Читать книгу Rite of Passage for the Home and Church - D. Kevin Brown - Страница 5

I am often asked for advice from young pastors and seminarians about how to implement New Testament truth into the life of a local church. I usually refer them to members of their own generation. There are a handful of younger adults who seem to understand the church, our culture, and how to apply biblical truth to both. Writers like Eric Carpenter, Alan Knox, Arthur Sido, and Kevin Brown are people who will help the Christian community find its way forward. These men are precious gifts from God, and their contributions to the church are greatly appreciated by their blog readers. They are engaged, informed, and ready and able to offer well-reasoned and biblical responses to the issues churches face today.

How often are we wrong about our suppositions! Mary supposed Jesus was the gardener. The disciples in the boat thought He was a ghost. Joseph and Mary assumed He was traveling with them when actually He was back in Jerusalem. And how many times do we in the church assume His presence in our programs when He is nowhere to be found.

God has provided instruction on how we should raise our children. If we are to love Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, then there is a right way by which to honor Him. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and so we must always go back to the Scriptures if we are to understand His ways correctly. Today we draw up our blueprints for “youth ministry” and seek divine endorsement instead of seeking first the divine Word. We do not inquire, as we should, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” It is high time we reported to His headquarters for our marching orders.

The last invitation of the Bible says, “Let the one who is thirsty come” (Rev. 22:17). My friend Kevin Brown is a pastor who hungers and thirsts desperately after God. He is conscious, deeply conscious, that there is only one source of Truth when it comes to our youth. If we drink of this Truth and receive it by faith, we will overflow to the glory of God and the blessing of others.

What a blessed pattern for youth is set forth in Scripture! Our greatest delight as parents should be to see our children living for Christ. There is indeed a biblical pattern to parenting, but there are many impediments, not least our enslavement to tradition. Our Lord was careful to stress that children were important to Him. It is a mistaken notion that youth require entertainment and games. There is no adult Holy Spirit and teenage Holy Spirit. There’s just the Holy Spirit, and all who possess Christ are to love and serve Him. Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 12. It is of first importance that the church stop marginalizing its youth. How ridiculous to act as though the Gospel could not transform our teenagers’ lives!

You will observe that this book does not claim to be the answer to every question you might have about parenting or youth ministry. Raising responsible teenagers is a work of God. Only He can transform our lives. Except the Lord build the house we labor in vain who build it. Kevin Brown says the time for flimsy alibis is over. It will take rugged tenacity and inspired stubbornness to see it through. But the pay-off comes when the world is obliged to acknowledge that the work was performed by the Lord.

Yes, says brother Kevin, Christian young men and women can be “strong” (1 John 2:14). The tragedy of today is that our sights are too low. Have you ever considered what the Scriptures have to say about the matter? If not, I urge you to make a start of it now, by reading this excellent book. Our Father would be pleased to give us so much more if we only had the faith to ask for it.

David Alan Black

Professor of New Testament and Greek

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary