Answers: 10 years or more: 76%; 5-10 years: 12%
Eighty-eight percent of the young people surveyed have attended church for 5 years or more. This tells me that we have a generation that is not being reached. If the only people who are attending this conference are long-time, life-long Christians, we have not been effective in reaching this generation.
We have either not reached any new young people for Christ, or the new Christians are not participating in the “youth groups†of the local churches, meaning they either don’t feel welcome or don’t feel that it is relevant to their lives.
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One of the things we have noticed here lately that is definitely different than in the US is the amount of noise there is around us. Here are a few examples:
- Last Friday night, there were parties at three of our neighbors’ houses. Nathan woke up at 2:30 am, and the music was still blasting. This wouldn’t be such a big deal except that our houses are connected (think, apartments with concrete walls).
- Our neighbor regularly comes home and honks the horn for his wife to open the garage door. While not a big deal, it adds to the noise.
- A guy just walked down my street selling something, all the while chanting what it was he was selling (some sort of pastry).
- The gas or water guys come down multiple times a day shouting gaaaaaaaas or agguuuuuaaaa.
- Dogs…barking…loudly…constantly. (Nathan definitely knows what a doggie says…woof, woof).
- Our neighbor really enjoys the sound system in his car, despite the fact that maybe we don’t.
- Music is regularly played above our normal listening level (at church, at stores, wherever.)
- A small airplane flies around with a loudspeaker attached, shouting something about some promotion that is going on or some political message. Cars drive around doing the same.
- As I’m typing this, I can hear someone banging on a house down the street that they are fixing up.
These are a few examples of the cultural differences and the noise level here.
Finally! My new office is finished! I have a few things left to hang. The phone line needs to be fixed to work. There’s no internet. But…I’m officially moved into the new office. I now have a much bigger space, and it feels so much more like an office. It’s great. As promised, below are some pics of the new office. If you want to see them all, check out my flickr set. Be sure to check out my bookshelf, too, to see what’s on it. The flickr picture of the bookshelf has some notes on it telling you what each thing is.
The Lost Art of Disciplemaking by LeRoy Eims is the textbook for one of my classes this quarter at the seminary. So, as I was reading it, I jotted down some quotes I thought were interesting.
These first two have a lot to do with that old saying “People before programs.” The italics are quotes from the book, and the rest are my comments on the subject.
- “Yet in all these programs people are still primary, for ultimately they cannot be helped by some thing but must be helped by someone.”
I think this is key to our thinking about ministry. Most of the time, we think of discipleship as a program or a class, when really it is the investment of a life in another. Programs are just excuses for building relationships.
- “The ministry is to be carried on by people, not programs. It is to be carried by someone and not by some thing. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a ‘program’ and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual, personal attention. It takes hours of prayer for them. It takes patience and understanding to teach them how to get into the Word of God for themselves, how to feed and nourish their souls, and by the power of the Holy Spirit how to apply the word to their lives. And it takes being an example to them of all of the above.”
I like the part about time and personal attention. It’s not a cookie cutter or assembly line process to share your life with someone else. It goes against a lot of what we do in traditional church, with no life-sharing. We come, sing, listen, and leave usually. Where’s the discipleship in that?
More to come…
