Sunday, October 26, 2008

Yes

Let's not be cliche. If ministry is real, it is a demanding. I recently read that doctors performing the autopsy on 38-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. discovered the heart of a 70-year-old man. Often in ministry, (or maybe because of all the Filet O' Fishes I have eaten) my heart feels much older than my age (and especially how old I look). To quote my rabbi, I feel the millstone.

But today...today was pretzel day - and the sugary goodness of a shared "aha!" (or Aja) moment proves the power of scripture and the Triune God it points to.

After a brief outline of epistles and Paul, I had my ten students read the first ten verses of Galatians, and asked them to break it down for me. What was the problem that Paul was trying to address? Here are their answers:

- People making the gospel something it is not
- People not listening to / ignoring the Holy Spirit

No "Adventurer's Bible" outline, no clever words from their youth minister, no slick DVD graphics, no fill-in-the-blank-seek-and-find, just students encountering the living Word. Here's the beautiful part:

Jr. High Student: "When was this written?! These are problems now!"

Smile. Let it sink in.

We went on to talk about how, despite mastering the bells and whistles of the 21stcentury, human beings are still human beings - and as such - the timeless words of scripture are as poignant and powerful as when they were first penned.

3 comments:

Kelly Efurd Lawson said...

Great post, Jason. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.

KL

Anonymous said...

that's great! and really true, people have faced the same problems all throughout time.

jeremiah said...

this is beauty bro.
again, more reasons why I respect the filet-o-fish out of you as a minister to students and families.