Challenging The Teenagers & Oversimplifying Worship
Two terrific blogs I read decided to swap posts, each writing for the other’s blog. It turns out to be quite the nice experiment with two provocative entries. Both challenge the popular myth that 1) children need “dumbed down” Christian doctrine and 2) that children can’t handle high liturgy. My experience with catechism on vicarage with eighth graders and my own children at home concurs with these authors. When you treat the children as ignorant, do not be surprised if their faith remains ignorant. We have the freedom to limit the power of the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith through the means He has given. God forbid we do so!
(These are excerpts… Read the whole posts!)
Putting Out The Fire: Oversimplifying Worship
…The suggestion has been made that the kids are getting “too much church.†I can concede that there is a point when kids, indeed all people, might be spending too much time in one location without learning things like: what a price means at the store, learning how to kick a ball in a goal, or how to write her name neatly. But 20 minutes every other day isn’t that much. It is less time than we spend cleaning up after dinner.Good Christian friends, your targets for evangelism are usually older than five years old, and yet we expect less from adults. Dumbing down worship leaves people unchallenged and unprepared for the secular world they are exposed to the rest of the week.
Not only are Christian souls are under attack by atheistic philosophy or other religions, but the Christian soul is under “friendly fire†from the rejection of infant baptism, the denial of the Real Presence of body and blood shed for us for the forgiveness of sins, salvation by faith plus works, decision theology, and other differences in doctrine among the denominations. Help them! Sound doctrine unites rather than divides….
Guest Post: Challenging The Teenagers | Necessary Roughness
…“But why don’t we use Oreos and milk?†This was the question challenging us concerning the hows and whys of the Lord’s Supper. All my student wanted was for me to show where in Scripture it said we had to use bread and wine. To avoid looking ignorant before his peers, he decided to ask the question with metaphors. And that was just fine with me; I got it and answered his question. He was happy and I was overjoyed. With so many of his friends saying that Jesus would’ve just wanted us to use grape juice the question was more complex and deeper than it appeared on the surface. And at the end of the day, my student’s question was just that, a question. All too often when an adult asks a question, it’s in the form of a statement.I have found that teaching teenagers is one of the rewarding and difficult things I do. I typically spend five to ten hours a week preparing for my one hour lessons as I know they will do their best to try to “stump†the teacher. At the end of the day that’s OK with me. I have worked the routine into part of my devotional time during the week, and this has helped me to learn and grow in the faith as well. Both teacher and student benefit here, plain and simple.
Too often we treat our youth like they are simply not capable of learning the simplest things. We know they are capable of learning at least two or more languages, physics, and chemistry. However, we seem almost afraid to teach them the very basics of the Christian faith. We often seem happy to let them go off to college without even the basics that every preteen should grasp and believe….
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Vicar, thanks for the bump! It has been a fun and interesting first start in what I hope to be a good series.
Wow, I didn’t think anybody actually read my drivel! Dan and I didn’t plan on writing pieces that were so complimentary, that was just one of those pleasant surprises. Thanks for the link and kind words!