One thing that makes me angry is poison ivy. Anyone who has ever had it, knows that it stinks. It’s not the itchy, burning part that bothers me, it’s the oozy nasty look of the rash. I would like to say that there aren’t really too many other things that make me angry, but then I would be lying (another thing that makes me angry). Why all this anger?
Currently, our church writing team is working on the first series for our fall season, if you haven’t guessed it’s about anger. We want to explore what makes us angry, whether or not anger is bad and how to best use or diffuse our anger.
As a youth worker, I know I get angry a lot when I meet resistance and I could list a number of different examples but I think it boils down to one thing…control. If I could control people’s reactions to a message, or if I could control the commitment students and ministers had to the ministry I might find myself getting less angry. I have a feeling the same goes for most people, especially teenagers, we get frustrated and upset when things don’t turn out the way we planned. One of my hopes for this series is to allow students to manage their anger in a God honoring way, use the energy that is sometimes wasted on anger towards fighting an injustice and help students give forgiveness to others and seek forgiveness from God when they’ve gone too far.
To get more insight into this subject, I’m going to draw a couple of students together to mull over and come up with a list of what makes them angry.
What do you think makes them angry?