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Just watched this……..
Boys oh, this was gripping and emotional viewing……..
Go check out Mark Inglis who was on this summit attempt……the man is amazing!
Is sunday-school & youth ministry un-Biblical?
As if I didn’t have enough thoughts and questions about why young people leave Church……
I grew up going to Sunday School. Goodness, here in Northern Ireland who hasn’t been sent to Sunday School? I didn’t have or get involved with a ‘youth ministry’ until I was a bit older and able to be a leader of sorts……
But, are these things good? More importantly, are they working?
As I was thinking about this film (left), how discipleship should happen in the home and how Christian parents should lead their children I remembered something…..
Years ago Cherith and I were leading a kids/youth summer club, doing the usual fun & games stuff, interspersed with Bible stories etc etc.
During the proceedings of that week, one of the young guys Dad’s came and asked me if I would make a point of speaking to his son about salvation. “Find out where he is, if he has or wants to make a decision and get saved.” (im paraphrasing)
I felt uneasy but at the same time felt a responsibility as the “leader.” I was too young and immature to realise that the real leader in the boys life was passing the buck to me…….his Dad was a Christian so why did he not know that this was his responsibility?
The young lad felt he could relate to me, he thought I was cool. His dad said he found it hard to speak to his son about this stuff. How common are these kinds of things? Is this acceptable? Is it damaging the family? Difficult or not, in a Christian home, the parents have a responsibility………..
This film – which you can watch for FREE here - looks at what is wrong with Sunday Schools and Youth Ministry. It challenges the idea that we should send children to a specially designed programme for their age group and segregate them from the rest of the Church body…….they suggest that Christian families have lazily passed on the responsibility to youth leaders who are often young, inexperienced and have not yet become parents. In short, Christian families have been passing the buck…….
It is a very interesting and challenging film…….
What youth ministry/sunday school experiences do you have? What have they done for you, if anything? Do you think segregating children and youth is helpful? Is it Biblical?
Id love your thoughts….
Woody Allen & Lowered expectations….
When writing about the new Woody Allen film ‘Midnight in Paris,’ Mike Cosper says this;
“Allen’s conclusion—in this film and others—is lowered expectations. There is no “Golden Age,” only life, which was as full of dissatisfaction in the past as it is now. Christians shouldn’t be too quick to toss this conclusion off as fatalistic or too humanist. We live an incredibly narcissistic time where our expectations for life, love, marriage, and happiness are grandiose. We throw holy water on narcissism and count on our religious lives to generate the results we want. We romanticize all kinds of “Golden Ages” or “Golden Relationships,” imagining that Christian celebrities and leaders have the perfect lives we want, wishing we could step into their world, and imagining that the right combination of circumstances and religious obedience could earn them for us. “If I were married to (blank),” “If I worked at (blank).” Such narcissism needs the gospel to remind us that there has yet to be a “golden age” or a perfect situation, and that sin’s effects make all of life “a little unsatisfying.” We would do well to simply expect a little less.”
Read his full post here
I guess this post unintentionally follows on from my ‘no ambition’ thoughts…..
But, just as I asked in that post, here it is again……..what about your ambition?
How does it look?
Are you expecting too much? Or are your ambitions focussed on the wrong things?
Narcissistic perhaps?
