is moving in big, big ways.
In conclusion, please continue to pray that the Lord would be guiding us. This is a ship that is moving very, very fast now and we want to be steering it with diligence. We don't want to get caught up in hype, but to slow down and allow the Lord to guide us. He will. And it will be incredible to watch.
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