My students opposed me! (and I'm glad they did)

Growing up, church business meetings weren't really high on the priority list. Lectures, occasional conflict, motioning and seconding... Thanks, but no thanks. 

Our church had a business meeting this weekend and over 50% of my midweek Bible study crowd attended. That in itself was encouraging. It's been well established that one cause of the oft-quoted 80% dropout rate is that students don't connect to their church. They just connect to the youth group. These guys care way more than I did when I was their age. These guys are invested in their church, and that is so good to see. That was surprise number one.

So I was encouraged, but also fearful that they'd get turned off by the whole process. There was a vote on the table and it doesn't really matter what it was, just know it wasn't a huge deal (like carpet color) and there wasn't a clear right and wrong way to vote. It was a preference kind of thing... Still my kids are leaning forward constantly and asking questions... grown up questions... lots of them. Some I didn't even have answers to. They desperately wanted to understand the issue. So we vote and the vote was split somewhat evenly... Another fearful moment because I knew these guys just saw that our church was not all on the same page. I wanted their experience to be positive. I wanted them to see unity. I wanted them to see unanimous voting! Which brings me to:

Surprise number two. 
The vote was so close that a simple "yea" or "nay" wouldn't do. So we do the stand up thing to count... And I stand up. And my students sitting behind me? Some of them.... Don't stand up.

They voted differently than I did. Which surprised me because I was really voting on their behalf. In other words, I was voting the way I expected them to vote. They completely destroyed my assumptions. Right after the vote I turned around and said, "We just voted differently... Still love me?" One spoke up and said, "I just voted differently than my dad, so yeah..." Why did this make me so happy? Because on some level I saw them owning and expressing their own feelings, not regurgitating mine or their parents. They are owning this whole church thing and it's one more step towards them totally owning their faith. The vote was small, but the moment was a big encouragement for me... And though they might not realize it yet, it was huge for them as well.