Buddy Passes and ignorant people
It's official. When it comes to flying - I hate buddy passes. Yesterday I was supposed to have had a meeting with a guy named Perry Noble in Anderson, SC. He is the pastor of Newspring Community Church that was started 6 years ago and they are already running over 4,000 people. I have not looked forward to a meeting as much as this one in a very, very long time. To make a long story much shorter - here is what happened. Every flight on Thursday morning was booked solid. Not only were they booked - they were oversold and there were about 13 standby passengers trying to get on each of the planes that I needed to be on. Needless to say - I got bumped from both flights that I needed in order to get to Anderson on time. I hate buddy passes... I am convinced that Delta makes it as hard as possible to travel with buddy passes. If you ever get the opportunity to use them - don't.
The other day I heard a guy say that "if teenagers are the church of tomorrow - than our churches are in major trouble". He then went on a rant about how teenagers are ashamed of God and no matter what the church does we will no longer be able to reach them. Let me just rant a little bit about those comments.
1. Teenagers are not the church of tomorrow - they are the church of today. The person who accepts Christ at any age is just as much a part of the church as the person who has been saved for the past 50 years. There is no favoritism in the Kingdom of God. Let's stop acting like there is.
2. Teenagers are NOT ashamed of God. They are ashamed of their church. If we give our people (whether they are teenagers or not) something they can be proud of - then we will not have to beg our people to be in church on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights. Rather than investing so much energy into putting a guilt trip on people in order to get them in church - we should simply invest in doing everything that we do in church with excellence. We don't settle for second best in any arena of our life; however, we have come to expect that in our churches.
3. We can reach them! They are looking for something - we just have to build relationships with them and point them in the right direction. The bottom line is that most churches won't (not can't) reach them because they expect lost teenagers to clean themselves up before they are welcome in our churches. Just a thought - lost teenagers don't have a drinking problem, smoking problem, whatever problem - they have a Jesus problem...and until that get's taken care of - than everything else is irrelevant. We can reach teenagers! We have seen over 360 saved and baptized in the past 30 months at Crosspointe...They can be reached. Will you be the one to reach them?
The other day I heard a guy say that "if teenagers are the church of tomorrow - than our churches are in major trouble". He then went on a rant about how teenagers are ashamed of God and no matter what the church does we will no longer be able to reach them. Let me just rant a little bit about those comments.
1. Teenagers are not the church of tomorrow - they are the church of today. The person who accepts Christ at any age is just as much a part of the church as the person who has been saved for the past 50 years. There is no favoritism in the Kingdom of God. Let's stop acting like there is.
2. Teenagers are NOT ashamed of God. They are ashamed of their church. If we give our people (whether they are teenagers or not) something they can be proud of - then we will not have to beg our people to be in church on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights. Rather than investing so much energy into putting a guilt trip on people in order to get them in church - we should simply invest in doing everything that we do in church with excellence. We don't settle for second best in any arena of our life; however, we have come to expect that in our churches.
3. We can reach them! They are looking for something - we just have to build relationships with them and point them in the right direction. The bottom line is that most churches won't (not can't) reach them because they expect lost teenagers to clean themselves up before they are welcome in our churches. Just a thought - lost teenagers don't have a drinking problem, smoking problem, whatever problem - they have a Jesus problem...and until that get's taken care of - than everything else is irrelevant. We can reach teenagers! We have seen over 360 saved and baptized in the past 30 months at Crosspointe...They can be reached. Will you be the one to reach them?
posted by J.R. at
5:18 AM
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