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Twice a year the staff and administration at Windermere High School take the week off of school and bring in a speaker to help focus the student’s attention to the most important lessons in life: the goodness of Jesus Christ. We call this week Spiritual Emphasis.
This year, they’ve asked me to be the speaker, and even after my years of serving and doing chapels at WHS I’ve never led an entire SE week before. With humble hesitation I accepted and I’m very thankful that I did.
I personally find it challenging to speak to youth, and it was all the more so for me while I was the Vice Principal at WHS (the students don’t really want to pay any spiritual attention to the same person responsible for their discipline!). However, I found this batch of WHS students quite mature and almost universally attentive to God’s Word and my messages.
We normally have the speaker give 2 sessions in the morning and 1 in the afternoon, however, for some reason I requested that we do 2 in the morning and another 2 in the afternoon. In order to avoid the law of diminishing returns, I had planed on a more interactive format for the sessions, that was about 1 hour of preaching with a video followed by a 5-10 minute breakout session that was led by the students in small groups with relevant questions, and then we’d meet back together to discuss their responses.
And it worked!
… I may have also bribed them with candy from time to time!
All in all, I felt that the content of our time together helped the students take careful consideration of the reality of God’s authority and rule, and our positions as His creatures, made in His image, and given a spirit in need of redemption. At one point we talked specifically about repentance, and I at the end I asked if anyone would like to repent today, either for the 1st time or to get back into fellowship with God? I asked them to stand up and give evidence of their faith and desire to choose Christ, and unbelievably even in front of their peers almost half of the students rose to their feet. The impression I got was that of genuine desire to return to their God, at least as much as 10th and 11th graders are capable of.
I had a wonderful time serving as the Fall WHS Spiritual Emphasis speaker and with much less hesitation I would consider it an honor to minister to the staff and students if they asked me again.