Here’s a quick wrap-up of June and the top posts of the month…

Taking a brief break over the Independence Day weekend.

We’ll resume posts on Tuesday, July 5. Please note that the monthly first Saturday feature CaptionThis will land July 9th.

Have a great holiday. (And, please, offer a prayer for all those who have defended our freedoms.)

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Many blogs, not just this one, noted their own top-ten postings in year-end reviews. The number one selection for the Christian Century was posted a year ago and asked Is Youth Ministry Killing the Church?

Pastor Kate Murphy, of Hickory Grove Presbyterian in Charlotte, NC, wonders if we been “unintentionally disconnecting kids from the larger body of Christ… ministering them right out of the church. . . The kids I’ve previously pastored never sat around a table with adults at church-wide fellowship events — they had their own program options. They’ve never worked side by side with other members to put on a neighborhood vacation Bible school—they were off on their own mission trips.”

It is an article worthy of noting, including the comments it solicited.

“It’s always show time.* A manager is leading people. You lead by example.”

If you are to be a leader in the church…

If you are about making disciples…

If you want to help make change in the world…

Then lead.  But commit to leading and lead all the time.

Because others are watching.

They dissect what you’re wearing and who you’re talking to and the way you present yourself and the kinds of questions you ask, and so on.

If you want to see change, be change.

Why do You treat Your servant so badly?

Why have You burden me with all this people?

If these are your prayers recently, let’s talk.  First… Good News.  They were Moses’ prayers as well.  What is the solution when you feel as if you have gone from burning bush to burnt out?

Get seventy.

The Lord told Moses to go get “seventy of the elders of Israel, men you know for true elders and authorities among the people, and bring them to the meeting tent. When they are in place beside you, I will come down and speak with you there. I will also take some of the spirit that is on you and will bestow it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you. You will then not have to bear it by yourself.”

Look around.  Do you have not seven, not seventeen, but seventy adults of the community with whom your spirit and burden have been shared.

For most, seventy seems almost fantastical… but it is a scripturally based goal. And, in all reality, the option of not doing this is not all that desirable, anyway. Aim high. Seventy is a great target. (and seriously is seventy seems certainly attainable in your mega-church community… up that to 350 or 700!)

Recruitment of adult leadership should not have a season but must be a constant efforts and priority.  What’s your secret towards getting seventy. <image source>

Ahhhh, the dangers of videotaping a presentation at home

It’s a short video, but the moment will come

Wait for it, wait for it…

There is hunger for ordinary bread,
but

there is also hunger for love, kindness, and mutual respect –

and that’s the great poverty
from which people today suffer so much.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Randy Raus of LifeTeen recently posted a larger list of suggestions, from a young person perspective as to Why I Just Stopped Coming to your Youth Group.  You want to read the full post, but his list includes:

1. You are too predictable. It’s begun feel like “same old, same old.”
2. You don’t make me feel like I belong there. It’s like I am still a guest, especially if most folks don’t know my name . “dude or guy”.
3. You never challenge me anymore. I’ve been coming a while, and it  seems as if I outgrew your message.
4. You don’t look like you are excited about your faith. If it is a burden for you, what do you expect will be attractive about it to me?

In May, on Wednesdays, we ran a series of videos regarding young people, liturgy, and the new Roman Missal.

Here’s Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre discussing the same – - an opportunity to fall in love with the liturgy all over again.

In the pastoral letter he mentions in the video, his instructs that: “To give witness we have to belong.  We have to be part of what we believe.  That is not an abstraction or a theory or a philosophy.  We believe in a person, Jesus Christ.  He is at the center of our lives because He alone has saved us.  And He, on the night before He died, gave us His Body, His Blood and told us “to do this in memory of Me”.  As Paul says, “every time we eat His body and drink His blood, we proclaim His death until He comes again”.

What are we doing to ensure that our young people belong… (especially in liturgy?