Why the Focus Month

Why try to gather a group of teenagers and preteens and remove them for a month from everything that normally makes up their world?

I mean, after all, aren't there a thousand other ways to make a difference in the world, ways that might even have better long term results?

Service projects are easier to arrange, and it's hard enough to ask someone to give up part of a weekend. Americans are busy. No one would begin to argue with the fact that we have responsibilities and commitments coming out our ears -- even more so in the middle of the school year. We work hard to carve out time for church and youth group, because they are priorities.

But, maybe that's the problem.

When Jesus was on the earth, He gathered a group of young men (most of them probably teenagers) by simply telling them to "follow."

As a parent, what would you do if your sixteen-year-old son or daughter left their job mid-shift in order to follow Jesus? As a teenager, what would you do if He came into your school and simply said, "Follow"?

What would you do when it became clear that following was going to cost you everything?

Not four hours on Sunday and three more on Wednesday night; not twenty minutes a day to read from the One Year Bible; but everything.

I can't explain the logic of the Focus Month perfectly, although, over the next few days, I will give it my best shot. But, I know that He told me to follow, and I know that there are others who hear that same voice.

Why take a group of teenagers and preteens away from everything that they know as normal?

Because, for some of them, that is what it means to follow.