Hey Church Family,

This past weekend we had our ANIMATE WEEKEND. Animate Weekend is for middle school students currently in 6th- 8th grades. This usually is the weekend of our “lock-in,” but because of the state of the world, we ended up having a Friday night and Saturday morning event. We had a blast!

This weekend is honestly one of my favorites all year. It is a time when we get to come together, spend an extended amount of time together, worship together, and have fun together. I love that students have fun at church, but even more importantly, I love that students have fun when we worship together.

Friday night we began our time with some games led by our high school students. How cool is it to have our high school students taking on some leadership within other ministries? We played a game that might be best described as backward charades. Two students came on stage and they were the ones guessing the charades. The students in the audience were the ones acting out the charades. It was hilarious to watch. They acted out everything from movies, to sports, to Tik Tok dances.

We continued our night with worship. This year, we invited our favorite band, MoveLove, back to Midland. They are based out of Memphis, TN, and made the drive to be here once again for Animate Weekend. Worship is always such a sweet time with our students. This is a time where we can let down our walls that we have put up and sing out our praises to the Lord.

Our speaker, Christian Seay, had three things that he talked with us about Friday night. First, he defined “what is worship;” second, he reminded us “who we worship;” and third, he invited us to consider “what God calls us to offer as a sacrifice for our worship.”

After the message, we moved into small groups. Our small groups were then able to elaborate on the message and dig deeper into scripture with one another. Some of the questions they were able to discuss together included:

• How do you think forgiving one another is an act of worship?
• How do you think caring for one another burdens is an act of worship?
• In light of what was talked about tonight, how is this going to change your understanding of worship and community?

What an incredible time for our students to be able to sit down with caring leaders to talk about what worship means to them as individuals.

Our night ended with surprise personal pan pizzas and a lot of 9-square-in-the-air! You really can’t go wrong.

Saturday morning, we did a service project with Keep Midland Beautiful. As we all know, Midland accumulates a large amount of trash and we were able to play a small role in picking that up to help our city stay beautiful! We had such a great time serving our city together.

We came back to the church for some of the Lord’s chicken, the one and only, Chick-Fil-A, of course! We ended our time together with worship.

In every event we do, we always begin and end with worship. It stands as a reminder to us for the reason that we come together. We may be silly, have fun, and play games in between, but the reason for us to come together is to worship God as a community.

With Joy,
Nicole Brown