Officer Hank

Last night at youth group we had a special visitor from the Davenport Police Department. The Parenting Fellowship group hosted an evening of Safety School here which included dinner together and then 4 age-specific breakouts for Pre-K, 1-4th grade, 5-8th grade and parents. Following their programs, I invited one of the police officers to stay for our youth group evening.

I intended this police portion of the evening to only last 15-20 minutes, and then to carve out some time to pray with and for the local law enforcement. However, once the officer began sharing his perspective on some of the more dangerous things in the world of youth, I could tell that we would be sitting a bit longer than anticipated. Officer Hank's talk took roughly 45 minutes and covered very relevant topics for our teenagers about the hidden dangers of our media culture. He explained in detail how police pursue violations like bullying and sexting (which is prosecuted as child pornography). In this discussion, his main point was that most teenagers don't realize that what their doing is wrong, can be traced back to them, their parents, and eventually prosecuted. He gave several examples that really showed the variety an dangerous nature of even receiving texts that could be construde as child porn or bullying.

Hank closed his time by talking a little about his faith and peer pressure. Though this part of the conversation could have been a little more powerful, I summarized his thoughts by also sharing Romans 12:2 and some words about resisting peer pressure. It was unnecessary for him to say that high school friends don't matter later in life, though that may be true for many people, it's not helpful for teenagers because no one wants to feel like their relationship doesn't matter. It was much more powerful when he talked about carrying the same attitudes, values and beliefs that you have now into adulthood, encouraging kids to make those choices the right choices right now.

We finished our evening with an extremely goofy game called instant replays. I broke the students into small groups and invited one group forward to create a crazy group pose while the rest of the students closed their eyes. When ready, we invited students to open their eyes for 10 seconds and we snapped a digital photo of the group. The other teams, one at a time, came forward and tried to replicate the exact pose, and two adult leaders judged the competition using the digital photo for comparison. After several rounds of hilarity I tabulated points and handed out a prize. The game was a great match for our group because we have a natural stage area and we had perfectly equal teams (with one adult leader mixed into a group to make them even). It was also easy for some students who are more physically and mentally challenged to participate. some of them watched, and some were invited into groups and given helpful instructions by their peers. It was definitely a winning game for our group.

We closed the evening with worship and some contemplative quiet time. I had planned a more intense contemplative experience but we were too short on time to make it work, maybe next week.