Friday, November 21, 2008

Invite Night pt 4: Sermon


Invite Night occurred October 15th, 2008 and saw 6 new people come to our youth ministry (there were 37 total for the night), with 5 students getting saved or recommitting their lives to Christ. It was such a resounding success that we've decided to detail the process here so others can take this idea and try it in their ministries.

Here are the other parts: Advertising, Games and Schedule.




Something tragic has occurred. The blog silence for the last two weeks (save for yesterdays post) was for the most part due to the fact that my computer blew up and I was using my outdated laptop for a while. This made doing anything and everything painfully slow. Therefore I tried not to be on the computer as much as possible, which is actually a nice exercise, if you mean to do it and don't have it forced on you.

*End Rant*

I said all of that to say that my actual sermon notes from Invite Night are now missing. If I ever stumble across them I'll post them, but here in a nutshell is what I talked about:

I started by referring to the game Chubby Bunny, and asked them (rhetorically) what they thought the point of a game like that was. After giving them a second to ponder that question, I opened another poll question, asking them their favorite super heroes from their childhood. The best responses were mighty mouse and captain caveman. From there we discussed Jeremiah 29:11 and talked about how God created us with a purpose, like a super hero and unlike Chubby Bunny.

At Youth Conference, the speaker Jeremy Johnson gave a great illustration about how a sponge in it's packaging has all the potential in the world to absorb water, which is it's purpose. However, a sponge can only absorb water when it's placed in water. I talked then about how we were created to be in fellowship with God, that's our purpose, and only in God can we be fulfilled.

That's the night in a nutshell, it was amazing, and even more encouraging is that some of the students are coming back, and they're getting plugged in to their purpose. I would highly recommend doing an Invite Night, in fact, we've got another one planned for January.

Did you do an Invite Night? Leave me a comment.
-Jeff-

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