Caught Between Church and School (for Youth Leaders/Workers)

“Busy sa Academics pero sa church hindi” . I think we should stop making our young people choose between church activities and school. I mean it. This is for anyone working with the young people, from a former young person shaped by the church and the schools. 

 I love studying, or maybe the idea of it. I loved going to school and I feel like I enjoyed the environment where I can always get some new information, exchange Ideas and to some degree, be transformed by them. When I was younger though, I couldn’t wait for ‘studying’ to finally be over. There was one moment in high school when I got so overwhelmed and frustrated after I realized I still have years and years after until I finish college. Little did I know studying DOES NOT end in college. 

I love going to church too, and doing ‘church things’. When I was younger, I was active in the youth group. As I grew in my Christian life, I realized that my Christianity should not just be exclusively expressed in ‘Christian activities’. To a certain degree, I was transformed by that thought. One day, I picked up a book in my Tatay’s bookshelf that had the title “NOT JUST ON SUNDAYS”. It talked about how we should bring our Christ-like attitude everywhere. 

 Back then, school was never a competition for church. In fact, I came to believe that school was the overflow where my Christlikeness can be observed by others. Most times I failed, of course. 

So, it appalls me every now and then to read on my FB feed posts like “Busy sa Academics pero sa church Hindi” or something to that effect that creates a dividing line between the secular and the spiritual life!

I understand that the academic pressures are different now than then. And maybe, we see less of our young people in the church now because they have stuff to do for school. I also understand that that is frustrating for pastors. But, instead of throwing statements that make them guilty, why don’t we strategize? Adapt! Youth Fellowship does not have to be on Sundays if it means our teens can’t attend. Its not in the Bible to always do it on Sundays! Heck, YF is not even in the Bible! On that note, maybe we should also dig deeper why we are doing other activities. Are they serving purposes that enable our young people to grow and be more like Christ or… they’re merely handed down activities for generations? It’s time to deconstruct.

Here. Teach them to grow in the word! That’s the major thing! Major on the majors, the trappings are always optional. But, here’s another thing, Academics is as much an avenue where you can reflect the love and grace of Christ as Sunday school, or the youth fellowship or the outreach. In fact, at certain stages in our lives, God calls us to do something. I believe, when our teenagers are in school, that is where God is calling them. And they should be faithful in their studies as much as they are faithful in memorizing the assigned verses in youth group. 

Dear youth leaders, please dont slack in your academics and be active in church. That is bad testimony. Heaven doesn’t give you a point for missing a class to do something ‘for the ministry’. Trust me, it does not look so Christ-like for you to miss half of your class for the week and be leading the worship on Sunday! Imagine if your teacher was in your church! (When I was working in the Bible college, we discouraged students from missing classes just because they had to attend the ‘youth rally’. In fact, one of the youth leaders had to make compromises in his schedule because we made him understand that for that season, God’s calling for him was to be a Bible Student, to be fully prepared for the ministry. He got it!)

And dear young person, if you are in school, do all you can to maximize the faculties God has given you! You brains should not be slightly used —exercise it! Your enthusiasm for Discipleship Group meeting should be the same as when you do group work in class! You should be able to memorize the periodic table without grudging the way you memorize the books in the Bible! You should be excited for the opportunity to go to school the way you are excited for the freedom to go to church. You are called to be God’s light in the campus you are in. Shine! 

I don't want you to think that the temporal is better than the spiritual. What I am trying to say is that when we are falsely emphasizing attendance in activities as the only avenue of their expression of faith, then we are stunting their spiritual growth. And when we get them divided over church activities and school responsibilities, then we are unconsciously basting them with the idea that God is not interested in their lives outside of church. That's dangerous. 

The youth ministry is pivotal in the life of every young person. I admire every youth worker I know who stick to Biblical truths yet evolve in their strategy to get to the heart of every kid. I pray, as people ministering to the young people, that we erase the diving line between what’s worldly and what’s spiritual and see our every effort AS TO  the Divine. Only then can we raise a generation who is conscious of bringing Christ to the world —their world, their future, where we will not be in.

Our posts will not transform them. And I do not expect this to transform you as well. But, maybe to a certain degree (as much as you hope your post would do to them), it will prick us somewhere and, make us bruise a little, and then move us to start making changes for the better. 

Me at 38, loving the school and the church at the same time. 

My Thoughts about Banished

Opening a book to read is like swinging a door open. Each book I read leads me to a room where the author creates a certain environment by stringing words together. Some rooms, I like to stay a while and then leave. Some rooms I kept visiting. Some rooms, I decided, I’d never enter again. And then, there are rooms in my shelf that are still waiting to be opened. 

When I got my hands on Banished, I knew the kind of room I was getting into before I even started reading it. Pastor Joshua has a way of making me uncomfortable when reading his work. Somehow, as in the books he wrote in the past, he makes me rethink my life and my witness. Halfway into banished, he did not disappoint. I was right.

In Banished, Pastor Joshua takes us back to the events surrounding the birth of Jesus and helps us look at it with the lens of the present time. In my opinion, the west has sanitized our image of Christmas that it is almost easy to overlook how scandalous the circumstances were, just as disgusting as the stories we have in the present day. He then seamlessly brings us to look at Jesus’ life and teachings in contrast to how we, the church, live it today. Are we "walking the talk" of the sermon on the mount? To answer, read the book. 

As a student of the Bible, Banished sparked an excitement in me as I savored the author’s own take of the scriptures, the snippets of history he dashed here and there, the laborious research he put into his work --- it was compelling! 

As a Christian involved in ministry, he rattled my convenient way of ministering. Suddenly, I am thrown into a puddle of information, opening my eyes even more keenly on the plight of the OFW, the struggles of those in the margins, and  the unbridgeable gap between the Lazaruses and the Rich Men of today’s world. In one of those pages, I came to the realization that many of the theories we teach in missions, in the Bible Schools, or those we even observe from ministers ahead of us in the field, are no longer applicable in the age we live in. Many of our strategies are coated with agenda.  Pastor Joshua writes “Authenticity and integrity are the key to transformative evangelism and discipleship.”  He talks extensively of humility as an integral virtue in the ministry --- something many, I observed, have dispensed of in exchange of militant, aggressive, number-driven Christianity.

As an adult finding my place in the world, a new sense of adventure  was planted in me in the last few chapters of Banished. The author talks about living our witness in public spaces, understanding first the perception of those outside the Christian tradition. We often fault ourselves in gagging those outside the ‘faith’ with Bible verses and doomsday revelations, instead of listening to them – finding out where they’re at, and taking them along in the journey of knowing Jesus.

Pastor Joshua concluded the last chapter with a voice of hope. I closed the book, my thoughts still easing through the discomfort of knowing that my actions as a Christ-follower have not always been in congruence with my talk. I am plagued with questions.  I just left a room that made me uncomfortable. But, like many who met Jesus – along dusty roads and polished palaces, in sinking boats and atop feeble tree branches --- discomfort is the way to discovering the truth; to live in perpetual discomfort of the mind, the heart and the body, until you come to the resolve that Jesus is truly, truly, the only One that satisfies them all.

Get the book. Get into that room. Get uncomfortable.

Book is available through Central Logos https://www.facebook.com/centralogosofficial .