Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: DAYDREAM (12/08/16)
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TITLE: Letting Go of the Dream | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Young
12/14/16 -
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Daydreaming during sermons had become my routine since I had gotten too old for Sunday school.
I had rocked Sunday school. I was the star of every class and had received a certificate for perfect attendance year after year. My parents had never missed a week, so I knew all the memory verses, all the stories and was a willing participant in class. I felt popular in class because people wanted me to be on team for Bible trivia. Yes, I truly shone in Sunday school.
However, since I aged out, I was stuck upstairs…and I was bored. The preacher might have been very fine, but I would have had no idea. I couldn’t follow what he was saying because it was over my head. I suspect it was over a lot of people’s heads as I would periodically look around and see glazed expressions that mirrored my own. However, my mother adamantly professed that he was the best, so week after week, we faithfully made our way to the family pew.
After five years of listening to sermons, I began to fake being sick or tired or anything that would get me out of going to church. I would say that I had homework or cramps or indigestion. Finally, after a few months of excuses, my mother confronted me, and I confessed. I had come to resent going to church. The people were fine, the singing was nice, the days when there were refreshments afterwards were good, but I couldn’t stand sitting through the forty minutes of incomprehensible preaching. I was an adult now. Shouldn’t I be allowed to make my own decision about going to church?
I’m not sure exactly what happened, but we ended up switching churches. We started going to a dynamic little place that rented out a Mason’s Hall. The minister was a mild-mannered, humble and completely relatable man. Everything he said spoke to my insecure young adult heart, and I began to look forward to going to church. It became the highlight of my week. Although I didn’t get to be the star of a class, I did learn something valuable: not every church fits everyone.
Nearly thirty years later, I understood when my teenagers complained about going to church. One of them detests the ‘meet and greet’, and the other one dislikes the singing. The actual sermons, however, they enjoy. So, like my parents before me, I had to make a choice. Do I force my kids to go to church, possibly making them resentful and turning them against the whole institution, or do I prayerfully consider other options?
I chose to do the later. After praying, I had an epiphany. Our church has a website that broadcasts the sermons every week, and my kids sure do love the computer, so I made a deal with them. They could listen to the podcast each week, give me feedback about what they heard, and I would let them stay home and sleep in on a Sunday morning.
Of course, this won’t work for everyone, and it’s not my suggestion that it will, but I want to say that each person needs to consider how they are going to get fed. We all have different appetites, different taste buds, and so it stands to reason that we have different ways of doing church.
I hope that one day my children will find a house of worship that they love, just like I love ours because it’s important to be with fellow believers in order to grow. But for now, I’m content to let them do church like this.
It hasn’t been easy. I had to let go of the dream I had about my family sitting together on a Sunday morning, all bright-eyed and eager. I also had to let go of the hope that my kids would actively participate in youth groups and short-term mission trips. Those things might still come, but for now, I just pray that God will fill their hearts with faith and love, and that they will come to know Jesus in a real and amazing way through the internet.
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