Wednesday, September 14, 2011

My thoughts on the Movie "Divided"


At the risk of offending many dear friends involved in ministry, I would like to encourage anyone involved with Church ministry at all to watch this film. It is online free for a limited time, so please go ahead and watch it. I would love to hear what others think about this.

The premise of the movie is that traditional youth ministry has the potential danger of dividing families away from each other. The solution, according to the film, is to have families together in worship and in Bible teaching instead of segregated by age or life stage.

While I think that solution by itself is limited, the larger goal is to have the church take up the responsibility to challenge parents to be the spiritual leaders and disciplers of their children.

We keep asking ourselves why kids are leaving Christ and the Church, but we haven't gained any ground against the world.

I think the Church needs to ask and address this question: are we truly holding onto the next generation by what we are doing, or do we need to do something different? While I would not agree with the movie that the Bible states definitively and undeniably that age segregation in the Church is wrong, (book, chapter, verse?) I do see that in many churches, the family is just as fragmented as in the world.

I don't know any Church or any youth minister that would say that the Bible is unclear about who is supposed to be the spiritual leader in a child's life. However, by our practices, maybe we communicate things that we don't mean to.

For example, most churches have a "youth group" time, and an adult Sunday School or small group time, but how often do churches have a dedicated "family" teaching time when youth and adults are experiencing the same thing at the same time in the same place? Unfortunately for many churches, that never happens. What does that teach the family? The kids? Is the family really gaining spiritual ground against worldliness? If not, why?

Is it possible that the media (or methodology) actually becomes the message?

Maybe if youth ministries spent more effort training parents to spiritually mentor their children, they would be more effective. I don't agree with the movie that we should do away with traditional youth ministry, but I do think that we should make it so much more family centered.

Please watch this and encourage Church leaders to watch this. We need to stop fooling around and start winning back the Church's youth for Christ.

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