Different viewpoints on youth group attrition
After serving for 8 years in collegiate ministry on a university campus, I have seen the disturbing trend of “churched” high school students dropping out of church soon after their involvement in collegiate life. I’ve posted here a few times about some of my conclusions about that, but I appreciate Earl Creps’ comments over at MMI. He offers a sampling of some previously held conclusions by different viewpoints. Here they are:
• The 75% number is bogus. (Some claim that assertions of such a high drop-out rate are a result of poor studies. That may be, but my personal observations are that the statistic is accurate.)
• The cliff may be more of a “turn in the road.” (Students are not actually marching off a cliff of non-church but simply redirecting their spiritual involvement and interest.)
• Why focus on teens when our adults are no better? (A good assertion. Although their parents may still be in church, it may be no more than tradition or familial connections that keep them there and not a vibrant devotion to Christ.)
• The drop-off is a function of family dynamics. (I would wholeheartedly agree.)
• Students are there for the relationships. (Uh… well, yes!)
• The students are living out the inherent flaws of youth ministry. (I would agree with this as well.)
I’d encourage you to read his entry in its entirety and comment there and here to keep the conversation going.
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Sanjayah lives! Part 2
Can you believe the traffic is growing faster at votefortheworst.com than it is over at American Idol? Ahahahahaaha (wicked laugh)… Check out the analysis over at the Compete blog.
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20/20 to air report on “Preacher Predators”
It seems the media has just discovered that there are sinners among church leaders. After highly publicized reports into abuses by the Catholic church in the past three years, ABC’s news program 20/20 will tackle “Preacher Predators” in the Protestant church, including Southern Baptists this Friday evening. What’s your input?
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Time to encourage another blogger-wife
My poor wifey. She has not blogged in a while. Methinks it’s because her last 5 entries received no comments. Could you please stop by and encourage her. She always has good stuff to say or great pics to share… Today she’s working hard with her Easter photo special at Monday’s Child. It might brighten her day to discover she’s had a plethora of comments upon her dusty blog.
Update: (4/12) Oooops. Her comment-y thing was broken. No one could leave a comment, but now you can…
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Browse faster
I appreciated the web browser review over at Macintalk Design. It pits the different web browsers available for the Mac up against one another in one category: speed. While I think features are an important part of my browser of choice (currently Firefox 2.0), I am intrigued by how Safari continues to rank high in speed and use.
I rarely use Safari anymore since it’s not optimized to take advantage of the visual text editor in WordPress and other blog engines. In the last few days, I’ve been playing around with Flock again, and while it wasn’t reviewed in the above article, I’d have to say that I like it’s features better than that of Firefox. It also has the ability to install plug-ins like Firefox, but you can blog from it and also link your Flickr photos (see the screen shot).
In addition, Flock has a Bloglines-like RSS engine which enables you to track all your blogs from one panel.
So… what browser do you use most? Which do you alternate to? And what would you like to experiment with?
Blogged with Flock
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What’s your brand of church?
Geoff over at Inner Revolution has an insightful post that pleads for common vision and mission over trendy church lingo. For example, you can’t read much these days about how a church relates with culture without hearing these words: attractional, missional, and organic. Geoff mentions another term later in his post – emergent – that he perhaps should have defined as well.
Here are his working definitions:
Attractional: A model that says church should be an appealing, non-threatening environment to present the Gospel so that seekers can come and see. Relational connections flow out of these larger gatherings. Picture a large circus tent with people streaming in from every direction.
Organic: A model that says seekers will be exposed to the Gospel through relationships with members in their community. Relational connections may flow into larger gatherings. Picture a group of pup tents with a campfire in the middle.
Missional: A mindset that says the every member of the body of Christ is called as a missionary to her own culture and community. The missionary may or may not connect to a larger gathering of believers. Picture a climber pitching his tent high on Mt. Everest.
I’d encourage you to go read his article and then leave a comment there or link back here. I’d be interested in knowing how you might label your church. You might even have to come up with a new term or definition! Maybe it will be coined by millions, and you’ll be famous. Or not.
I agree with Geoff’s assessment that however your church is structured or flavored, the important thing is “seeing people becoming disciples of Christ.” In other words, ministry is measured by fruit. Our goal is the submission of life to Christ and the subsequent transformation of life by Christ.
I hope I’m not putting words in his mouth by emphasizing that a disciple of Christ is a follower, not a one-time decision. A disciple of Christ is not someone who embraces heaven to avoid hell, using Jesus to do so.
My working definition of a disciple might be summed up in this way: a person who is consistently seeking to follow Jesus Christ and continually orienting their life to His teachings and His ways as described in the New Testament because of Christ’s love for them and their continuing growth in their love for Him. More simply, we love Him because He first loved us.
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Rick Warren’s evangelism method criticized
Oldtruth.com has an interesting and powerful assessment of Rick Warren’s evangelism methodology. What think ye?
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Hamper fishing
Monday night, for whatever reason, the Noble family invented a new sport. It’s called hamper fishing. It’s quite fun… unless you’re the one doing the fishing. Let me tell you what happened.
I noticed it Monday morning. The hamper door wouldn’t close all the way. It’s one of those older models that’s hinged on the bottom and you pull down and out. Obviously, it meant that our overfull hamper had shedded its excess behind the hamper, in the black hole beyond the hamper. It is a place that few souls have ever seen or visited, and for good reason.
I will not comment on how the hamper managed to get soooo full that clothes were falling behind it. I will allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. However, when Carolyn suggested I devote Monday evening to hamper fixing (soon to become fishing), I was not overly happy.
My first approach, and an initially successful one, was to unbend a coat hanger, insert my head and upper body as far into the hamper as possible, and “fish” for the clothes in the black hole. While initially fun, it began to get arduous. I had some early bites and was able to land two pairs of shorts, a shirt, and some undies and socks.
Carolyn exclaimed after one successful catch, “There’s my shorts! I’ve been looking for them forever!”
However, the discarded laundry apparently became more wiley and began to evade my casts. Either that or the fact I was using no bait finally became an issue. Either way, I could feel more clothes back there, but I couldn’t pull them up.
Finally, however, I got a series of bites that surprised us. Namely, because they weren’t our clothes… Yep. I fished out a pair of boxes that had to be 50 years old. Right after that came up a pair of “grannie panties” that had no elastic in the legs. Eeeeewwwww. It was alright when I was fishing out my own family’s undies, but when I began to pull up someone else’s undies – and ancient ones at that – I broke out the drill and just took the whole hamper apart.
Thankfully, all that was left in the black hole were several old socks. The adventure was over, or so I thought. Caro insisted that I take the hamper in Adelyn’s bathroom apart, just in case. I did, and it produced nothing.
I’m writing to the Olympic Committee to suggest this new sport. It takes great patience and practice. So if you have a hamper such as I’ve described, you might want to get busy…
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How big are your problems?
Consider this quote from Walter Henrichsen’s Disciples Are Made Not Born:
Every problem a person has is related to his concept God. If you have a big God, you have small problems. If you have a small God, you have big problems… When your God is big, then every seeming problem becomes an opportunity. When your God is small, every problem becomes an obstacle.
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About
Notes from the Trail
The Personal Blog of Jeff Noble
Info: From the misty hills of Virginia, "Notes from the Trail" seeks to encourage you on your journey. Written by a graphic designer-pastor, this blog is a blend of humor, insight, and faith discovery.
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