Gaining Wisdom and Spiritual Passion from Older Generations

On one of my previous blogs I wrote a post I titled The Church As Burger King, in which I mentioned briefly, among other things, that "An older Christian adult with much more life experience can give something [to a teenager that] one's peers cannot."

At the end of May I officially graduated from the youth group at my church. This fall I will move to Waco and find a church of my own, but for the summer I needed to find a Sunday School class to go to, so I decided to go with my parents to theirs, The Way and The Word. I have only gone twice but I am absolutely amazed at this class. It mostly consists of couples with children from elementary age to college age, but there are a couple older couple who have no children at home, and of course, there's me, a college student. But despite being the youngest one in the class, I'm already feeling more at home there than I ever did in the youth group. These adults have a spiritual passion that is so contagious. They are more than just a class-they really are a family! They rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. They constantly lift each other up in prayer. They are incredibly connected. You can't sit through one of there classes without sensing the spiritual passion these people have. They are eager to learn. When the teacher asks for someone to read a passage in the Bible, there is no awkward silence!!! Someone is always willing to read from Scripture, and it's not just the same someones over and over either. And the knowledge they have about Scripture is amazing. Bill Schreyer is the teacher, and he has an incredible wealth of knowledge about the Bible and about history. In youth group, I always had an "I already knew that" during the sermons-not in a bad way, it's just that there wasn't ever much material that I already knew. The opposite is true in this class-I am an "AWANA nerd" and yet I am learning so much every class!

I am loving this class and I am so excited about how much I am going to learn this summer. The adults are amazing. I liked youth group, but it will never compare to this. Of course, the age range is very different, the youth group is much bigger, and many are there simply because their parents bring them-but I hope that one day the youth group will experience the same spiritual passion that this Sunday School class does.

Maybe if teens spent much more time with adults like the ones in this Sunday School class, then youth groups would have more spiritual passion. How can you not see how much these adults love the Lord and NOT want what they have?