I give out a love of crap at my church. Much of it good fun. But in the cold light of day it is really useless, cheap crap. Useless, cheap crap that may possibly have the letters JESUS or GOD on the side.
Whistles, lights, bells, puzzles, bouncy balls, kazoos, eye patches, pencils... all cheesy christian crap.
Sometimes I wonder if it is doing more harm than good.
When I arrived at my current job they ended each term with a game that gave away these sorts of prizes. I thought it was not harmful, so I continued the trend.
By the end of 2011 I started to taper off the presents.
The reason?
They were costing a heap of coin, they didn't really achieve anything, the prizes usually annoyed the leaders (and parents!) and, finally, they have a danger of creating a spirit of entitlement.
For better or worse, youth ministry continually flirts with creating this spirit.
We cater our programs to the kids.
We model our activity space to be as pleasing as possible.
We provide everything with as little fuss to the kids as is reasonable.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the drop-out rate is significant once teens pop-out-the-top-of-the-system and this pandering ceases?
No comments:
Post a Comment