|
Metaphor for Youth Ministry - Mac & Cheese
Sadly many faithful high school students leave the church in college. To better understand this compare their spiritual walk to a diet. The youth pastor--as a talented speaker--prepares extravagant gourmet meals bringing years of spiritual harvest like exotic spices to each meal. He works with steak, seafood and all the difficulties of life that students are still struggling with. The students become accustomed to such a wholesome diet and seemingly flourish. With such a good diet, their unhealthy habits often go unnoticed, but they graduate and find that all they know how to make is Mac n Cheese. Then at the very time they are under heaviest attack they are malnourished and disappointed with every meal. They have not learned proper spiritual exercise or the ability to get the food to which that they have become accustomed.
My vision is not to take gourmet off the menu, but to teach each student to develop his own food. This is complicated, but the result is not a gourmet restaurant, but a majority of students who can cook for themselves and feed their peers-
students who God uses as pillars in their environment today and have the strength to handle tomorrow.
|