I promised one of the teens I'd send out the passages I read in each of the Children's Ministry rooms every Sunday over the summer. I'm going to try to be faithful about doing that. Help keep me honest! I'm sending this to all the teens and all their parents so that there is no inpropriety, but if this feels like spam, just reply and I'll stop sending it to you and your child. No hard feelings.
Last week I read out of 1 Timothy 4:12 & 13
"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching."
At first glance this looks like a passage that specifically targets teens, but it really isn't. I asked if anyone had experiences where they'd been told they were too young for something or they felt like they were looked down on because of their age. Some of the teens mentioned driving a car as an example or movies rated PG-13 or higher. Some of the adults remembered stories about entering the work force and not beeing allowed to progress too quickly in their careers because they weren't old enough to convince their superiors they had enough experience.
Both are great examples, but I feel that to understand this passage fully, you have to stop and think about why these age driven criteria are considered important. We want to make sure that anyone who gets behind the wheel of a car recognizes they're taking their lives, the lives of their passengers, and the lives of the passengers of every car they come near into their hands. That's a huge amount of responsibility. The age limit doesn't mean you're physically incapable of driving. It's a safe guard to make sure you've probably matured to the point that you will make responsible descisions when mom and dad aren't sitting right next to you, and what happens if you prove to them that you're not? License or not, you're probably not going to be driving anywhere.
Believe it or not, the example about the workplace is the same kind of safeguard. Someone climbing into management, for example, isn't just taking on responsibility for the company they work for to ensure that they make money. They're also taking responsibility of coaching and mentoring the people who work for them to ensure those people have what they need and know how to do the job so that they can continue to make a paycheck that will support their families. It's a big responsibility on both sides, and you have to be responsible and mentally strong enough to handle it. Shouldn't you be sure that the advice you're getting about the Creator of the world knows what they're talking about? Who's going to commit their eternal soul and hope of salvation on someone they don't think could possibly know what they're talking about?!
Paul makes it clear to Tim that the best way to get past the "age" stigma is to set a good example in speech (what you say), in life (how you live and what you do), in love (how you treat people, even someone who can do you no good), in faith (how you trust God to lead and protect you), and purity (and he wasn't talking about bar soap). He told Tim to walk the talk because no one can argue with proof. I asked everyone to think about and share ways they could set those kinds of examples, which ones were the hardest, and as usual everyone had a different one they struggle with.
The last part of the passage about reading scripture, preaching and teaching I thought was Paul following up with a simple way for Tim to get opportunities to set an example in all of those ways he'd just listed by encouraging him to get out into the real world and in contact with other people in the name of God.
The last question I asked everyone was what they thought the difference was between "Preaching" and "Teaching"? That one stumped a lot of people, and others seemed to have it on the tip of their tounge. I'm no pastor, but the way I've come to understand it is that Preaching is sharing the ways someone can walk closer with God and Teaching is a back and forth dialogue to help someone better understand something that might be confusing, hard to accept, or hard to explain. To use an analogy - think of Preaching as singing a beautiful song that helps someone enjoy music and want to hear more. Think of Teaching as instructing someone in music theory so that they could take the sheet music and sing the song themselves for others.
It took a whole lot less time in the classrooms than it did to type it all up, but I'll try to keep this up like I promised!
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