There's No Plan Like No Plan

This is a special story of grace, and shows how God works in His Church. In my urban ministry, we had a small youth group for "seniors". This wasn't for "youngsters". But one day, three youngsters came to the Church’s big steel gate, asking for Youth. It was 5:00 pm on a Friday, when nothing was happening. We said: "There is no Youth." But they continued to hang around at the Church gate. We said: "There is no Youth! Go home!" The next week they came again, at the same time. Again we sent them home. The next week they came again. The third time, a leader of our "seniors" said: "All right, come in. Let’s have Youth." Within months, there were about 40 youngsters on our Junior Youth roll. Interestingly, within weeks, the Senior Youth disintegrated, for perfectly natural reasons -- studies, jobs, moves, and so on. OBSERVATION: Author Ray Bakke calls it "God's surprising interventions" in the inner city. In fact, I don’t see how the notion of planned ministry can ever work in the inner city. One needs to shift to a sensitivity to God’s opportunities. It's a "file photo" of the Junior Youth at devotions.