Church at Chipotle and Things I Found In A Burrito

This past Thursday we closed out our Church at Chipotle experiment.  An idea that originated due to aliteration but turned out to be pretty fulfilling.  Over the last 6 weeks four of our small group leaders lead a prayerful bible study (Lectio Divina) with a group of students that ranged from 4 – 10 teenagers.  There was no sign-up, students just showed up to eat a burrito and talk about the Bible.  Some had bibles, some didn’t, sometimes the scripture provoked deep discussion, sometimes it was the burrito.  But now that this experiment has come to an end their is much to digest.  A lot on my mind, here’s some of the positive:

• We Can Create Intimacy In A Busy Place – Chipotle around 6pm got pretty busy but it didn’t deter the students from opening up and sharing.  It also proved to be a good exercise for finding quiet in noisy world.  So often the teens are tempted to multitask, in this situation they were challenged to focus.
• We Can Get Students More Comfortable With Scripture – The exercise of a Lectio Divina not only introduced them to new readings, but helped them go deeper.  Sometimes we read over a passage and think we got it.  By going through God’s word multiple times we will always find something new.
• We Can Be Simple Yet Impacting At the Same Time – There was no set-up, hardly any cleanup, leaders just had to grab their bible, the whole evening was simple, but the conversations were complex and deep.  I think this is due to the fact that our leaders weren’t preoccupied with setting up or explaining and could just focus on the teens.

After the evening was done my mind was racing, my heart was filled with joy, there is so much more to process, which I hope to share with you all.  Sometimes as youth pastors we need to search and seek out the simple things to do with students, because when you can do that you can really see how God is working.