Photo: Youth from Hesston (Kansas) Mennonite Church during Friday worship. Photo by Ken Krehbiel. 

During the Friday morning worship service, youth were encouraged to be superheroes and love where they are. Friday evening’s service asked the youth to let God’s light shine as they join God’s church.

Live out your passions: Love where you are at

Jon Heinly, youth worship leader, began the service by telling the youth about the Native Americans who used to live in Central Florida, and reminded them that Native Americans continue to be oppressed and displaced from their land.

“That’s been our past, and all too often our present, but that can change,” he said.

He told the youth they can be the solution now and they don’t have to wait until they are older.

Scott Roth of Red Hill, Pennsylvania, associate pastor at Perkiomenville Mennonite Church and project manager for Urban Expression North America, continued this theme of youth empowerment in his message.

He addressed the crowd as “Scott Roth, The Tinkerer,” dressed in a top hat covered in keys and gears and with chains holding bottles, keys and a small scoop hanging from his belt.

Roth described how his journey to becoming a superhero began in 1996, when his best friend was killed by a drunk driver. He said he got angry because of the complacency of those around him, and his anger turned him away from church for more than five years.

During this time, a dog bit him on the neck, barely missing his carotid artery. It was also the anniversary of the day his best friend had died.

His mother called him and said, “You know God sent that dog to bite you?”

Roth took off his “superhero” outfit as he told the youth, “We don’t need an outfit to be a superhero. We don’t need an outfit to go hunt down the bad stuff in the world.”

He said a friend had asked him once, “If God is infinite, and God is in us, does that mean we have infinite potential?”

Roth told the youth that, yes, they are all superheroes, and they just need to learn to “Love God and love people together.”

As the youth left the hall, they were given a business card with information on how to join the “League of Infinite Potential,” a network of youth groups who want to dedicate time and effort to loving God and loving others together in their community.

Extending love beyond: God’s church unleashed

Remilyn Mondez, assistant professor in English and Communication at the Malayan Colleges Laguna in the Philippines, encouraged the youth to consider three components of being the global church: love, light and lives.

She cut and filled cups with dye-stained water to demonstrate how we must ask God for a new heart, because often our hearts become broken, stony or filled with pride and jealousy. She asked two youth to pour water back and forth to demonstrate that if we try to get love from each other, we will never have enough.

Mondez then described how we each must shine a light, but if we rely on those around us for the energy for that light, we will run out of power. Instead we have to plug in to the original source—God.

Mondez also reminded the youth that when we act as a church, we are dealing with people’s lives. She described how sometimes churches preach truthless grace, by assuring people that God has abundant grace, while other churches preach graceless truth, by creating and enforcing their own rules.

Mondez tossed an egg between her hands until it dropped onto her table and broke, to show truthless grace. She then held another egg firmly, squeezing it until it broke to show graceless truth.

“As a church we have to be mindful of how we handle people,” Mondez said. She had the audience pass a third egg from the front of the auditorium to the back as reminder of how we must handle the lives of those around us.

“As a church we have to preach [both] grace and truth,” she said.

The ushers passed out glow sticks, and Mondez asked the youth to crack it and hold it up in the air if they were willing to accept God’s call to shine his light in the world.

“Let’s stop being consumers like we are waiting for the church to entertain us,” she said. “Rather, let’s step up and be the leaders, make a difference, shine the light.” Mondez said.