Imagine your child goes off to Piano lessons he say he loves it. A year later you ask him to play something. He plays a really simple / bad rendition of “twinkle twinkle little star”, a rendition as if he had about 2 weeks worth of lessons not a years worth. You go along watch the kids lessons and discover that they spend the first 55 minutes playing games and the last 5 minutes playing piano. You confront the teacher, and she says “This is how we get the kids in! They wouldn’t come otherwise!”
What would you say?
This is often how we approach children and youth ministry. Entertainment usually has more of an instant appeal than faith development and we often get stuck with a trickle down idea. Where we get the kids in with entertainment and then sneak in a bit of the gospel.
What usually happens is young people interested in being serious leave, socially adept young people leave & hang out with their friends and find entertainment else where. If you're lucky, you’re left with socially inept young people coming just for games fun and food and that’s it.
As nice as it may seem to have 40 young people running around a church hall it will be far more fruitful in the long term to have a group of just four doing faith development.
The reality is Churches are not great entertainers nor should we try to be. Of course this doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyable just not entertaining for the sake of being entertaining.
What would you say?
This is often how we approach children and youth ministry. Entertainment usually has more of an instant appeal than faith development and we often get stuck with a trickle down idea. Where we get the kids in with entertainment and then sneak in a bit of the gospel.
What usually happens is young people interested in being serious leave, socially adept young people leave & hang out with their friends and find entertainment else where. If you're lucky, you’re left with socially inept young people coming just for games fun and food and that’s it.
As nice as it may seem to have 40 young people running around a church hall it will be far more fruitful in the long term to have a group of just four doing faith development.
The reality is Churches are not great entertainers nor should we try to be. Of course this doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyable just not entertaining for the sake of being entertaining.
2 comments:
Love this post! So true. I think there is a place for social activities within a youth group, but that social activities need to be transformed by Jesus. Taking the alcohol and swearing out of youth activities does not make them Christian. I would love to see youth groups where the teens who are uncool are loved and included and made to feel just as special as everyone else.
Hey Thanks Nathan,
I'm really like the piano lesson analogy. It makes it all so obvious.
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