Timothy's Thoughts

I skipped church the other day, but this isn’t about that. Instead it is about age group separation. I read an article that suggested that maybe the reason young people leave the church is because they were never a part of the church in the first place. We start them out in the nursery because who wants to hear crying babies in a worship service. Then we move them into Children’s Church because they would just be bored in worship. Then they go into the Youth Group. So when they reach adulthood “church” is very different from what they are familiar with. I can buy into that as being a problem, but what do we do about it and what does that have to do with me skipping church? On Wednesday night our church is broken into several different groups. I am one of the Awana leaders, but because of Christmas break, Awana and Fear One (youth) weren’t meeting. That left one available activity, the Wednesday evening prayer meeting. Because the young people meet in other groups the Wednesday night p...

W e laugh when people talk about treating people in the real world like we do on Facebook. One such post begins, “every day I walk down the street and tell passers-by what I have eaten, how I feel at the moment, what I have done the night before, what I will do later and with whom.” The post continues with other things and ends by saying, “I already have four people following: two police officers, a private investigator and a psychiatrist.” Yes, we laugh, but what if we really did apply the same principles that we use on Facebook to the world outside? Suppose your car won’t start one morning and you decide to take the city bus to work. While you’re waiting at the bus stop you see a stranger approach the bus stop. You make eye contact and you say, “Good morning. How are you?” The stranger replies, “I’m fine. How are you?” “Good, but my car wouldn’t start this morning. Now I’m going to be late for work.” “My wife went to see her mother, so I’ve been without a car all week.” “Have ...