Church Voices

I like to be right. But I don’t hate it when I’m wrong. I do, however, hate it when I’m in the wrong for so long and nobody else has the spiritual maturity to recognize it and/or say something to me about it. That’s a dangerous place to be for a church, it’s ministry, and it’s ministers.

I hope you will find some value in this post for your own spiritual life and ministry…

Sometimes God takes a while to bring about a particular change in our lives. Maybe it’s because we are bullheaded, or maybe it’s God’s gentleness. Regardless, there are periods in our lives when God makes clear to us a particular sin that has as yet gone unaddressed. That moment of recognition has been called by many the “aha” moment. I had one of those moments recently.

My attitude was that of contempt. Shame on these parents for not being involved in their kid’s lives! I was trying to understand the community I live and minister in so that I could better lead our church in outreach. I wanted to understand the choices our neighbors made and why they made them. I was not the first person to come to the conclusion that parents here did not care about their children. I wasn’t even the first one to say it. But when I did, everybody agreed. Parents here don’t care about their children because they aren’t involved in their upbringing, we reasoned. When the parents drop their kids off, they do just that, drop and go. We never had parents come in to find out what was going on or who was watching/teaching their children. Many parents wouldn’t even bring their kids; they had to find a ride from somebody (all the time). Many kids that should know their address, how to spell their last name, or their mom’s name, don’t. We saw what appeared to us as a complete lack of involvement in the lives of their children.

This has been a long time coming. I’ve been in this current ministry for 3 1/2 years and have held a particular view about my community for most of that time. Last fall I took a Youth Ministry class at Central Christian College of the Bible that was taught by Keith Ehresman. That class and what I learned there (that we should be encouraging, supporting, teaching, training, and involving parents in a family ministry) began the long slow process to recognition. I was wrong.

I was wrong about the parents, I was wrong in my attitude toward the parents, and probably worst of all, I was wrong in encouraging the same attitude in others. My perspective was skewed. Where I saw a lack of parental support at church as a big deal, most un-churched parents don’t even think about it. Sports? Yes. School? Absolutely. Entertainment even, but not church. This is a classic example of expecting non-Christians to act and think like a Christian. Why is this such a big deal? Because I was hurting my own witness, ministry, and the ministry of my church.

Besides the major factor that all ages of children pick up on our attitude toward them and toward others (especially their parents), our choices in ministry are impacted, even largely decided, by our attitudes and perception of others. If I don’t think that parents in my community participate in what their children are doing, then I’m not going to offer a single resource, ministry, encouragement, support, etc. for parents (or even for families as a unit). And I didn’t. Once my perception, understanding, and attitude began to change, the first thing we did was offer a parent’s night for our Wednesday evening children’s program.

What kind of attitudes and thinking drive your ministry decisions?