One of the groups that meets every week at Helping Up Mission is the Waterboyz. Different Waterboyz meetings happen all over the greater Baltimore/Washington area and are places where men hold each other responsible for spiritual commitments and band together to help someone else. After the last meeting, Pastor Kevin shared this summary of what happened with me.
After sharing personal prayer needs, the group took a passage of Scripture and everybody took turns reading 2 or 3 verses. Then, with pencil and paper, each man did a personal S.O.A.P. effort on the Scripture passage. S.O.A.P. stands for:
S = Scripture. Each one chooses 1 or 2 verses that seem to “speak” to him; verses that stood out from the rest and address themselves to us and our situation.
O = Observation. What is it these verses were saying? Examining the entire context, we think and write down what we think it meanst the principles and teachings involved.
A = Application. We then began to write down how this verse (or verses) applied to our lives in a particular manner; what is it teaching us now, and how will it affect us during the coming week.
P = Prayer. We wrote down a brief prayer that reflected our understanding of the verse and its teachings.
When finished, we went around the tables sharing with each other our different S.O.A.P.s.
We concluded with Dave, the leader, giving us all a small piece of paper containing a brief Scripture passage. We put our name and phone number on the paper and then placed them all in a hat. As the hat was passed around we took out a paper (making sure it didn’t have our name on it) and promised we would pray for the man whose name was written therein. As time goes by we will call/speak with the man whose name we have and inquire as to how his life is going, question if there are any issues we need to pray for, and show a genuine Christian concern for his life. We will also memorize the verse during the week.
The meeting closed with prayer, after 60 minutes. It’s important to the Waterboyz that these meetings last no more than one hour and they keep their promise.
The Waterboyz are a significant group of men concerned about the spiritual and emotional problems with men in today’s society. It is their prayer that God use the Water Boyz as a way of getting men to become more visible in their faith, more responsive to the promptings of God in their lives, and more sensitive to the needs of others in their lives (wives, children, friends, etc.) It’s also important to them that they not simply become men who sit around doing nothing but reading the Bible together. Serving others is absolutely crucial to their ministry.
I know the Waterboyz from my church and am so excited they have come to Helping Up Mission. If you want to know more yourself, check out www.waterboyz.org.
Sincerely,
Pastor Gary Byers
Spiritual Life Director