446. Learning at Church is not only through Sermons
One truth about living in community is this: your life is transparent. Just like in a family, your life is visible to others, because they know you and care. Transparency is a blessing because, only when people know the real you, can you feel real love and trust. Transparency allows us to feel known and loved, but it also comes with responsibility—to live rightly.
When working at a cancer research lab, my professor taught me to follow proper protocols like wearing gloves and masks to reduce the chance of contaminating the results. However, he himself rarely wore gloves and masks. He would just grab equipment and mix solutions, with no mask and no gloves. Eventually, I found myself doing the same; conducting research with no mask and no gloves. However, I got scolded by one of the other PhD students. In the middle of me getting scolded, guess how I responded? “But, professor does it!”
My professor always taught me: wear gloves and masks. But what I caught from him was a different lesson: it’s okay not to wear gloves and masks. This experience is often the same in church. As Ralph Neighbour Jr. emphasized Christianity is caught, not taught. This is not to undermine the importance of teaching, but to highlight the reality that most people get their cues from the people around them, especially their leaders.
Therefore, as people living in community we should be mindful of how our decisions impact the next generation. Because again Christianity is not taught, but caught. We can tell our students listen to wholesome music, but if they get in our car and we’re listening to explicit music, that becomes their learned standard. We can advise our students on wise dating, but if they don’t see it modelled from us, they will struggle to believe it and apply it.
At Houston, my hosting shepherd told that because they love their house church members, him and his fiancé committed never take overnight trips together before marriage. He explained, “even if we got separate rooms, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather wait until marriage than risk any misunderstanding and be a reason for my house church members to stumble.” I was truly impressed. His awareness of the impact of his decision in community and his intentional decision to model it, tangibly showed how much he loved his brothers and sisters around him.
Christianity has a built-in self-humbling apparatus. As I continue to youth ministry, I am constantly humbled. Preaching better does not make me a greater blessing to the next generation. Instead, only when I more humbly, more intentionally follow Christ and become a real life example for those younger than me in the faith, am I becoming a real blessing. My hope and prayer is that The Seed does not delegate the job of “training the next generation in righteousness” to the Sunday sermons, but takes upon themselves the responsibility of modelling godliness for the next generation. Make the mission personal.
