This week I was in Arlington for a youth pastor's convention. It was a good week overall. Lots of challenges to overcome..our booth was not coming together like we had planned; tables collapsing, banners not the right size...but in the end what mattered was that the people that came to our booth liked it. I connected with some great youth pastors and hopefully these will become great long term relationships for me and my bands.
The past couple weeks I've been thinking a lot about the spiritual state of our youth. With so many school shootings....you have to wonder what is happening these days. I grew up at a time when my peers were so on fire for God. We were bold, we had conversations with our friends about Christianity..but something happened in the past few years. Over time, the excitement and fire died. My peers and myself became disenchanted; boldness gave way to being "open-minded" and "unoffensive". Many youth pastors are my age or younger. This attitude seems to be passed down to the younger generation. Students don't seem as excited at spritiual things. I hear from my bands all the time that teenagers just don't seem to have that fire in their lives. All of these things make me ponder where our society is heading. Later in the week, I went to a Christian bookstore to pick up some CD's. Going down the isle, I noticed 2 things that really floored me...Strawberry Shortcake and these toys that looked EXACTLY like My Little Pony, but they weren't called My LIttle Pony...they were called Praise Ponies. GAK First of all...when did Strawberry Shortcake become a "Christian" toy. She's a toy! You rub her head and she smells of wonderful strawberries. So..needless to say the sudden site of this toy in a religious store is very strange. Now onto the Praise Ponies. Seriously guys...these ponies were EXACTLY like My Little Pony..they had the same hair, the same brushes, the same colors...everything. So, WHY do we have to call them Praise Ponies. I can just picture some poor little sheltered kid taking her pony to school and trying to play with the other little girls and insisting that they are Praise Ponies. I found myself becoming really upset with the Praise Pony. As Christians, we need to get out of our bubble that we've created. There is no need to label things as "Christian", but live life as a Christian. Love people like we should instead of alienating ourselves and trying to shelter ourselves from the real world. I think its time to be real. To live life to the fullest and serve those in our path.
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3 comments:
I recently heard an editor of a Christian publishing house say that he regularly met people only read books from Christian bookstores. I can understand not reading junk, but hello? Avoiding Borders altogether? That is almost sacreligious!
But I'll agree that people in general seem less enchanted with religion. Either that, or they're fighting political battles in the name of Christianity. It seems like there must be a happy medium somewhere.
Good luck helping people find it.
I think the problem is that the "extreme" religions (any kind, not just Christians) is when there are attempts to cram it down everyone's throat.
When I went to youth group as a kid, there was this song that said, "and they'll know we are Christians by our love...". I don't shove my religion down anyone's throat. But I'm willing to talk about it with anyone who's interested in having an open-minded discussion about my faith and theirs. But, if I can show others what matters by my actions, that's really what I'm interested in. And I think a big part of that is that being a Christian is that you aren't perfect. And you embrace and acknowledge that you can always aspire to be a better person all the time.
You guys are all right on the mark! My life's work is basically to promote Christianity and hopefully others will see truly what Chtistianity is all about. I just see so much in the world around us that gives a false picture of how I believe Christ wants us to live. Hopefully one by one we can truly make a difference.
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