What is your most challenging and painful encounter in Christian service and ministry?
Like it or not, doing God’s work is no easy task. Elijah had to run for his life. Moses had to face many rebellious Hebrews. Likewise for Apostle Paul as we read today’s devotional passages from 2 Corinthians 6:3-11 from Our Daily Bread.
This passage brings back memory of the time when I somehow volunteer to “work” with the Youth Alive! some 11 years ago. At that time, I had just completed my course work on Youth Ministry in the Singapore Bible College and written a good proposal about youth ministry, which earn me an A-, I thought it might be a good time to implement it in the church. And so with my big mouth, I requested the Pastor to let me serve in the Youth Ministry for 3 years. I was a bit naïve then, not knowing that he had already appointed a youth president who was running the whole youth ministry.
As it turned out, I could not do much in the youth ministry. Since all the programs were carried out by the youth president and the youth committee, some parents were very unhappy because they were not informed of what their kids were doing. After many such incidents, one parent confronted me and questioned my handling of the youth. I was dumbfounded as I was actually quite helpless. Another sad moment was when one parent told me in the face, “When my children reached secondary school age, I do not want them to join the youth ministry”.
During my time in the ministry, I would look at the youth and visualized how they would turn out when they grow into adulthood. On most occasions, I was right. Many of them are not with us in the church now. I sensed the youth ministry lack vision and direction and after 3 years disappeared from the ministry quietly.
From then on, I never will volunteer for service in Bethany PCES.
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5 comments:
sigh.. unfortunately YA still looks like a mess.. Hopefully the new pastor can help them out!
Hi Uncle Mark,
Unfortunately, even as an RCT member,there are many things we are unhappy about and wish to change. We discussed pretty often about BSG, about how to improve the dynamics etc, but we never seem to be able to find a solution. After attending a few similar BSG in other churches, even when in Netherlands, I could never quite understand why is it that our BSGs are in the situation they are today-not growing in membership and spirituality, "non genuine" fellowship, afraid to share, afraid to grow (in case people label them as too holy) and other things. It's quite upsetting and I admit I'm also not doing much to improve the situation. Like you, I agree that we do lack direction. We do plan and plan, but there's usually barely any implementation. What do we do then?
This sharing is more a reflection and not meant to find fault with anyone.
We need to relook the way in doing things: 3 things come to mind:
- "Begin with the end in mind."
- Bless the many, invest in the few.
- Follow Jesus' example of ministry - 3, 12, 70 and the multitude.
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