Yesterday my pastor preached a sermon that touched every bone in my body after it ambushed my heart. This quote from William Willimon (quoted in the sermon from Romans 12:3-8) should cause all of us in student ministry to pause and ask ourselves if we are part of the problem in the evangelical sub-culture of reducing Christianity to private affair.
“American Protestantism often impresses observers as a highly individualized, privatized, psychological affair… Individual conversion experiences (in which individuals are saved from individual sins in order to have individual relationships with Jesus) are viewed by some evangelicals as the end rather than the beginning of the life of faith. The church becomes (little more than) a conglomerate of like-minded individuals who find it useful to congregate in order to keep the flame of individual religious experience alive and to foster it in others.”
Students falling in love with Jesus as their Saving LORD in our student ministries is not the end, it's the beginning.
Monday, February 04, 2008
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1 comments:
dude, great comments! i've been processing this lately after reading one of charlies blog's. it's been very much about me, but when you sit back on a sunday, or any other time of community and think, "this is for us," that produces some powerful kingdom thoughts!
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