Curtis Fry

Last night at youth group we invited guest speaker Curtis Fry to speak with our teenagers. His story is incredible! It was a story that challenged our teenagers and our small group conversations were sparked in all kinds of directions.

We began with an ice breaker called forced decisions which allowed our teenagers to move around a little bit and begin to think about difficult topics like morality, perception and others judgments of us. This game was a great fit because we didn't have time to move to another room to move around - instead we played it right in our room.

Then we shared joys and concerns followed by introducing our speaker, Curtis. He was very good. As he told his story he shared the bad decisions that eventually led to him being arrested. Then he told his story growing up and who he was. Then he told us what he was arrested for: murder. Curtis' story is bleak and the hope that he offered often comes in the hope and faith he has in God.

Curtis did get a little preachy at points. He could have been more brief and allowed more time for questions. And it seemed that Curtis was using the shotgun approach of just covering lots of topics rather than just closing in on one and really selling it. For instance, he mentioned red flags that God had showed him - which would have been a great closing. He talked about choices that he made - but it was really only one choice that was a mistake. He talked about life in prison, forgiveness, grace, drinking... all could have been good in and of themselves. We'll surely touch on these again in the future months.

Q and A was brief it seemed our teenagers, there were over 50 of us so intimidation was likely high.

Small groups were all over the board as their topics were so varied. Kids reacted strongly to the choices, drinking, and forgiveness themes. the leader reaction at the end of the night was also all over the board many connecting to different points in the talk, surprised with kids' reaction, and wrestling with their own ideas of having a convicted murderer in our room.

It was a powerful night - very memorable!