Oh My God, You're all a Bunch or Dumb Asses! or Thoughts and Ramblings from the Mind of a Children's Minister.
The second statement above would probably be a much better title for this blog, but would you actually read it if that was the title? Seriously, You know you wanted to find out who the dumb asses are, and if you happen to be one of them. You know you did. Well here's your answer... You are, we all are, everyone is a dumb ass. At least that's what one of the kids in my children's ministry thinks.
You know it is interesting how all kids think that they know better than everyone else. But don't we all think that? A couple of weeks ago we were starting a new Wednesday night class with all new teachers. (I'm one of the teachers, and I'm new, since I just stated working with this church). I decided, in all my children's ministry wisdom, that we should play some games with the class to get to know each other better. After all 3rd 4th and 5th graders love to talk about themselves and share interesting facts about their own lives, right! I actually know this to be a sticking point for a lot of kids, so we tried to make it interesting and add a little physical spin to the sharing time. We went bowling! Everyone loves to bowl. And these kids fell right in line and were excited to bowl too!
So here's the game. We all had to bowl a dodge ball towards 15 bowling pins. (I know that it should have been 10, but I was stretching to make sure we learned enough facts about each kid). So the object of the game was knock over the pins and tell a fact about yourself for every pin you knock down (or 15 facts if you miss all the pins). So with a class of 12 students we started bowling. The class was chaotic to say the least! From the get go they were asking if they could go to the gym. Begging to take the game to the gym, "please, please please, let us go to the gym."
Now let me get one thing strait, I am not a gym person. I have spent my fair share of time in the gym, and appreciate those who use gyms, but I personally am not one of those people. I knew that the kids wanted to go to the gym, and had been warned by Pastor P., the lead Children's minister, that in the past, they spent the majority of their Wednesday night class time in the gym. What I was not prepared for was DAVID. David wanted to go to the gym, and he wanted to go now!!!!
David, I had previously learned, as ADHD and is on the spectrum, meaning he is socially challenged and gets rough with other kids - rough physically, and verbally. While I had not really seen much of this side of David, this first night of class, was about to be an education for me as well as the to resident students who were teaching along side me. David loves going to the gym, and had been working hard throughout the entire bowling game to rally support to go to the gym. I told him early on, we would go to the gym when were were finished with our game, but everyone needed to have the chance to bowl first. David volunteered to go first. He rolled the ball and hit nine pins. He quickly and unintelligibly muttered out 9 facts and sat down. The next couple of kids began to take their turns, all the while chaos was looming above the classroom like a thunderhead building before a flash flood! David was loosing it.
Others in the class, were not at all interested in the game. They too wanted to go to the gym, or play any other sort of game but the game that we had selected for them. Paper airplanes began to fly, kids began running laps in the room, the noise level was reaching newer and newer levels that could only be described as incessant. They were picking at one another. None of them, except for a singular boy named Jackson and a sweet quiet little girl named Elle, could sit still any longer. The bowling experiment was falling apart! Were were pushing our way through the game as determined as we could possibly be; more determined than any bulldozer has ever been. We were going to finish this game, damn it!
Time stood still, the game was eternal, and then it happened. David looked up and saw the clock. There were only 10 minutes left in class. He looked at me and said, "Are we ever going to the Gym?" I replied in a devastated and overwhelmingly exhausted way, "No, not tonight, we still aren't finished with our game."
SNAP
"Oh my God, You're all a bunch of dumb asses!" exploded from the mouth of David. Jaws dropped, everyone slowly turned. This was simple to do because time stopped. The universe had just split open and the 3rd 4th and 5th grade minds were whirling! Then as fast as time had stopped, it crashed back in on us as one of the resident teachers pointed to the door and grabbed David by the shoulder. There was no sound in the room. At least from my perspective there was no sound. My ears had stopped functioning. It was not until David was out of the room that I realized that Elle, sweet little Elle who had been waiting patiently to tell us of her 8 facts about herself was almost done with her list. "... and my favorite food is Pizza."
What just happened? Did I really just experience this, or was it all an elaborate hallucination? Did I eat something that is causing me to dream horrific things in the middle of this class?
Then Jackson comes to me and says, "Mr. Jason, is it my turn now?" Yes I reply and hand him the ball I pass the game off to the other resident and rush out the door to find David. He is, yes you guessed it, in the GYM. We talk and I tell him to run and get out his energy. I know that he held in his explosive forces as long as he could, and I tell him that we will talk about it later.
So why am I sharing this story? I share it to encourage others that are working with kids. It's not easy. Working with kids is actually very hard, at times. We are not perfect, in fact a lot of times we are all a bunch of dumb asses. But, we keep on working with kids. We know that we too can learn from them too. Our best plans are not as important as the needs of a kid. I was forcing my lesson through. I wanted to learn more about each of these kids!!! But in turn I learned nothing about them, and a lot about myself. I was a dumb ass.
I will do my best to not be a dumb ass in the future, but thanks to David, I know that changing gears and moving forward or running down a rabbit hole might be better for the class as a whole, and not just trying to accomplish my goals. Making a difference in the life of a child will always trump completing a lesson plan!
Proverbs 13:20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.
JC
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