On the camp question, allowing that it would be better to reach a 46 year old man than his 15 year old son, how do you transfer those resources from the child to something just as effective with the man?
(And how do you answer the statistics that show people coming to faith generally earlier in life?)
Our resources in the church are largely time, people and money. So the obvious answer is to spend our time, money and resources doing things that will reach parents and disciple the parents (and that teach them to disciple their own children) rather than suggesting the church will do that discipleship/evangelism for them. So it probably does mean taking our time and money out of youth works and camps and focusing it on evangelistic outreach aimed at adults/parents and discipleship programmes focused on parents/adults. Some of it will also be a matter of creating a culture where this is normal.
As for stats about people becoming believers early in life, they are a bit more specific than that. The stats don’t show most become Christians early in life so much as specifically in Christian families, and seemingly those Christian families that read the bible at home and bring their children regularly to church. So, again, focusing on the parents, and discipling the well on these things, is the best way to put children in the best possible position to believe.
It takes a cultural adjustment and requires taking some well ingrained blinkers off, but the stats do bear out that if we reach the parents first this is best for evangelism and discipleship of children too.
Yes, but let’s say that one of your church members takes the week off and instead of going to camp, he wants to reach the fourty year olds – what is it that he actually does with that week?
I do believe that most converts from outside the church do so early (but if course if that’s where we put our resources, as well as statistically issues where somebody who was converted at twenty and lives to be 70 has been converted at twenty five times as long as the one who is converted at sixty.)
I’d say the church that thinks one week of camp a year – whether pressing on with it or redirecting that sole week to something else – probably needs a total change in its evangelistic and discipleship culture. If they can’t see beyond what to do with one week in the year, they really are missing the point altogether. Resources to camps are usually less well spent and effective than ongoing ministry through local churches. One-hit wonder weeks of evangelism are less effective than ongoing, relational means of outreach. If your only Q is, how to I redirect my one week of mission a year, you are missing the scale and the nature of the problem nor what needs to happen to resolve it.
But the ongoing relational work and the week at camp aren’t rivals to one another. (Indeed perhaps if nothing else camp helps train people to speak Bible or gives a refreshing change of pace or give a straight line answer to ‘going on holiday?’). Saying to not do camp but do long-term relational work is like saying ‘don’t eat eggs, play rugby’ it simply makes no sense.
Holiday days are a resource that Christians have. One answer to how to spend this resource is camps. Another answer could be to try to cash them in to *help* the church fund a woman’s worker. But, invent a new Christian doing relational work all year long is certainly not an answer to the question of camps or any other kids work. And the effectiveness of camps and kids work has to be compared to the best alternative of those resources*.
(* It could be that Youth camps are the best use of the holiday, but are so relatively useless that to be concerned about the holiday at all is penny-wise and pound-foolish, but how ineffective would camps have to be for that to be true? (I would like to clarify that I appreciate that camps do take up more resources than just the one week of holiday I’ve been referring to.))
Your reply also seems to imply that churches that encourage its congregation to volunteer at camps are less likely to encourage people to do long-term relational ministry. I don’t think that’s likely for a few reasons:
A church encouraging people to help at a camp is concerned with the lost.
A church encouraging people to help at a camp is publicly concerned with the lost.
‘’ is encouraging every member ministry.
‘’ is encouraging Bible-based evangelism.
On the camp question, allowing that it would be better to reach a 46 year old man than his 15 year old son, how do you transfer those resources from the child to something just as effective with the man?
(And how do you answer the statistics that show people coming to faith generally earlier in life?)
Our resources in the church are largely time, people and money. So the obvious answer is to spend our time, money and resources doing things that will reach parents and disciple the parents (and that teach them to disciple their own children) rather than suggesting the church will do that discipleship/evangelism for them. So it probably does mean taking our time and money out of youth works and camps and focusing it on evangelistic outreach aimed at adults/parents and discipleship programmes focused on parents/adults. Some of it will also be a matter of creating a culture where this is normal.
As for stats about people becoming believers early in life, they are a bit more specific than that. The stats don’t show most become Christians early in life so much as specifically in Christian families, and seemingly those Christian families that read the bible at home and bring their children regularly to church. So, again, focusing on the parents, and discipling the well on these things, is the best way to put children in the best possible position to believe.
It takes a cultural adjustment and requires taking some well ingrained blinkers off, but the stats do bear out that if we reach the parents first this is best for evangelism and discipleship of children too.
Yes, but let’s say that one of your church members takes the week off and instead of going to camp, he wants to reach the fourty year olds – what is it that he actually does with that week?
I do believe that most converts from outside the church do so early (but if course if that’s where we put our resources, as well as statistically issues where somebody who was converted at twenty and lives to be 70 has been converted at twenty five times as long as the one who is converted at sixty.)
I’d say the church that thinks one week of camp a year – whether pressing on with it or redirecting that sole week to something else – probably needs a total change in its evangelistic and discipleship culture. If they can’t see beyond what to do with one week in the year, they really are missing the point altogether. Resources to camps are usually less well spent and effective than ongoing ministry through local churches. One-hit wonder weeks of evangelism are less effective than ongoing, relational means of outreach. If your only Q is, how to I redirect my one week of mission a year, you are missing the scale and the nature of the problem nor what needs to happen to resolve it.
But the ongoing relational work and the week at camp aren’t rivals to one another. (Indeed perhaps if nothing else camp helps train people to speak Bible or gives a refreshing change of pace or give a straight line answer to ‘going on holiday?’). Saying to not do camp but do long-term relational work is like saying ‘don’t eat eggs, play rugby’ it simply makes no sense.
Holiday days are a resource that Christians have. One answer to how to spend this resource is camps. Another answer could be to try to cash them in to *help* the church fund a woman’s worker. But, invent a new Christian doing relational work all year long is certainly not an answer to the question of camps or any other kids work. And the effectiveness of camps and kids work has to be compared to the best alternative of those resources*.
(* It could be that Youth camps are the best use of the holiday, but are so relatively useless that to be concerned about the holiday at all is penny-wise and pound-foolish, but how ineffective would camps have to be for that to be true? (I would like to clarify that I appreciate that camps do take up more resources than just the one week of holiday I’ve been referring to.))
Your reply also seems to imply that churches that encourage its congregation to volunteer at camps are less likely to encourage people to do long-term relational ministry. I don’t think that’s likely for a few reasons:
A church encouraging people to help at a camp is concerned with the lost.
A church encouraging people to help at a camp is publicly concerned with the lost.
‘’ is encouraging every member ministry.
‘’ is encouraging Bible-based evangelism.
It sounds to me like you are wedded to doing camps – which of course, you are free to do if you want.