On our way into a Friendly’s I held the door for a family on their way out. As a little guy passed me I heard him say to his dad, “I want to come back here again.” Too bad Friendly’s didn’t have that on camera. It would be a great ad. I found myself wishing we could figure out how to get the same reaction from our youth regarding coming to church. During church we have a children’s story and a mob of little kids flood the front pews. But where are the teens? Something happens during adolescence and we rarely hear, “I want to come back here again.”
I realize it does have something to do with being a teen. After all 4000 teens start smoking each day. That says a lot about their cognition. The truth is we are competing with media productions that spend hundreds of millions of dollars to capture their attention. It’s pretty hard to preach an eye and ear catching sermon without the visual fade ins and outs, the finely tuned music and the built-in laugh track. Lest I sound totally pessimistic I do want to point out we do have something on our side the other side doesn’t have. God promises to send His spirit to attend us. Should we be wise enough to seek that help, we will have something on our side no amount of clever, eye-catching media production can ever match.
One of the things every one of us needs to understand is “preaching” at them and “exhorting” just doesn’t work. They react to it like it was smallpox. Telling people not to do something usually elicits just the opposite response. Inspiration is the key. We must inspire them. We must make them want to do what is best for them and love is the magic potent.
Written by Roger Bothwell on March 15, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org