Ministry to Young Adults – Syncroblog

Also read the posts on the following blogs (hopefully they’ll be up soon):

• The Contemplator.
• Die March.
• Tiaan.

The following question was raised on Cobus’ Blog (The Contemplator) and we were each asked to give our thoughts on Young Adult ministry (in broad):

“What is the general feeling of the theological students about Youth Ministry – specifically the young adult ministry, meaning ages 22-35, might even include the group 16-22? Is there any blogs of forums on that? Where do they belong, in the congregation or apart, etc?”

 

Having to organize the ministry to Young Adults (17-28) in my congregation, which started this year and is still in a baby steps phase, I felt that we should create a space, which we would like to attend. Something that has it’s primary focus on God and growing as a Christian, but something that would be fresh, be real. It had to be a space where we could relate to each other, where real life issues are dealt with and people can feel open to share their problems and flaws, also their victories and prayer requests.

The problem with this obviously is that it attracts only a certain type of person, someone maybe who grew up in the Church, someone who has no problems speaking his mind, someone who is prepare to take on the flaws of the Church in the open and prepared to converse about those problems. These are the people who we currently have (maybe 12 in total). It is so easy to form just another clique in the church and this is what we couldn’t allow.

I must admit, it could be my fault, not that we are a clique – that hasn’t happened yet (Thank God!), but feeling that everything is my responsibility. That I need to keep the stuff going and that I had to prepare some type of sermon each week. Having to pull a rabbit out of a top hat each week.

We changed all that, I had to tell the guys (and ladies) that our primary focus will still be on growing as Christians and growing closer to God, but that we couldn’t be exclusive. We had to plan our meetings in such a way that others would feel welcome, not expecting too much of them at first, but still challenging them a bit to get out of their comfort zones. I had to give the group back to themselves (difficult for a control freak like me!), they had to take responsibility for the stuff that WE are planning, they have to call people, put the tables out, basically they need to learn how to function on their own – to facilitate. I’m not going to be at this Church next year and it’s of no use to have a program that is so reverend dependant, that when I leave the whole thing will fall apart, but also people need to learn that sometimes the perfect answers to our questions doesn’t always exist. Churches are messy places – just like family is a messy bussiness.

I must admit however that this “new” direction we are going in hasn’t started yet, thus far we had a planning meeting, but the “old faithfulls” are very much exited on being able to plan along and having their voices heard. I will post on this again to tell you what is working and what isn’t (some ideas will help!!!!).

I have included our program for the rest of April and May, tell me what you think, please.

Date	Event	Place
22 April 2007	Poker evening and Info session on what we are planning.	Church hall
27 April 2007	Visit hospital to see where we could help out.	Johannesburg hospital
5 May 2007	Help with administration of Bible walk (fund raiser for Braille Bible).	Church hall
6 May2007	Chilling out (topical chat) – coffee.	Chapel
13 May 2007	Culture evening.	Chapel
20 May 2007	Praise and Worship (with teen ministry and Church band).	Church hall
27 May 2007	Chilling out (topical chat) – coffee.	Chapel

Cactus People

In a comment to what Roger said in a post on “Giving up belief in God, in order to find God.” My reaction was that I have rather lost faith in people (a current face of God) than having to lose faith in God Himself. Over the Easter weekend I was confronted, time and time again, on how Christ could have died for our sins – and sorry to show a bit of my bad side – especially how he could have died for people that doesn’t want anything to do with Him, or people who say that they are Christians but not living that way (to me it is like the most frequent form of blasphemy)!

And without telling any of the locals about these thoughts – I mostly aired them on the web in the past week, the reverend – who is my mentor at this church – said (while talking to adults in the confirmation class) that a lot of people call churchgoers hypocrites (holding myself back from shouting “AMEN!”), but that we should realise that all of us are saved by grace and in different stages in our walk with God. We aren’t all exactly on the same page, but we attend the same sermons and belong to the same congregation.

I remembered the earlier words in a post on being church, that being church is a messy business. I realised that, like the others, I am also saved by grace, that I am too in a process of trying to be more like the face of Christ – sometimes with success and sometimes without. Loving your neighbour isn’t easy, loving him like you love yourself is even less! But we need to do this, we have to because on the same grounds that I deserve to be saved, so does he (and don’t worry I’m not suicidal – but with the stupid stuff that I do sometimes, I need to realise that it was only by grace that I’m saved). It is only by grace that the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and that we can’t live without God.

 

On seeing this picture I realised how empty our lives would be if we won’t even give the time of day to some people – at least the cactus has some colour! Hugging a cactus will be painful (and it’s so true that we get hurt most by fellow Christians), but we need to embrace the cacti in our lives – that is what Jesus did (speaking to the Pharisees and Sadducees), they were the church people! They were the people who caused His death, but Jesus even embraced them (John 3) even though He knew that He will be killed by them. He laid down His life for cactus people (people like you and me), are we willing to do the same?

“I’m sorry to say: ‘It’s Good Friday!’”

Going to church this morning I found it very interesting (but mostly sad) that people didn’t know what to do with Good Friday. Where they supposed to be happy, should we be sad. Should we sing or mumble. Okay now! Obviously Christ dying on a cross for our sins is a very serious topic and we need to remember this.

• We shouldn’t forget the price that He paid to prove that He can save us!
• We shouldn’t forget the mockery, the purple robe, the smell of blood oozing out of His back.
• We shouldn’t forget being alone, not even having God your Father with you in your hour of need.
• We shouldn’t forget His final words on the cross that we should take care of each other (John 19:26-27).
• We shouldn’t forget His death.

 

But we also shouldn’t forget His resurrection. That we needn’t be sad – that’s back in the past, it’s part of the old you! (2 Cor 5:17)

If only we could truly feel the joy again, the joy of that first resurrection. If only we could share the joy that we have – if we were willing to give it away, as freely as we have received our own resurrection…

Starting anew!

A very good friend of mine recently decided to start a new blog, replacing the old one – you can find it here: http://mycontemplations.wordpress.com . This I found out just now – ironically without me knowing about this I felt the need of sharing more about everyday life that you would find in here! The blog started feeling like a cage, wherein I’m only supposed to post a certain type of article, most of the stuff that I posted felt a bit preachy – even to me! I’ll henceforth be trying to integrate more what life is about – I guess: what life is about to me, but I dearly request of you that you make this blog part of your space aswell! Therefore I removed the comment moderation option so you can converse freely (I am however having some problems that the site requires moderation from some people and not from others – so sorry for this!) - I would however like to ask you to keep language as clean as possible so that everyone can enjoy this site.