The Sphere of Influence

It is quite amazing some of the things we can learn from our junior high students.  We had a pretty cool experience this past week in our large group meeting.

I am always encouraging our students to be thinking about easy ways to get there friends to hear about God and get them to check out church.  Our students have said time and time again that they want to evangelize and invite their friends, but they have a hard time knowing when and where to do it.

One of the things that I encourage students to do is have friends spend the night on Saturday night and make plans to take them home after church.  It is a little easier if they are waking up in your house to just get ready and have them go with you.  Then they don’t have to find you or walk in by themselves.  You can introduce them to adults and other students to help them get plugged in.

Apparently our students have been listening.  We have noticed several families bringing groups of kids lately that spent the night at their house.  Some are for birthday parties and others are just nights spent having fun.

Well last weekend this happened again, but it was like to the extreme.  We had one family that brought two van loads of kids.  Another family had a van full of boys that stayed for a birthday party, and yet another had another van full of boys.  All the sudden we had a whole bunch of students that had never been to our group before, but they weren’t alone.

I got to meet them and say hello, but because they came with their friend they just came in and jumped right in.  The nerves weren’t there.  I was so excited to see our students reaching out to their friends in this way.  Another cool thing is some of these students came back on Wednesday night.

A sleepover at a friends house could be the thing that changes a friends life forever!  Don’t let your students underestimate how big an influence they can be on their friends.