Over the past year, I have been a part of two exciting, repeat Flash Mobs involving Michael Jackson. That’s right. Michael Jackson.

MJ Flash Mob #1: It was about this time last year. Halloween to be specific. We were all enjoying another festive holiday gathering over on Lyle St. with a variety of friends and their kids in cute costumes. As the evening wore on, people slowly trickled out the door, off to bed, back to our adult lives. However, thanks to Twitter and a little bit of word-of-mouth, Stacy, myself and a couple of others caught word that in our very subdued city of Bellingham, a zombie “Thriller” dance was going to be taking place downtown. Being the curious onlookers we are, we immediately piled in to the car, found our way downtown, through the growing mobs of college students and a-little-old-t0-be-trick-or-treaters and joined a huge mob building around the intersection of Railroad Ave. and Holly St.

Here’s what we witnessed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IuEa9xthdM

MJ Flash Mob #2: Fast forward to the tragic day this summer, when we all found out the King of Pop had died. Shorter story here, but just as powerful in illustrating the amazing spread social media has in our lives. I’m on Twitter in the afternoon and start to see local tweeps (people who tweet) mentioning the possibility of a reenactment of the “Thriller” dance that night. Sure enough, the same zombies you saw above, put together a second Flash Mob, complete with a “dead” Jackson being crowd surfed away by the zombies, as a memorial gesture. It was pretty epic.

What does this have to do with students? Well, besides the fact that a good majority of the people I witnessed these dances with were in the good ‘ol 18-23 bracket?

I’ve been trying to think lately about ways to connect with students that are outside of the coffee meetings or our big programmed Tuesday gatherings. I’ve been trying to think of ways that I interacted when I was a student, ways I connected with my peers, places and things I got excited about. Some of the most effective, fun things about forming connections as a student seem to be centered around the spontaneous. People, and specifically, students it seems, love the idea of doing something random and in the moment, where they have the opportunity to share an experience and maybe make connections with each other.

A real problem I find is that it’s hard to do program ministry in such a spontaneous way, simply because it’s programmed. To be honest, I want to know how an activity is going to happen, who’s going to be responsible for sound or decorations. We need to talk about how it’s going to be promoted and execute that in a way that reaches students. We need to plan for contingencies, watch out for safety. When you’re in a ministry setting, you have the people who support, care for, and watch over the work you do and I don’t ever want to let them down. And most importantly, we want to be intentional with the ways we connect with students, hoping to provide meaningful opportunities for them to connect with God and with our community and to experience growth in the faith.

Part of me has to wonder, though, with those cautions and very practical necessities, if there isn’t something a bit limiting to the work of the Holy Spirit. Is it maybe part of the beauty of God’s interaction with us that creates moments of flash-bang excitement? Is it maybe the Spirit driving students, people, us all together to form bonds of community simply in the spur of the moment interactions?

I may have wandered a bit from the point, but I think there is something really worth examining here when it comes to program planning vs. spontaneous interacting/connecting. Maybe it is Flash Mob interactions where we offer an opportunity for a fun, spontaneous event or even a moment of worship/spiritual discipline, amidst the ongoing day-to-day, that gives students the chance to glimpse that freshness of the Spirit’s interaction with them.

One of the great things about our office is the “drop-in” atmosphere for students. On any given afternoon, you’ll find students helping make videos, talking with staff people, eating lunch, or just sitting on our couches between classes. Spontaneous, flash interactions happen there every day. I wonder if that’s a good place to start looking at how to best connect with students today.