New Feature: Question of the Week 11-12-08
Prompted by a question I’ve been struggling with lately I’m going to start a new weekly feature here on the old blog. Each Wednesday, I will post a question, and together we’ll struggle with it and collaborate for an answer. Now, I realize going in that that sounds a lot easier than it will actually be, but that’s the fun part. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s answers. This week’s question is:
How committed should the church expect believers to be?
Now, discuss.
I think you first have to decide what committed looks like. I think it looks different in churches. I remember going to a church that didn’t want the band to have a red guitar because it took away from the worship experience. Other churches would call that church uncommitted.
interesting indeed.
I have a lot of different thoughts on this and none of them are coherent.
I just spent $300 on food, decorations, etc for a big Halloween party here at the YMCA. I planned games and a ghost story complete with a sounding alarm and a maniac. We even planned the party for our normal hours 5-7pm so that the teens could come here like normal and we wouldnt be competing for their Friday night.
7 teens showed up and then complained that nobody else was there and it was boring. I felt like I had wasted a bunch of money and alot of my time and energy.
This keeps happening to me because they simply just have way too much to do and not enough time to do it.
I am in complete agreement with James that the problem is two-fold.
1] Not enough programmers have my kind of mindset. Since I was a youth minister I know better than to schedule events on Wednesday nights or during times when teens should be with their friends and family.
2] Teens and Americans in general simply don’t know how to stop or say no. We get what we want, we do what we want, and we never hear the word No anymore. Ever. So we dont know how to say No to others. The bizarre truth is that you even have to say no to good things sometimes. [remember when David's men went out and got the water from his spring and brought it to him and he said No I refuse to drink this]
I think there is also a lack of humbleness, servant leadership, etc going around. It used to be that the priorities were God, family, others, self [or..self, others]. So in an ideal world people would be devoted to God, taking care of their familes, and staying healthy themselves and their priorities would reflect this, but that isnt what we are seeing.
It seems that Teens are seeing church as just another option on their social menu which in and of itself is troublesome. If you invite 10 kids to go bowling and 7 of them dont show up, their loss. Have fun with the 3.
However, I think that it is ok to hold teens to a higher standard when it comes to things like a Unity outing. The whole idea is to work on togetherness and you cant do that without being together.
The bottom line is that you are a mentor and they are growing into adulthood. Yours is a teaching role. The task is to help them learn how to say no and why they should be doing so while making time for the tangible life sustaining oppurtunities that the church provides.
Which leads me to another thought. The other part of the problem is that the church resembles an old out of touch man on the last leg of his long journey. But that is a whole other discussion altogether.