The Next Step: Love•4•God

The Next Step: Love•4•God

L.O.G. weekends are peer-led.  Twenty to thirty youth serve on a Team to prepare and present a L.O.G. weekend retreat.

Of course, there are adults who serve as advisors, mentors and are, as one of our adult leaders always puts it, “cool adults who care about the kids”.  Understandably, most parents might be concerned about allowing their daughter or son to attend a weekend with no adult supervision.

But, most of the leadership comes from the youth themselves.   They plan the event, invite their friends and then give talks, lead discussions and serve in many other ways all around the theme of what it means to be in a relationship with God and how that makes a difference in their life.

I believe that the peer leadership is part of what makes L.O.G. uniquely effective.  Kids listen to kids differently than they listen to adults.  There’s real power in hearing someone your own age sharing his or her story – the highs and the lows, the joys and the struggles and where God fits into that story.

But on our journey of faith and life, along with someone to walk beside us, we also need someone to go before us – to lead and guide and teach and inspire.

If L.O.G is about discovering God’s love for us, The Next Step: L•4•G is about how to love God back by living in relationship to God in our day-to-day lives.  L•4•G focuses on how to deepen our relationship to and understanding of God. 

There’s plenty of time for conversation and sharing with friends, but L•4•G is always led by an adult – someone who has been on the journey a little longer than the youth – someone who’s spiritual maturity and wisdom can encourage, challenge and motivate us to take the next step – and then the next and the next.

Sometimes we focus on the spiritual disciplines.  Sometimes we dig into Scripture.  We’re just back from L•4•G #15 where Sheila Auter led us as we considered “The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive”.  In group discussions and personal vertical time we sought to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit about what it means to be alive in Christ.

There's an old Chinese proverb, “A journey of a lifetime begins with a single step” or maybe more accurately “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.  It is my prayer that the steps we take in L.O.G. and L•4•G last thousands of miles in our lifetimes.