NYTimes wrote an interesting article about how teens are often attending more than one church.
Check it out here: Church Mixer 101. You need a free membership. If you don't want to get it, I'll post the whole article as a blog entry. Just read the entry below this.
I know that we have many students attending our church from other churches. I'd be interested to see who does it the other way.
I think this is a good and a bad thing. Good because it shows that teens understand that the kingdom of God is not limited to one place and can be experienced in a variety of ways. Bad because it doesn't encourage commitment to a particular community.
3 comments:
My concerns, as this issue is related to the kingdom of God, have several differnt lines of thought. While the "church hopping" may help youth to understand the personal nature of their relationship with the Lord my fear is that the Kindgom will become equated with a place or the warm fuzzies. While the kingdom can be "found" in a place and might include the warm fuzzies, I think the kingdom is ultimately somthing that we discover and then bring to the rest of the world. In fact, I'm becoming more and more convinced that you cannot separate the two. Are we spawning a generation of churh hoppers who will always travel to the place where they feel the kingdom never realizing that they are the ones to usher the kingdom in no madder where they are... not a hot worship band and a great speaker. When this behavior and midset is carried out to an extreame, no one goes to the dark places, no one brings hope to the downcast because ultimately we're not willing to pay the price of being someplace that doesn't cater to our felt needs. I think it's clear that this isn't a black and white issue, there isn't a wrong or a right. But we de need to be willing to recognize that this type of church culture carries some heavy consequences, just as the more "traditional" church culture does... so how do we help bring balance and understanding to the church in the midst of this situation? How do we save a church that is often divided and dying off, because our needs get met in different ways. I wonder if we think of our needs being met by actions...as opposed to a person. The unifying fact, and person, in all of this debate must be Christ.
have fun in Italy!
I often wonder if we aren't just shuffling the deck again and again and never really introducing any new cards. If so... I'm sad. If so... how did we stray so far? If so... how do we go back? If so... where are fringes of faith and church that we can run to to claim some relevance and truth?
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