Today’s guest post is from Mackenzie Matthews in Ft. Collins, CO. She has written a few other posts for the YLLB that you can find here. The article below was originally posted on Mackenzie’s blog.
Earlier this year one of my dear friends and fellow leader at Fossil
Ridge, Jenny “The Gold” Ackerson and I decided we wanted to commit to
loving our Seniors well. Both her and I expressed feeling relationally
overwhelmed with the amount of kids we wanted to love well this year. In
that, we decided to really try to do this thing well. The Seniors.
Jenny spearheaded a bible study for the Senior girls. Every other week they would meet at a local coffee shop and read Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge together. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
We started a tradition of washing the feet of seniors last year. Last
year we had a mixed group of 10 or so seniors guys and girls. This year
it was all girls. And we had 15 or so that we had close relationships
with. So we decided to dedicate a night to celebrate them. This is what
we did.
Our goal for the night was to Celebrate. Encourage. Commission.
We started the Celebration by cooking them dinner. I
made my favorite Tomato and Sausage Risotto and we had brownies with
whip cream and big ripe strawberries. We laughed, and wanted to be sure
they felt waited on.
The Encouragement piece we broke down. We started by having cabin time like conversation. Two questions:
1) What are you most excited about for next year?
2) What are you most scared about for next year?
Then we gave words of advice: Always seek what is true.
Always seek to find what is true about God. Who does He say that He is and how do you know it?
Always seek to find what is true about you. What does He say that you are?
Find Community that will remind you of those things.
Find a place to give your life away.
Before we arrived we planned to give the girls each a gift. We made
them Wordles. It’s an awesome website that will make typography art out
of words. We bought frames and printed off small 4×6 pictures of the
wordles. They were made for each one of our seniors by using words of who they are. We also had a time the week prior where the whole campaigners of
underclassmen got to shower them with words. So we used those, and added
some ourselves, after some prayer and listening to the Lord.
So we took these gifts, put them in bags, and hid them in the back
yard. To finish our time of advice, we asked them to literally go to
seek what is true in the back yard like an Easter egg hunt. So they ran
through the back yard like kids, finding their gifts.
After the gift and advice portion of the night, we got to wash their feet.
With the introduction of what Jesus did. In a way of saying we have
served you, now you go and serve others in your next phase of life.
Jenny and I each washed their feet together.
After each girl Jenny would
open in prayer for them, two or three girls would pray for their
friend, and I would close.
The time was sweet. Sweet time to celebrate girls we have loved for a
long time. To encourage them in their next stage of life by reminding
them what is true. Lovingly sending them off to do big things in the
name of Jesus.||
Here’s a similar post from a male perspective.
How have you celebrated your senior class? Please comment below.
