help me brainstorm for our big recruitment event?

Kids making homemade Runzas (no frozen bread to be found here, so I’m putting them to work helping me make fresh dough). Yum! Baking is such a great picture of throwing together various ingredients you’d never eat separately, yet together, are delicious. Wish you could come for dinner!

I’m in the office today on a cool, fall day. (Life with flipped seasons still catches me off guard.) Today’s first priority is to continue to brainstorm a post-lunch (move body/don’t fall asleep) 20-minute vision and interactive event for our upcoming recruitment event on May 30.

The event is one in which we’re helping participants (college and non-college) think about God’s will for their lives and to encourage them to make decisions regarding their careers in a way that helps them to pursue God’s calling for them.

It’s a 6-hour event with white-space time for reflection amidst content. We’re actually calling it a matchmaking event because it’s not hard-sell on joining the ministry, but rather helping them consider how to match how God’s made them and available opportunities, including those to serve here with us.)

The goal for the portion of the day I’m leading:

• 20 minutes
• interactive (keep them awake after lunch)
• cement the idea that their life is an investment (invest well, no “perfect” fit but be open for how God would lead, and invest intentionally)

Initially, I thought of something like everyone gets assigned an ingredient that goes into baking a cake (but they don’t know it because they only see their ingredient). Somehow it’s revealed that their ingredient matters and the recipe they put their ingredient it will be better as a result of what they have…and it’s needed. A cake isn’t a cake unless ____ is in it.

That wasn’t the best option, because it didn’t fit with our “there’s no one, perfect place for you to serve” as God could have one person invest their life in various places. Not just the idea that their ingredient can only be used to help make a cake.

Just a few minutes ago, I think God gave a new idea. Maybe you could help me flesh it out? What if I give people an ingredient, but have them brainstorm various ways it can be used? I first thought of baking soda. You can use it to make biscuits, cake, bread, use it to clean or…make a bottle rocket!

Then, maybe after each person brainstorms, I’d have them mix together (small or large groups) and combine their ingredients in different ways and see what they’d make.

What other ingredients could I assign to people that would have obvious…and less obvious uses? (I like the parallel of “less obvious uses” because, often, we can have a narrow view of how we think God might use how He’s wired/created us.)

Here’s my first go at the list. What would you add? Also, maybe think of household items that can have unique/surprising uses, when combined with other things?

• baking soda
• milk
• lemon juice
• flour
• yogurt (or, yoghurt, as they say spell it here)
• butter
• vegetable oil
• an egg
• coffee
• vinegar

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