Today has been a great day in the two high schools I teach scripture and run Christian groups. In the first school we had a great time during year 9 scripture. There were about 10 students and they were all engaged in reading Luke 22-23 and the events leading up to the death of Jesus. To kick off I asked them what their last request would be if they knew they were going to be executed the following day. This was an interesting kick-off because you can imagine the answers that some year 9 boys are inclined to give! The rest of the lesson was simple. We read through the text, stopping to work out what words meant and summarising along the way. One of the key things that we reflected on was the way different people responded to Jesus. This all culminated in the different response from the second criminal who recongnises that he himself is guilty, that Jesus isn't and then asks (in his last request) that Jesus would remember him as he comes into his kingdom. It was great to be able to talk to the students about how they will respond to Jesus and the how to be brought into paradise with Jesus.

The lunchtime Christian group was a bit crazy today at the first school... but the exciting thing is that a yr7 girl that has recently started coming to the group and to youth group keeps bringing different friends each week. If praying, pray that they would keep coming and that they would put their trust in Jesus' death and resurrection.

At the second school we had an interesting time as we continued reading through the Gospel According to John. Half way during lunch time there was a student (who I have invited to come to the group every time I teach him in scripture) and 10 of his friends who showed up to the group. We were just about to start reading the Bible... as they walked in I thought that I needed to change the passage that we were about to read to make the most of the opporunity. Since they were a little bit rowdy... after meeting them all I said in a loud voice: "Today we are going to be looking at a part of the Bible where people tried to get Jesus stoned!" This certainly got their attention. It only took about 5 seconds for one of them to realise I was probably talking about rocks and not drugs! The kick-off question was what types of thing do you think people would have been stoned for 2000 years ago. We then proceeded to read the latter parts of John 8 and reflect on why the Jews wanted to throw rocks at Jesus. This was fun to work through as we talked about what it meant when Jesus said "I am" and we even had one of our visitors give a blow by blow history of Moses (based on his recent viewing of the Prince of Egypt!). We concluded with thinking about how we ought to respond to Jesus if he is God.

What do you think of my play on words to get the attention of the group? Clever? Or dishonouring to Jesus?

Praise God that many non-Christians heard the good news of Jesus today. Thanks for reading this far... I think it's my longest post ever!