One of my favorite job responsibilities as a pastor and mentoring program leader is meeting new kids who have no idea who I am or what I'm all about. Yesterday my mentees invited me to organize a pick up football game with a bunch of their friends who I had never met before. We drove around to all different parts of Homewood and the East End in search of kids to round up for the game at Westinghouse Park. I must have met ten new teenagers yesterday. I always laugh to myself when I'm with my mentees and they introduce me to the new kids as "their friend, Mr. B." Their friends just say "hey" and then they start right into their usual conversations with my mentees with all of the unedited cursing and crass talk that comes with it. My mentees and I have this thing where we'll usually let that go on for a minute or two to see if the friends pick up on me being a pastor and mentor, and that their crude words might somehow harm my innocent ears. What's funny to me now is that I don't even have to ask the kids to stop anymore... my mentees will just kindly inform their friends that "Mr. B's cool, but you shouldn't talk like that around him." Their friends are usually perplexed by my presence but agreeable. We hang out together for a while, and then all of a sudden I'm "in" and the friends start begging me for a mentor. They'll do anything to sign up for a mentor. They'll ask me to be their mentor, and my mentees will forcefully remind their friends that they've overstepped their bounds. They can sign up for a mentor, but Mr. B's taken.
After the football game yesterday, three of the kids I had just met asked if they could go to church with us. A few hours earlier they were cursing up a storm when they first met me, and now they were pleading to go to church with me. It still amazes me how God puts me in those situations, and I never take it for granted. God has given me a passion for building relationships with people who are not Christians, and as long as I go where God asks me to go then he keeps bringing people to me. God is so good! We all went out to dinner and then we went to church together, and the kids had a great time. We had some interesting conversations about God and life and a whole bunch of other stuff. Plus, the car ride to Oakland was hilarious because if you've ever been on a car ride with five sophomores in high school then you'll understand what I'm talking about. These guys were cracking me up, and by the end of the evening I felt like I had made some new friends. I'll be sure to follow up with them this week if I can. And that's how the Kingdom of God advances in this world... one relationship at a time. Being used by God to reach others is the great joy of my life.
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