This will be included in the sermon I will be preaching tomorrow morning. It will be the first time I have been in a pulpit since July 12, 2009.
Methodist Bishop William Willimon was interviewed in Modern Reformation magazine last year. He was asked, “What hope do our kids have of being discipled if we’re busy telling their parents how to be a better you?”
His response, so typically Willimon and blunt, is wonderful and terrifying at the same time:
There is an army base near my home where they’re preparing people to go to Iraq; I’ve noticed they don’t seem to do that with fun and games. They do it by saying, ‘here are some skills you’ve got to have or you could die, and you could cause the death of other people.’ I think it’s kind of an analogy. I feel sorry for kids that think Christianity is about skateboarding and fun and games, and then go off to college and realize it’s like we’re in a kind of war. I would also say that as somebody who’s been trying to follow Jesus for a long time. And it ain’t easy because Jesus won’t make it easy. He loves to take ordinary, faithless, weak people and make them disciples and demand they take over the world with him, in his way. (Modern Reformation, September/October 2008, 43)
Have a nice weekend and worship well tomorrow or today.
5 Comments(+Add)
Wow…just like a broken clock.
Willimon is absolutely right here. I don’t know what the point of your message is Jerry, but I see this all the time with the college age youth that I minister to. It is two fold; they are dissatisfied with pat answers and are looking for deep, thought filled conversations and answers to their questions. At the same time, however, many college ministries are attempting to attract them with pizza and movies and shaving cream fights just like they were used to in high school. And it becomes spiritually dissatisfying, and when they are attacked with temptation and other pressures, more often than not christian raised kids depart the faith. They are not ready for battle.
Hence the attraction of the emergent church, I believe. They are willing to talk, ans speak about deep things, and have an open ended conversation with no real answers.
i like the answer.
i don’t understand the question.
Neil, the context of the question is found in churches that preach a ‘Joel Osteen’ type of gospel.
jerry
Thanks Jerry,
in that case, i like the answer even more.
Neil, hit your knees and thank God that “a better you” didn’t bring Osteen to mind immediately. Surely, God is protecting your psyche.