another year of life . . . again

So, my birthday has come and gone. All in all, not a very eventful day. Work, dinner with my mom, my sister and brother-in-law arrive for a visit. But a good day.

I went back and read the post I wrote around my birthday last year. I was reflecting on where I was in my journey with God. This has been another year of life where I can say that the journey I'm on with God has continued. I am in a different place than I was this time last year. And yet, there are many things that are the same too.

I still have the same job . . . and I still love it most days. I still have the same great friends as roommates - for a while longer at least. I still have the same great family I did then - and two great brother-in-laws added to the mix.

Both other things have changed. In a short time I will be moving - staying in the same city, but in a different place to call home. I've started to feel connected at church again - in a place that I never thought I would, women's ministry. I thought of women's ministry as the place my Mom and my Grandma were, not where I belonged for so long. But, this year, it really has begun to feel like the place I should be - a place where I look forward to being a part of things.

And my answer to a request to describe what my journey with God has been like lately is different. I no longer feel like I am in the midst of a dark, overgrown forest where all I can see is the next step.
I feel like I have made my way out of that forest into the light - into the open area beyond it. A place with colour, and light, and streams running through. A place where I can just enjoy spending time with my Lord and hearing from Him, rather than clinging for all I am worth to the little I can see.
It is a much different place to be. I am not sure it can be said that it is a better place to be to, because I can see now the growth of the time when I could barely see the next step ahead. It is a different place to be. A place I know I probably will not stay forever, but a place I will enjoy for every moment I am here.

a few totally unrelated thoughts from my life recently

Apparently I have been neglecting my blog for the last three weeks. My first clue came when I had to try to remember my log-in because it had been so long since I had actually had to use it to get in. The last few weeks have been busy and as much as I have kept meaning to come by here to write a post, there never seemed to be enough hours in a day. I have no specific thing I have been thinking about a lot recently - mostly it's been a few smaller things that have been running through my head. So this post may be a little bit random.

Last weekend I was at a conference at my church. We were using Beth Moore's Loving Well teaching for the weekend. I was challenged by her saying that we cannot love others well until we accept that we have been well loved by God. Our love for others must come out of the overflow of God's love for us in our lives. If we are only seeking love from the other people in our lives, we will easily become burnt out on loving people. The love we receive from other people should be a bonus, that comes after we have been filled up with God's love. We must continue to seek to be filled with God's love as we pour out love to others.

My sister will be here in a couple days. That is something that I am really looking forward to. Six months without seeing her is too long! I think at times I have taken for granted how much I enjoy spending time with my sisters. But in the last year I have come to a greater understanding of how special our friendships as sisters are. To this day, my sisters are the ones who can drive me the craziest and frustrate me the most. But, they can do that because of our relationship. My sisters are also the ones I have laughed the most with, cried the most with, and have the best memories with.

crossing the lines of age we draw in the church

I borrowed a book from my Mom a few days ago that looked really interesting. And upon reading it - definitely has been an interesting read. The book is called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults are Leaving the Faith . . . and How to Bring Them Back, by Drew Dyck. There is much I could write about the book, but that's not what prompted this post.

I read a few sentences in one of the chapters that jumped off the page at me because they resonated with something I have wondered about for a while. I have often wondered whether our division of the church according to age was a good thing.

"According to Smith's research,* one key indicator of whether or not young people stick with their faith was intergenerational connections. Basically, those young people who had relationships to older Christians, whether their parents or other faithful congregants, were far less likely to abandon their faith in their twenties." (Generation Ex-Christian, pg. 177)

I guess having grown up in a church that my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were active members of, I was incredibly blessed to have those intergenerational connections happen naturally. But, I also know of many other people in the church of other generations who took an interest in my life, and still do. Until the last few years I have taken that for granted. I realized how blessed I was in a conversation with a friend who came to follow Christ as a young adult and really only knows other young adults at church well.

It makes me wonder if we have lost some of the richness of the church as the body of Christ by always segregating people by age for church events. I wonder if we need to once again become more intentional about connecting the generations in our church. After all, the body of Christ needs all of us to function as God intended it, but we cannot do that if we never talk to anyone outside of a ten year age span around our age.

There is definitely a place for youth groups and young adults ministries and seniors ministries, but there needs to be a place for ministry that speaks to more than one generation at a time. If we do not do that, we will risk losing young adults in the church. Even with the strong family of faith I come from, I love sitting around a table at the women's Bible studies I am a part of with women of all different ages and walks of life. I learn so much more than if I was to sit at a table doing the same study with all people my own age. We have much to learn from the other generations in the church.

It makes me a bit sad sometimes to sit in a church service and look around to see all the youth sitting in one area, the young adults in another, young families in another, seniors in another. Why the separation? Yes, I know we want to sit with friends or family. But, I have found that my favourite place to sit is with people who have been followers of Christ for more years than I have been alive. There is a richness to their worship that I cannot describe.

So I am left to wonder, how do we develop intergenerational connections better? How do we develop those connections so that young adults have stronger ties to the church as a whole? How do we connect youth and young adults who are not from Christian families with the older generations in the church to help them grow?

*Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005), pg. 162-163