Release The Feast: 30 Hour Famine 2014


Watch Release The Feast

It's time for our 30 Hour Famine. It's one of my all time favorite events because it's outward facing, significance building, Kingdom resembling, and life changing.

A little background. The 30 Hour Famine is an international movement of students fighting global hunger together. Each year, our students learn to see the world differently as they participate in becoming educated, fundraising, and fasting for a 30 hour period.

Why?

Fasting is good for a few reasons. It's a spiritual thing. It helps us break free from our mental clutter and it can bring us closer to Christ.

Fasting changes our worldview. It will give us a taste--a reminder--an empathy--for those who we are helping. When we can identify we can offer more of ourselves and experience others more abundantly too.

Fasting brings our youth group together. Our adults light up as tribe leaders. Our students unite for this purpose. We learn about each others quirky coping skills when we are hungry. We forgive. We laugh. We make memories. There's really nothing like this experience.

This years theme is RELEASE THE FEAST.
Bascially, our 30 hours is an unfeast to release God's resources to those who need it most.
The HPNY junior high and senior high famine starts on Feb 7th and ends on Feb 8th 2014. We have less than 30 important days to focus on what we can do to love God and love others by fighting hunger together. 

I thought I'd share what we did last week to get things started.
(World Vision provides loads of resources, helps, and instructions. We choose from many of them and have some of our own ideas as well. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to visit www.30hourfamine.org to see how your group can be involved.)

1. Kick-Off Night

We planned a worship service that will set the stage for sign-ups. 
We sang.
We danced.
We played hunger trivia.
We inspired each other.
We gave a challenge.

We use the time to give meaning
and shape to their understanding of the famine. We want to provideintrinsic motivation for our students to get involved. Our
hope is that they will feel compelled to say yes and that they won't
grow weary in doing good because they feel connected to their own
"yes" from the very beginning.

Later...

We fast.
We pray.
We learn.
We rest.
We serve.
We celebrate.

We had at least 100 students decide to particpate in our
famine this year. I'm excited about the goals that they have
set for themselves.

Our challenge was for every student to participate. In a big or small way, we wanted them to be a part of the journey. Some students aren't able to fast. Some aren't able to come to the overnight experience. We want them all to know that you don't have to have an event to love God and you don't need a packet to do something for others. To reinforce that, we give them ways to get involved outside of the 30 hours. One of the options is to fast and pray in a different every day for 30 days leading up to the famine. Students can find the challenge every morning on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter

We also have a  GENERATIONAL GOAL this year. We hope that moms and dads, teachers and friends, grandparents, and cousins of participants will join the 30 day prayer challenge to support those who are learning, fundraising, and fasting.

Does your church or family participate in the 30 Hour Famine?
What are your best practices?