Prayer

Bry introduced me to her friend Mike a few weeks ago.  He's a very nice fellow and came to our youth group so we agreed to go to his.  When we got there it seemed like your average youth group.  Everyone was chillin, playing games eating food.  The leader, Jason came and welcomed us.  It was all very youth group ie if you will.  We soon were upstairs for the more structured part of the evening.  To start we prayed.  However it wasn't just like your God bless this night prayer it was let's walk around in a circle with the lights dimmed.  This all made me very uncomfortable to begin.  I kept hearing "Trisha, this isn't wrong."  In the deep part of me that wanted to just slap the cult title on it all.  The experience was nevertheless interesting.  It didn't end there though.  We proceeded to pray for our city schools and families.  We stood in that circle proclaiming the things we felt were in need of prayer.  This was all very typical, nothing too unordinary.  Then we all started praying ALL AT ONCE all together in this circle, we're all praying for the same thing, different words, different reasons.  

The entire time I was basically praying that I would stop judging these people.  All this was good, it wasn't a bad thing.  It wasn't something that should be condemned.  It was quaint.  ... I suppose really what it comes down to is how different it was from anything I've ever experienced.  It seems to me that a youth group has the goal of numbers.  For the reason of reaching the youth and yada yada.  With that prayer time you aren't going to pull in a lot of new people.  If I was one of those kids who went to youth group simply because my parents made me, I would find that whole time to be, in fact, "cultish" if you will.  

That prayer time I suppose is just something I think should be done with an intimate group.  I could see the worship team on Sundays doing that.  If me Bry Aubrey and Andy sat down to do that it would be cool.  It would be an intimate time with God.  The big group prayer I hardly know most these people just makes it all seem very shallow to me.  ...

Anyways it was a good experience.  I'm glad I went.  I just don't imagine I'll be back.  I dig Element youth even if I don't always feel like I belong.  So there I will remain.