It still happens......

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[askingquestionsaboutGCI]

This was posted on another group I'm on -- totally unrelated to GC*, it's a dog lovers' group!!  But the person who posted is from Minnesota and I instantly thought of the GC churches in that state.  Now, I have no idea whether or not the church involved is GC, but it doesn't really matter, I suppose.  It's sad that this goes on at all.
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  Little Rant...Please Indulge Me
Ok, so I'm a youth minister by trade, currently in grad school at a seminary. I'm sitting in Caribou Coffee getting some work done and in walks a teenage boy and an adult man. They sit at the table next to me and begin talking. It's obvious that this is a youth member of an area church and his adult mentor. I'm thinking, "Oh, that's so nice to see..."....I'm a big advocate of mentorship relationships for teens. They can use all the love and support they can get during those difficult years.

And then I start catching bits and pieces of their conversation and I want to strangle the mentor. I keep trying in vain to mind my own business, concentrate on my book, and I keep catching their conversation. It seems the teenage boy is a graduating senior this year and wishes to attend a different church near the college he will be attending in the fall. The mentor is lecturing him about how "he wishes that he had a mentor like himself in his life even today", that the kid "owes it to the church to be involved there longterm", that he "can't support his decision", wants to pray with the kid for "proper guidance"...And I'm sitting here thinking, "Oh my gosh...this is EXACTLY why Christianity, the church, and youth ministry gets such a bad reputation. What the hell is this guy doing to this poor kid?! To mentor is to SUPPORT that student and LOVE them no matter where they go in life. That means through the worst of life, be it drugs, dating mistakes, school, peer pressure, whatever. The kid wants to attend a different church and he's being ridiculed?! ******* Maybe it's the right choice for this kid and maybe it isn't, but it really makes no difference. Encourage, love, support - no matter what. Is that such a hard philosophy?!

Needless to say, I had to put down my books, plug in my headset and crank up the music so that I didn't butt in and say something. I'm so p****d.

Thanks for listening...

[Rebekah]

Yeah! That definitely sounds like it could be GC. It's nice to know other people get angry when they hear stuff like this too--even if they have no experience with GC (or churches like that).

[AgathaL'Orange]

These youthful commitments are recipes for years of therapy and self questioning later.  Mentors, parents, pastors, and teachers need to remember that in order for our children and young people to feel supported, we must not have this expectation that they must become us or make every choice that we would make.  We are so afraid of losing people to the dark side (or what we perceive as the dark side), that we must control every aspect of their lives!  This only serves to confuse and cause questioning later!  I should know.   

It's all just a heavy handed form of manipulation based in love and concern, but awful anyway.

GC has the corner on this type of parenting and mentoring.  And sadly, they never seem to understand that outward obedience says almost nothing of inward heart change.  And further, that you can never control someone's heart change.  And even further, you are more likely to help someone have a heart change if you stop pinning outward performance to the inner heart change.  For example, you might tell a teen that he needs to attend college near his home church because that's what God wants... loyalty.  So, deep down the kid knows, he really wants to go to another school for whatever reason.  He now has to either 1.  Walk away from what he thinks is God's will, and then in essence walk away from God, 2.  Rethink God's will and realize that not everyone is going to be told what God wants for HIM personally and ignore said command, 3.  Stay at the home church and "please God" or so he thinks, wake up another day and realize that he gave up everything good in his life for a lie about what God wanted, or 4.  Stay at the home church, deny himself completely, listen to all messages about denying self and think "that's what I'm doing" and become less of what he could have been in the first place.

It's kind of lose/lose.