My great grandmother was a preacher at Jubilee Church. She was there during the John Sung Revival. My mom kept this photo of her dad’s wedding. In fact she has a library of photos of each of us (I have 3 other siblings), all our family trips, our birthdays, our growing up years.
She constantly complains that nowadays, we take photos and keep them in computers and social media and do not develop them. She needs to hold them and feel them.
I praise and thank God for as I listened to all the participants sharing their own church history. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and many stories of the faithful have been lost. Who am I? What makes the church what it is today? What are the conversion stories of all these grey-haired folks that I see them coming faithfully every Sunday? What was it like during their youth ministry those days? Did they even have youth ministry? What kept them going? What significant thing happened in the past? How did they go through so many years where they didn’t even have a pastor?
A picture tells a thousand words. Where are the stories? Can I hear them? Can someone share with me? Do I have time to listen? Do I really want to listen? What if I find it too hard to do? What if I ran out of patience? Am I constantly looking for relevance or is there something so valuable that I must listen but pretend that it’s not there? Is there such a great generation gap today that we can’t connect with the old anymore?
Pr. Willy Lau
Synod Youth Executive
No comments:
Post a Comment