More ATL Stuff

The second ATL I did in Matamoros was a miserable failure. No one shared what God had shown them with any confidence. We didn't know where to go. We didn't find a single thing that we thought God was telling us.

Is that what made it a failure? No. What made it a failure was that I didn't really talk about it with them in the debrief.

So, here's what happened.

I talked with them - they were all boys, with the exception of one female leader - about what we were doing and why. I gave them the verses that have become my staple, Rev 3:20 and John 14:21, and sent them off to pray. They came back and had nothing. No one shared anything except for 'a red arrow.' During our discussion, one of the kids said that he wasn't convinced that God was real...what to do? I sent them off again and this time they came back with a little bit more information. They saw pink. Pink!

I felt a disaster coming on.

We started off in some random direction with Tori leading the way. We would get to an intersection and I would ask them which way we should go. No one would answer. Except for Tori. She got really frustrated with their inaction and ended up leading them around, starting conversations with people (through a translator) and trying to get these boys to do what they should be doing. She was unsuccessful.

We eventually gave up and headed back to the church. No one was saved. We didn't really talk to anyone except for some kids - they may have come to VBS, but I don't know for sure. When we got back, I tried to talk with them about what happened, but it just didn't seem to click. I did talk about whether or not we had heard the voice of God and how we apparently had not, but...it was just weird.

I did two more ATL's on that trip, both with two different teams from Georgia. They were from a different church than the boys mentioned above. On each of those trips, we saw EVERYTHING that God revealed. Why were they so different?

I think that God did reveal things to the boys in my second group and they, for whatever reason, were reluctant to share what it was. I say this for a number, 3, of reasons. 1) In all the ATLs I have done (somewhere around 12), God has always shown things to the people in the group - with the exception of this one group. 2) They were all junior high boys and appeared to be extremely concerned about what everyone thought about them. 3) The church they were from didn't seem to have an open spirit about this kind of thing. By this, I mean that it didn't appear that one could say something like, 'I saw something Irish' as a man did in one ATL I did, without worrying about rejection or condemnation. The other two churches on this trip were eager to see what God was doing while the people from this church stood to the side and sort of just watched. Not that there is anything wrong with watching, but they didn't really participate in most of the out-of-the-box stuff on the trip. At the end of the trip, I did see a definite change of heart in their youth leader. Maybe next year will be different.

Was it really a disaster? I guess it wasn't, at least for me. I learned that I need to make them comfortable with sharing. That I need to NOT take the responsibilty of the ATL's success on me.

The next day, I got to lead two more ATLs and saw God work in powerful ways.