Lock-Ins

I get to do crazy things for my job every once and awhile. Singing "Oops I Did It Again" with one of the associate pastors and the youth director at the ski retreat would fall under that category. I think taking over a good number of tables (probably about a third) at a Barnes and Noble every Sunday for a young adults group might fall under that category. But, I think one of the events that will always separate the semi-crazy from the truly crazy is the lock-in. This is where you voluntarily lock yourself in the church or other various locations with a group of high schoolers for a night. It includes lots of junk food, games, and caffeine and no sleep.

This Friday I got to do my first true lock-in at the church (the last lock-in was on a Saturday and doing a lock-in before you need to coherently lead a worship service is not a good idea). And it wasn't just any lock-in. It was a Laser Quest Lock-In!!! This meant we met at 9, played some games at the youth house including ultimate frisbee in the church parking lot, did a devotion, and then headed to Laser Quest at 11. At midnight, everyone else except our group was kicked out and we had the place all to ourselves. So, it's me, Jeff the youth director, Rob from Young Life, Greg the lone dad, and 34 high school students ready to go at it for 6 hours! That's right, we were there for a solid 6 hours of laser tag!!!

The area that we played laser tag in was pretty intense. The room is full of black lights and there is fog everywhere. There are two levels and ramps going up and down each place. There are also no real good places to hide. Every place has an area that you are exposed so you can't just sit and hide the entire time. Therefore, we got our exercise.

Each game was a bit different. We would play free for all where you were basically playing against all the 35 other people and would shoot at anything that moves. There were also team games where we would divide into two or three different teams and try to outscore each other. One of the most unique games we played was called "Twins." We were asked to find a partner who was roughly the same height as you. As a leader, I waited a bit and ended up being paired with Mike. He was still taller than me but we figured it would work. Then, the catch. The packs that we had to wear for the game basically covered our back and our front down the the navel and there are straps on the side to keep these parts from flapping around. For this game, our packs were tied together and we were essentially attached at the hip to our partners. It definitely made for a humorous time! We would come to a fork in the path where we could go left or right and we would literally go in opposite directions and yank each other around. We had a decent time even though we got killed off early (our packs died after we had been shot 30 times) I found that it was actually more entertaining to watch because partners were literally dragging each other around.

All in all, a great night! I lasted until 7 a.m. easy and probably could have played another round (although I was quite happy that I didn't have to). I love working with youth!

And on that note, I get a slight position shift now that I'm halfway into my internship. One of our youth directors resigned in mid-December and there has been some shifting since that has happened. If you haven't already guessed, I love working with youth and it's my goal to be a youth pastor once I'm finished with seminary and everything. I have a strong background and therefore part of my role as the intern will now be to fill in as the interim youth director. So in other words, expect more crazy stories like this as the year continues. :)