Help!

PunkStar · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:10 am Post subject: Help!

Hey guys:

At school I'm running the prayer meeting this year. We've had a small problem. The prayer meeting was set up as a time during recess when the students could come and pray to God with other Christians. Just recently we started holding the meetings outside instead of inside. We found inside we were getting people coming in just to get out of the cold. And not to pray. But just recently we've had people coming to the meetings and are just messing around. They aren't there to pray. They are just hanging around for some reason. I wish I knew why. Anyway, it's really distracting us who are there to worship God. We have trouble focusing on prayer and we're starting to dislike those people not coming to pray seriously (not like hate or anything, we're just starting to have trouble looking at them as people God loves).

I don't want to throw those people out of the meetings, they come of their own free will and I don't feel throwing them out is a great Christian testimony. We've been praying about this for a while now and we are seeking God's direction in this matter. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas on fixing this.

Thanks

Meridian · House Cat Joined: 02 Dec 2002 Posts: 154

Wow. Interesting dilemma. Well, if you follow Christ's example, there were times where He did have just the disciples around. However, I don't recall a passage where He ever told someone who wasn't a disciple to get lost.

Praying together as Christians at school during recess is probably very convenient for all of you, but it seems to come at the price of having the "non-serious" folks present at the "serious" meeting.

As a practical matter, here's my advice: If you guys/gals want to have a serious-Christians-only prayer meeting do it by-invitation-only, before or after school either at the school or at a location nearby for sake of convenience. Make the recess prayer time a little more inclusive by asking the "serious" and "non-serious" folks if they have any prayer requests and then have a prayer time where all those requests are lifted up. Make the "non-serious" folks feel included.

On the spiritual side, God's got them there for a reason, whether they know it or you know it or neither of you know it. Keep praying that God gives you insight into why He has them there and pray that they get what they need from Him through you. Whatever you do, don't treat them with disdain because they don't fit into your agenda for the meeting. Sometimes God moves outside the agendas we set. Very Happy

(I say that having learned it the hard way.)

Hope that helps.

Mer