What Message Are We Sending ?

Once per month we have a "combined" activity with the youth of the church on our regular youth night.  One group of the youth is responsible to plan the activity for that evening and then everyone else just shows up prepared to enjoy whatever is planned.

This month, that responsibility fell upon our group (the 12 and 13 year old young men), so we have spent a few weeks over this past month planning for that night.  All told, it probably encompassed about 3-4 hours of planning and several individual assignments that each required another hour or two of work outside our normal meeting times.

All was going smoothly until this past Sunday, when we were nonchalantly informed that the young women would not be joining us for the activity.
Wait, what?!
When did this happen?  Just now.
And why are we just finding this out three days beforehand?  Sorry.
Can we just change the date for the "combined" activity?  No.

The questions didn't end there ... but the answers did.

This bothers me mostly because of the terrible message it is sending to our youth.  What message can we possibly expect them to learn from this experience?  The boys that invested time to plan now have to scramble to adjust plans, while scrapping all their hard work ... for nothing.  The youth that "missed" the combined activity get a message that it's not really important to be in attendance unless you're the ones who are in charge or invested time to plan the activity or event.

This is why the next generation is in trouble ... they have weak teachers.  :(

Song Of The Day:
I feel the song "Kings and Queens" by Audio Adrenaline is an appropriate tune for this day.  As current adults we need to respect our responsibility to teach the rising generation in the right way, even if it makes things tough or inconvenient for us.  Otherwise, we will reap the weak things we have sown and then we will become 'the least of these' but with no hope for improvement.

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