discipline... yuck!

My least favorite part of youth ministry is discipline. I know good things come from it, I know kids grow and eventually a light bulb should go on. I sincerely try not to be one of those cranky adults that always says "no" and yells at every little thing. I believe that positive reinforcement works better than negative. I believe that youth will live up (or down) to whatever expectations are set for them. And all of that is great in theory.

And then there are days like today.

We used a donation to get a popcorn machine. Huge cool fun improvement. And so we had popcorn in paper bags today. On 3 separate occasions I told the youth that they needed to throw their bags away when they finished their popcorn. I guarantee that every youth had the opportunity to hear this. There are 2 trash cans in the UG, conveniently located by the popcorn eating area. No big thing.

As the youth prepared to sign out, there were 7 or 8 either on the table, on the counter, or my favorite-- the one smashed on the ground by a bunch of spilled popcorn. And I said, "if I find popcorn bags on the ground or not in the garbage when everybody leaves, we will not have popcorn tomorrow."

"You have to give us a snack."
"I'll just bring my own."
"Fine, i won't come tomorrow."

Instead of addressing the actual problem-- a 30 second pick up of a few popcorn bags, the youth banded together in a stubborn declaration of entitlement.

So here's a real, not so cheery look at after school youth ministry. And I'm caught in the dilemma of how to handle this. There need to be consequences. There needs to be a major attitude change. There needs to be something.

I'm open to suggestions.