Married to the Empire

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Saying Good-bye

Sunday we said good-bye to our youth minister. He and his wife are headed off for a mission opportunity. We're quite sad to lose him because he's been a fabulous youth minister. The kids love him, and the adults enjoy working with him. We've seen tremendous spiritual growth in our kids during his time with us.

We started the morning with a breakfast for the youth. We did this in place of our regular Sunday-morning classes. It was a special time for just the kids to hang out with the youth minister and his wife. We had lots of yummy food, and 3 of our talented girls sang a song they'd written.



During the service the youth sang 2 songs that they'd worked on during the summer:



There was an entire chorus of sniffling going on during one of the prayers. What a blessing to have had a youth minister worth crying over!

We had a reception later that afternoon for the entire church to attend. The kids showed a video they'd made of the youth minister's time with them. It was very well done and quite sweet. We took a final group picture, and then we said good-bye.

It's been a good year-and-a-half.

5 comments:

JunkMale said...

Would any of the songs happen to have been "Friends" by Michael W. Smith? Just wondering, because back in my pre-college days, I remember hearing that song semi-frequently when people would leave congregations in a friendly manner.

Anne Marie@Married to the Empire said...

Oh, JunkMale, you just made me laugh! I doubt our kids even know "Friends." And seeing as my husband is very anti-Michael W. Smith, I know that he would like to keep it that way!

No, they sang a couple of songs from some youth-choir song collections. I don't think they were anything that anyone would actually know, as in, they don't get any Christian radio play.

JunkMale said...

I was thinking that them kids probably hadn't even been born when that song was released. Then again, who knows if I was even born when that song was released. I did a quick Google search, but couldn't find the year.

Anne Marie@Married to the Empire said...

I pulled my ancient MWS album off the shelf and looked it up. "Friends" has a copyright of 1982. I knew it was old, but I didn't realize it was that old!

Anonymous said...

What a blessing your youth pastor and his wife were!

And I'm cracking up over junkmale's comment! I was in choir in high school, and every year we had to sing at graduation. And every year, we sang "Friends." I can't remember if it was at my own graduation or my brother's a couple years later, but we also did (Steven you're going to LOVE this one...) Place In This World! Those songs probably wouldn't even be allowed in public school anymore.