“Instead of teaching kids to allow Christ to live through them, we invite them to mimic Him. They rely on their own power, interpret their own behaviors as God-honoring and feel a sense of spiritual pride when they hit the mark.”

                                                                                              -Steve Gerali

Wow. Um. Yeah. Uh. Well.

What an amazingly succinct summary of our culture of youth ministry. NO WAIT! Not simply youth ministry… the CHURCH!

That statement sure hit my marrow. I’ve always been told that Christ is our standard, but that standard isn’t something we can comprehend, interpret or quantify. It’s only by living in and through Him do we begin to understand who He is (and that there is so much we don’t know).

As I walk more with Him, I begin to realize - it’s less of being like Him and more of me submitting myself to Him. That is the process of becoming more Christ-like. 

I’ll leave you with the words of Aaron Shust, who summarizes this thought much more eloquently that I could ever do. 

“You are my strength. You are my God. You are my King. You make me laugh. You make me dance. You make me sing. All of my plans, all of my dreams, I lay them down before your feet. All of my time, all that is mine, I submit to your design. Because you are the one, the only one, who would give it all away for me.”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 6:27 am and is filed under Adam LaRoche, Blogroll, Christ-like, Christ-like or like Christ?, Christianity, Church, Jesus Christ, Steve Gerali, Uncategorized, aaron shust, change, change me, christ, christian, christianb, christians, christiantity, youth, youth ministry, youth work.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.