Last weekend was a lot of fun! About 30 of us spent Saturday and Sunday playing together with God in and around Martin and Rosa’s house. Since they and their family began following Jesus a couple of years ago, they’ve wondered what God wanted them and their house church to do to make a difference in the lives of the children who live around them. Though they are always ministering to and providing surrogate “parenting” for the kids around them, the idea of a “kid’s weekend” began to emerge… They asked Nancy and me to help them. It needed to be simple. It needed to be reproducible for normal Mexican Christians. It needed to be cheap. So, after praying and describing to one another what we believed God was leading us to do, we decided to dive in.
Beginning about noon on Saturday, we began the party. There were seven adults and 25 kids (ages ranged from 3 to 16 with the average being about 9). As we described what we were doing, two images were used over and again. One image was that of caldo (Mexican soup). Although Nancy provided a basic framework of organization, we talked about the weekend being like a soup that we make together, each one adding their ingredient and trusting that in the end it will taste good. The other image was “playing.” We reminded each other that we were just “playing together with God.” And play we did! We “played” three stories from the life of Jesus. We “played” each one at least three times with different kids playing the parts in each telling—afterwards we talked about what we liked about the story—we wondered and discussed together what the stories mean to kids like us. We played games. We played soccer. We played musical chairs. We played with clay. We had a campfire and roasted marsh mellows. We sang songs to the Lord and to each other. We sang silly songs. We prayed together. Everyone brought bedrolls and we “camped out” there in the house. We ate simple meals that we prepared and cleaned up after together. We talked and listened to one another talk about real life in a place where poverty, addictions and abuse are the norm. There were tears. And did I mention that there was playing?
I wonder what God will do with the seeds planted in all of us last weekend? I’m not sure, but I think something significant happened in the hearts of the adults. Martin and Rosa want to do this again in January or February—maybe plan to have a kid’s weekend every month or two. They see it as their way to incarnate Christ and his missional presence among children in their little corner of the world. I wonder about some of the other small Christ communities around us and how they might choose to incarnate Christ among the children in their neighborhoods.
Posted by chaddsch 
