This blog idea began June 08, 2008.
Question: How do people decide that they should go to this certain church service/event but skip that church service/event? Allow me to explain.
Most churches have three services each week: Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. And of course, you've got some form of group Bible study either before or after the Sunday morning service (at Southview it took place after). The problem is, attendance is typically high on Sunday morning, decent on Wednesday evening, and terrible on Sunday evening. Lately I've been wondering why this happens and how people work it out in their minds that this is acceptable (I'm completely guilty of it too, so I'm frustrated with myself just as much as I am with others). Two situations got me thinking about this...
The first was during an event called One Prayer that took place in June. I'll explain more about this event in my next post, but it was spread out over four Sunday evenings. The plan for each service was to play these pre-recorded video messages from some of the best preachers in the world, so I was honestly expecting tons of people to show up. The typical Sunday morning count was around 180. The One Prayer evening services brought in around 30 each week. I was baffled (not a word we use enough these days if you ask me!). Maybe we could have talked up the event more, maybe we should have put up flyers around the community advertising the event (even though it was really more for the already-churched than for newcomers). At any rate, the poor turnout made me wonder...
The second was when one of the youth told me he was skipping Sunday Morning Bible Study because he had a project to finish for school. Baffled once again. For some reason this tends to happen a lot with youth. It's hard to put my frustration into words here, but when a kid skips an hour of Bible teaching focused directly on them so they can finish their homework (when if they just came to class they'd still have from noon until 11pm to finish it...like that extra hour is gonna make or break their success) it drives me crazy. The same goes for when they have sports practice or just can't miss their favorite tv show. Sometimes I feel like parents severely underestimate the importance of the youth group. Please forgive me if I sound arrogant, but I honestly feel like, in most instances, an hour in a youth class that I'm teaching gets through to kids WAY more than an hour in the "big church" service. No disrespect to the senior pastors out there, but they would probably agree that their sermons are written and delivered mostly with adults in mind. My lessons are specifically designed for these youth. But if you suggested to the parents that this kid skip "big church" and work on the project during that time so he could still come to my SMBS class, I'm betting they'd freak.
Hopefully this heap of rambling made some sense. Comments?
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Counseling...?
This blog idea began on June 06, 2008, a few weeks after I began working at Southview for the summer.
A church member came into the office a couple days ago to talk to Rob (for the purposes of this blog we'll call the man John). Apparently John had had an altercation with someone the previous day in a store parking lot.
Now let me preface the story by saying that John is a big guy who's originally from the south. He's fairly new to the whole church thing, so from time to time he still lets a cuss word fly around the pastors, etc. I'm pretty sure he's ex-military and at one point in his life he spent a considerable amount of time in jail. Oh, and he's HUGE. Muscle huge, not fat huge. He's been in fights before, and he knows how to handle himself, so messing with him is just a bad idea.
Back to the parking lot incident...the other person had cut him off in the parking lot or flipped him the bird or something, which John didn't really appreciate, especially with his wife in the car. John's wife rolled down the window and yelled at the guy, and the guy just yelled back and continued his rudeness by calling her an obscene name. John then proceeded to get out of the car, the whole time yelling and cussing at the guy, and basically telling him he was ready to fight. The other guy, still sitting in his car like a coward, pulled out a knife and showed it to John. John looked him in the eyes and said that he better stay in the car and drive away because, if he got out and tried to cut him with that knife, he would kill him. The guy finally wimped out and drove away.
Now the point of this post isn't to question his actions. It's not even about him specifically. The point is to ask a generic question about counseling. When people come in to speak to a pastor or therapist or whoever, what do they expect to happen? Are they looking for someone to just listen? Or are they looking for someone to tell them where they went wrong, what they should have done, and WJWD (What Jesus Would Do)? I find that if you throw a topic my way, odds are I'll have a pretty straightforward opinion about it (thus the name of this blog). However, I've been in situations where people are having a tough time and they just need someone to whom they can let it all out without responding. If there's one thing the whole world has in common, it's hating being told that they're wrong. On the other hand, the person may be desperately looking for someone to give them guidance. Over time I've come to realize two things about this topic:
1. Both types of people rarely verbalize what they need. They talk, and then it's up to the counselor to figure out the next move.
2. If you mix these situations up and speak when you shouldn't, or stay silent when you should speak, things simply don't end well. The person leaves with a feeling of "Man I was looking for something more" or "Hey why are you all up in my grill?!".
I suppose it comes with experience, but so far it's been tough for me to discern between when my thoughts are needed and when I should just keep my big mouth shut.
A church member came into the office a couple days ago to talk to Rob (for the purposes of this blog we'll call the man John). Apparently John had had an altercation with someone the previous day in a store parking lot.
Now let me preface the story by saying that John is a big guy who's originally from the south. He's fairly new to the whole church thing, so from time to time he still lets a cuss word fly around the pastors, etc. I'm pretty sure he's ex-military and at one point in his life he spent a considerable amount of time in jail. Oh, and he's HUGE. Muscle huge, not fat huge. He's been in fights before, and he knows how to handle himself, so messing with him is just a bad idea.
Back to the parking lot incident...the other person had cut him off in the parking lot or flipped him the bird or something, which John didn't really appreciate, especially with his wife in the car. John's wife rolled down the window and yelled at the guy, and the guy just yelled back and continued his rudeness by calling her an obscene name. John then proceeded to get out of the car, the whole time yelling and cussing at the guy, and basically telling him he was ready to fight. The other guy, still sitting in his car like a coward, pulled out a knife and showed it to John. John looked him in the eyes and said that he better stay in the car and drive away because, if he got out and tried to cut him with that knife, he would kill him. The guy finally wimped out and drove away.
Now the point of this post isn't to question his actions. It's not even about him specifically. The point is to ask a generic question about counseling. When people come in to speak to a pastor or therapist or whoever, what do they expect to happen? Are they looking for someone to just listen? Or are they looking for someone to tell them where they went wrong, what they should have done, and WJWD (What Jesus Would Do)? I find that if you throw a topic my way, odds are I'll have a pretty straightforward opinion about it (thus the name of this blog). However, I've been in situations where people are having a tough time and they just need someone to whom they can let it all out without responding. If there's one thing the whole world has in common, it's hating being told that they're wrong. On the other hand, the person may be desperately looking for someone to give them guidance. Over time I've come to realize two things about this topic:
1. Both types of people rarely verbalize what they need. They talk, and then it's up to the counselor to figure out the next move.
2. If you mix these situations up and speak when you shouldn't, or stay silent when you should speak, things simply don't end well. The person leaves with a feeling of "Man I was looking for something more" or "Hey why are you all up in my grill?!".
I suppose it comes with experience, but so far it's been tough for me to discern between when my thoughts are needed and when I should just keep my big mouth shut.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
