A Bit Extreme Perhaps...

Still trying to work with the teen class last night, I asked them (near the end of class--this will have to be continued) to begin brainstorming about what they think that we, as Christians, should be all about, and what they could do specifically to make this more our identity.

A little background: a few weeks back we had our chruch planning session. The teens, with another teacher, left, went downstairs, and had no part in this session. They make up nearly half of the congregation, yet they neither feel as if they have a say or really want much of a part in the overall communal life of the church. I don't have as much of a voice as I did at one time, but I still teach them regularly, and would like to see this change. I talked with the adults a week before, and many of them said that they would welcome input from the teens if I could get them to give input.

Last night's discussion started after reading Jesus' Luke 4 introduction in which he quoted the passage from Isaiah that summed up his ministry and asking the class if they could help come up with something similar that defined us.

The first suggestion involved participation in worship. This was fine, and is an area where many have been prodding them, but I wanted to get more personal. The next suggestion gave me an opening.

A young man suggested that they could help make the building look more presentable, help in projects such as cleaning up and planting flowers. I thanked him and said these were good suggestions, categorized them as "service", and then asked for other ideas about service. Were there, perhaps, ways that we could get involved in people's lives, in serving each other--particularly the older membes of the congregation--directly? I asked them, "If one of the older members of the congregation needed some help, would we know that they needed help?"

Sad to say, the obvious answer was no. There is too little cross-communication.

That's when I made the extreme suggestion.

"I'm not saying that you have to do this," I said, "and don't worry; I'm not going to go upstairs and present this tonight. I just wondered if you would feel comfortable if we could say to the adults, 'The youth need opportunities to serve, and would like for you to look around and find ways that they could help you. We need to serve each other, to help each other, in order to be like Jesus. By finding some way for them to help you out, you will be helping them, so we'd like you to come up with things you need done. We [I realized I wasn't including myself enough and tried to here] want to help you in any way we can."

Then I asked again, "Would you be comfortable making this kind of statement?"

There was a bit of silence. A couple of okays that didn't sound too enthusiastic. Then one girl said, "I don't think so. What if they take advantage of us? What if they just use us to get their house cleaned"

We ran out of time right then. We'll see what happens next week.

I don't know if this will go anywhere. As I said, I don't have the influence I once did, and I'm afraid that the others working with the youth might not go along with this. This may end up being nothing.

But I have some things to say next class.