Yesterday, we continued our Revolution Student Ministries Summer with a trip to Concord Mills for a game of Mall Madness.
We had the students divided into 5 teams with their sheets of 44 items to find and be back by 4:30.
Being a youth pastor that likes to be prepared and cover all bases...I called in July to get it cleared with Concord Mills. The Lady on the phone gave us the full okay and said that some stores do not allow it, so have your students be polite and thank them and move on to another store.
So we get there and let the students loose in the mall and start the adventure. An hour and a half into this, we are sitting down eating lunch as an adult staff talking about the upcoming year and we get phone calls from one of our groups. They said they are being held by security on the other end of the food court and we need to come very quickly.
And then the Mall Cop on the Segway ended the Scavenger Hunt.
"Mall Cop" was trying to be serious....it was very hard not to laugh.
All the stores had no problems with the students...just the 3 mall cops that had to show us who was in charge by bringing out a folded sheet of paper that stated no scavenger hunts.
And told us the lady that we talked to to get permission did not know this policy...
So now we just add it to the list of youth ministry...
So my feelings....
I was a little mad since we had called ahead and got permission, but then were told that everyone doesn't know of this policy. But I was more upset that the Mall Cops held two of my students like they had done something severly wrong so everyone passing by could see. I have put in a call to the head of Concord Mills and am waiting a return to call.
All in all it was a fun day, we did get to continue to stay there and go around, just had to end the game early....
