Zach Bashista and I lead a small group of 10 junior high guys and we call ourselves the Pyros (Mostly because all boys love to burn stuff) I got a cool note from the Mom of one of them regarding our meeting on Sunday night that really touched me:

Thank you for last night’s small group. It was a perfect topic for XXXX. He has been struggling big time, moving into an environment where it is not “O.K.” to be who he is, i.e. thoughtful, kind, smart, an independent thinker. I have been encouraging him to be defined by Jesus, not by peers. It was great to have him hear that from someone he actually respects. The way he has been defining his feelings for me lately is, “I’ve felt bad about my environment before but I’ve never felt bad about myself.”
Thank you once again for taking a Sunday night away from your family, for pouring your heart into middle school kids. You make a difference.

Our group has been going through pieces of the book Wild At Heart, looking at who Jesus was (not the flannelgraph Jesus, but the dangerous, radical, revolutionary Savior of the world) and looking at who we are to him. We started our group off talking about all of the names we've been called in our lives and how we've responded to them. Jr. High guys have been called everything in the book - and every name hurts - short, fat, stupid, faggit, wimp and worse - each name leaves a wound. We talked about who we are to God, and the stone that Revelations talks about with our name on it, and the importance of knowing that name - knowing who we really are to Him. We watched the clip from Gladitator where Maximus states his entire name to the Emperor, and the clip from the Matrix where Neo begins to believe that he is not just "Mr. Anderson" as the Agent tries to convince him. Here's the miraculous part - eight junior high guys spent 3 minutes quietly listening to God, asking him to tell them who they are to him, and writing down what they heard. 3 Minutes for 9 guys with ADD (I include myself in that) is miraculous! What an amazing group of guys - watching them grow from being these tiny immature 6th graders to where they're at now is a blast!