Resolution or REZ is the monthly evening youth service!

REZ meets on the third sunday of every month and is an opportunity for the youth to meet as a group in a ’service’ environment. It’s a place where the youth can step up to being more involved in shaping a service or being in the band. Also there are opportunities to lead a service or lead the worship.

20th Sept 09

Letter to Wycliffe Youth

Andrew Waugh, pastor and fellow-traveller,

to the Youth at Wycliffe Baptist Church, Reading

Grace and peace to you in Jesus! May you always know and experience more of his love and presence.

I thank God often for you, because you’re hanging in there with the church thing, in an age when that’s probably not seen as cool. Also it’s what many of your parents are doing, and I’m guessing it’s definitely not cool to spend too much time in a place where your folks could look in on you. I commend you for the way you seem to respect your youth leaders, and I’m glad you know how to have fun. 40 per cent of churches in the UK have no children’s or youth work going on and to be honest, you guys bless me simply by turning up. So thank you.

You are living with a set of pressures that previous generations did not have to face. Obviously, if you go back far enough in history, everyone was made to work as young as possible, because everyone had to work all the daylight hours simply to put food on the table. Then, sometime, (at least in the UK) things got more comfortable for most of us. But “quality of life” hasn’t always been improving. Believe it or not, a recent research paper has said the best year for a Brit to be born in was 1935 – to be born earlier OR LATER was not such a good deal because of war, healthcare provision, availability of work, pension rights, etc etc. Your generation has more school work, far more testing, a greater burden of expectation (why SHOULD 50% of young people be expected to go to university?) and the future of work is far less clear than for decades. As you move into earning real money, you will be expected to support an increasingly aged population (like me… thanks).

But here’s the greatest pressure, and it’s been increasing since the 1950s when teenagers were invented. You’ve got money. As a result there are a whole load of people and corporations out there who do not have your best interests at heart. When they look at you, their eyelids ring up £-signs like in the old cartoons. They do not care what kind of music you listen to, or what the lyrics mean, so long as they sold it to you. They do not care how you look, so long as they made money out of it. They do not care what your skin will be like in 30 years’ time so long as you start using cosmetics now (and when you’re 50, they’ll sell you something else to hide the damage). They do not care how little wisdom is said or texted, so long as they sold you the mobile phone; and they don’t care how snazzy your phone is because they will always find a way to make you want another one. So long as they sold you the clothes, the music videos, the alcohol, the magazines and the movies, they don’t care how early these things drive you to become sexually active; and they certainly won’t give up any of their profits to pay for all the support services, adoptions, abortions and counselling that come a few years later. Any time you feel your self-esteem slipping a little, they will have something else to sell you. And I know their plan is working – remember ‘Make Poverty History’?  That year, Nelson Mandela told the concert in Hyde Park that your generation had an opportunity, like never before, to end world poverty. The following year, the £-sign people persuaded the youth of the UK to spend a quarter of a billion pounds  (£250,000,000) on ringtones.

Do you see how Satanic this is? Actually, literally Satanic? If you don’t find your identity, your self-esteem and your purpose in life, IN JESUS, then you’re doomed to buy substitutes that don’t even work, and billions of poorer people will continue to suffer. God loves you and he made you for a better destiny than this. At this point I must put my hands up and admit that it’s my generation that is doing this to yours. For those of you who have already spotted this and are striving to live out an alternative, I salute you. Don’t give up.

Now let me say what bothers me most about your generation; as far as I can tell, you aren’t giving time to the Bible. You could use the NIV, the Message, the New Century Version… it’s never been this easy to read. You could read it, you could have it loaded onto your PDA, you could get it as mp3 or on DVD, but I don’t think you do. In baptism class, when I say “let’s turn to Acts chapter 8” it’s usually the youth who just don’t know whether that’s near the front cover, the back cover, or somewhere in the middle. (I’m not trying to put you off being baptised! it isn’t usually me doing the baptism classes, and even if it was, I would never ridicule someone for not knowing their way around the Bible. But you get my point?) Now, if you’re just along for the ride because Wycliffe Youth is currently nicer than any other bunch of friends, then I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re unfamiliar with the Bible. But please don’t tell me you’re serious about following Jesus, serious about living in Holy Spirit power, serious about loving the Father, if you haven’t at least read the New Testament once. In the church-edition Bible, the New Testament takes up less than 300 pages. That’s shorter than some of the books they make you read for English Literature..What do you give most of your leisure time to? Facebook? Music practice? Sport? Online role-playing games? I dare you to name one day in your life, in which you put less time into that, than reading the Bible.

The last thing I want to say isn’t specific to the youth – it’s on my mind for all of God’s people. Why did Jesus come to earth? The most important answer is, to die for our sins and rise again so WE can rise again and be with God forever. This is what Paul said is “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3). But once that’s clear in our minds, there’s another answer worth looking at. Jesus also came to earth to show what one human being could achieve if he or she were totally submitted to the Father’s will and always filled with the Holy Spirit. The wisdom, the constantly being in touch with the Father, the miracles, the power over demons, the driving back darkness back, attracting more people into God’s kingdom… that’s what God always intended as normal humanity. If we only see “believing in Jesus” as some kind of Get Out Of Hell Free Card, well, God still loves us and we will indeed go to heaven. But if that’s our attitude, then in the meantime we won’t even need the Holy Spirit. We only need Him if we want to change the world.

Your generation will out-live mine, but do you really want that to be just because you were born later? I want to watch you out-live me in every way. In other words, it’s not a competition, but I want you to win.

with love

Andrew

Heb 13:22 (it’s in the New Testament) (that’s near the back)  (in the Bible)