|
| Comfort Zones
Most of us define our comfort zones the same way: Staying in the environments you like, and behaving in ways that make you comfortable. All with the goal of making life as free of risk as possible. We all have our comfort zones, and they lead us to eat certain foods, wear a certain style of clothes, subscribe to a given set of magazines, go to a select few places, engage with certain friends. If someone asked me to cut the remaining few hairs on my head a different way, I can assure you the answer would be no. Even when we are faced with facts that tell us there are better ways of doing things, the comfortable ways we have established hold powerful sway over us.
Which is why when someone put their arm around me and told me that I’d be a good Sabbath School teacher of 7th and 8th grade kids, I was quite certain that they had mistaken me for my wife or someone else truly qualified to teach kids. Me? Teach teenagers?! Definitely sounded like a job for the professionals, and way outside my comfort zone. Besides, the Sabbath School that Ken Dedeker and Bob Dahl lead is great and I always came out having learned something and being spiritually refreshed. And that is what it is all about, right?
I got caught with the oldest line in the book: “We only need you to lead once a month or so”. How can you say no to that? After teaching a couple times, I realized that we have a really amazing group of kids in our church. My visions of 13 year old kids bouncing off walls and/or each other were never realized (um kids, don’t get any ideas). Instead, they have been very attentive and willing to engage as we study various aspects of God. Whether we are learning how God is like a potter, or like water, or like light, or many other concepts we have studied over the past year, the kids have been adept at learning. Making it interesting and fun is challenging at times but God blesses even non-professional teachers like me.
Sometimes we think that only those of us that are something north of 29 struggle with getting out of our comfort zones. Kids are game for anything, right? In some ways they do that naturally, but certainly not all. And getting teenagers to test their own spiritual comfort zones has been a challenge of its own. Talk about spiritual things in front of your friends? Go back home and implement the concepts we have talked about? The teenagers of our church are indeed willing to stretch their spiritual comfort zones.
Our church has a wonderful blessing: Lots and lots of children of all ages. And they all need good Sabbath School leaders. Come stretch your comfort zone, and see what blessings God pours out on you and the children of our church!
By Dale Williams, MCA Operating Committee Member |
|
Download the 
Listen to "