Gimmicks.
It is so easy to fall into the Trap - oh, whoa is me (Almost an Elijah whining session 1 Kings 19:10) I dislike Entertainment Youth Ministry. What you win them with is what you have to keep them with. I dislike the comparison game. Why? Because I feel it does disservice to the Kingdom.
So why not be ourselves? When students see the cool youth ministry down the road, why not ask them, so what are you doing here? Why not involved.
I think comparing churches (And we do it ourselves and as people ..I mean come on ...how many of us compare ourselves to good ole Doug Fields?) is like comparing apples and oranges. Both are fruit. Both are round. Both are very different. Maybe that is what it is about our churches. Both are trying to be the Church. But both come with different contexts and cultures to consider.
So the next time you find yourself wandering and wondering how I can be more like Church X, why not just wonder how you can just be the church and person God called you to be, and not this imitiation.
Otherwise we'd be too loose with the facts ...See these quotes below.
Came across this quote from YWJ:
"Youth Ministry Is in the Spotlight
There was a great story on youth ministry by Austin American-Statesman religion writer Eileen Flynn. And did you see the front-page story on the Friday, Oct. 6, 2006 issue of The New York Times? The headline said it all: “Fearing the Loss of Teenagers, Evangelicals Turn Up the Fire.”
“Despite their packed megachurches,” said the article, Christian leaders like Teen Mania’s Ron Luce are sounding an alarm that “their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.” The National Association of Evangelicals has even warned about “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.” But Christian Smith (author of last year’s acclaimed Soul Searching book) thinks people who claim that only four percent of teens are “Bible-believing Christians” are being too “apocalyptic” and too loose with the facts. "
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