the little chipper that couldn't

kurt johnson, the middle school pastor at saddleback asked for crazy middle school stories for his new book. I'm sharing the chipper story with him. I've shared this one a few times, but if you haven't heard it, I hope you'll enjoy it.


our ministry used to do a messy “extreme night” every six weeks. the most infamous was the chipper night. I saw this guy putting branches into a wood chipper and I thought to myself, “what if we put vegetables like watermelons into a wood chipper and sprayed the shredded vegetables onto students? they would love that!”
so the volunteers and I went to work. we made announcements for weeks. we got a ton of safety glasses so that no one would hurt their eyes. we went to local grocery stores and got a mountain of day old vegetables. and of course, we got a wood chipper.
on the night of the event, we had a huge crowd of students; they were dressed for a mess and anxious to get started. after a brief message and a brief small group time, the students went to the back parking lot where there was a huge sheet of plastic, the mountain of vegetables and the wood chipper.
the first game was to see who could fill a cup up with chipper-mush. so they stood there in front of the chipper wearing safety goggles, raincoats and holding their cups in the air.
we tossed watermelons, pumpkins and tomatoes into the chipper; there was only one problem: nothing came out the other end. we tossed in more vegetables, nothing.
the chipper began to cough and sputter, and an orange goo started to ooze out the sides. (I later learned that chippers only like to chip up DRY things, like branches. wet things like vegetables clog them up.)
I started to panic. the night was still young, and all of these students came looking for an adventure and we had nothing to offer. I made a quick and foolish decision. I yelled out two words that I still regret, “FOOD FIGHT!”
the students grabbed the vegetables and started throwing them at each other. one student slipped on the plastic and hurt his knee. one girl got a fat lip from a flying potato. and every one of us walked away with bruises.
at the end of the night, I must have given out a hundred apologies to parents and students.
the volunteer staff and I stood there stunned as we looked at the mess that needed to be cleaned up and the chipper that needed to be repaired. one volunteer broke the silence saying, “it seemed like such a good idea at the time.” we all laughed and cleaned up the parking lot.


I share this students whenever we talk about wise and foolish decisions and I often say, “a good idea doesn’t always turn into a wise decision.”