Sunday, February 17, 2008

Lent 10

Saturday's lent reading gives this quote, the author's prayer during a crises in vocation, education and calling,
"I cannot believe that you intend the best years of my life as a disciple of jesus Christ to be experienced between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. I cannot accept that I have peaked in my experience of you and the church and that I am to spend the rest of my life going through the motions. I cannot accept this."


I really hate the way the worldly trait of youth worship has seeped into the church. High school is should only be the best years of your life if you are in high school. In the world, youth is worshipped as the thing we wish we all were. There are very few television shows with old heroes. I have heard people brag about high school sports endeavors ten years removed from high school - like they have been living memories for a decade. When does it stop?

In the church, we have also succumbed to this "memory living" as student ministries are living front edge of the gospel and many, many adults are content to ride their pew into eternity. As a leader, I really hope that we can figure out how to break through the numbness that so many churched adults live in and bring people back to that first love for Christ - that which they (at least 85% of them) first experienced as a teenager.

May we live more fully everyday.

3 comments:

darrell said...

See...I'd like to see the "oldies" take a good look at what goes into making our teen culture just that...a CULTURE...with "good" stuff, and "bad" stuff, like any culture.
At the same time...I'd REALLY like the "youngers" to get a good understanding of what makes the oldies tick. What their culture was like that shaped THEM to be how THEY are.

Some mutual looking through the glasses of "culture" would do for each group what missionaries do when they go to a different country: discover what makes the culture tick...and accept differences as just that ... DIFFERENCES...not right, not wrong, just different.
How GREAT could be our outlook to the future, as well as our appreciation of the past and present!!
Thanks for bringing this to mind.

Darrell

Andrew said...

Lol! "Ride thier pew into eternity"? Thats awesome. ha ha. As for bringing Adults back to experience the love of Christ Im not sure? Mature, but dont get boring? I dont really know off the top of my mind how to fix that problem. I'll think about it.
-Andrew

James said...

thanks for the comments guys - i think this kind of stuff is the primary struggle of a great senior pastor. not that they figure it out...but I think this kind of thinking begs the real questions. When we can get away from individual desires for individual rights and individual (you get the idea), we'll start to see each other in real ways - and not feel like we need to fight for our own cultural ways.