Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Program versus Ministry

So a friend of mine persuaded me into doing a little 5-10 minute talk on Saturday night. It's kind of a strange circumstance. I was heavily involved with Christian Service Brigade in high school and through college, having become a Christian through the program and then being a leader for around 10 years. The program was huge in terms of my spiritual formation and growth, learning how to be a leader and having a group of lifelong friends commited to the same kinds of things. When as a young married couple, we decided to leave the church where I had become a Christian and worked in CSB, it opened up a whole new level of thinking for me, about church, youth ministry, leadership, etc.
Lately, the CSB organization has been going through some tough times. I think most of it has been operationally, dealing with finances, vision and implementation. And so they have a new president and he is coming to town to do a little dessert reception where he can talk about this new vision and future for the organization.
My friend was giving a 10 minute talk about his experience in the program and he got this bright idea that I should too. And that I should talk about what I'm doing now, etc.
So I signed up to do it. I've been a little hesitant in general. The audience is mostly middle aged men, who I suspect are mostly used to coming in every week to a group of boys from ages 10-18, playing a bunch of games and then opening up the program material and going step by step, narrative by narrative, for an hour or so. Very programmatic. Almost rote. Yuck.
So my job, I believe, is to call them to ministry and have them start to get incensed about program.

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