DO NOT TURN MESSAGES INTO TEACHING MATERIAL
These principles for choosing material aim to supply people with life, solve their problems, and generate a feeling of need within them. This is how the material should be chosen for the youth meeting.
Although our messages are educational, we should avoid turning them into a course of teaching. For example, the so-called Sunday school became a course with fifty-two study topics. A child may attend all these lessons without gaining much regarding spirituality, the gospel content, and life experience.
For example, I attended a Christian elementary school and was one of the best students in Sunday school. I even served as a teacher's assistant in Sunday school. However, I gained no benefit from Sunday school. This is why I say we should abandon the word "school" for children's meetings. We don't want a Sunday school; we just want children's meetings.
We should not convey to them the idea that the meeting is a study course and that they must recite and memorize. They should feel touched and supplied inwardly when they attend the meetings. Therefore, our children's meetings should focus on making children godly young people who live in the presence of the Lord. If they leave impressed with matters concerning human life, the fear of God, or salvation, it will greatly help them.
At a children's meeting in Manila, Philippines, those who served wanted to tell the story of Samson and Delilah because several cinemas in the city were showing a movie about the romance between Samson and Delilah. This is a fundamental mistake in choosing material. This is the wrong method of selection.
We should not randomly talk to children about Samuel today, David tomorrow, Saul the day after, and then about Peter, providing them with outlines to memorize and then testing them on the material. This is futile and wrong. We need to touch their feelings.
For example, D.L. Moody's children's meetings resembled a Sunday school, but they were not. He felt responsible for people's souls. Once he invited a girl to attend his school. She promised to go but did not. Several days later, he saw her on the street. As soon as she saw him, she entered a tavern and hid under a bed. Moody ran after her and pulled her out from under the bed. After that, the little girl went to his Sunday school. If we feel responsible like Moody, we will succeed. We need to pay attention to this matter. Everything else is secondary.
We should not simply give lessons like elementary school teachers, who divide children by age groups and lead their classes. We should not give a lesson to children and then start the next one asking: "What was the lesson last week? Right, it was about David. Who is David?" The children then answer, "David was a man after God's own heart." "David reigned for forty years." Then we say, "Very good, you got it right." If our children's meetings are like this, we are doing a work of death that must be stopped. The children's meetings in Taipei still have this smell.
The material we use must be alive. We can speak to the children about loving the brothers, the love of God, and how God created people with a loving heart. We do not need to talk about spiritual love. Instead, we need to make them realize that the love within them comes from God, and therefore, they must love their brothers. They will then feel guilty if they do not love them. In the next meeting, we can talk about honoring father and mother, asking them to obey their parents. This speech is alive. This does not mean we should not use Bible stories. We can use a story from the Bible to illustrate love for the brothers. This is not a study course, but a living application.
This should also be applied to the work with young people. Those who serve the young people need to understand that we should not depend on instructional meetings. If we rely on them, we will fail. From 1946 to 1948, there were no youth meetings in Shanghai. We did not even have that title. At that time, care for the young came from a burden. The saints pastored them individually. It is a pity that our university conferences are led as classes teaching a specific subject. Everyone who speaks on behalf of the Lord must learn that our speaking should instruct without seeming like a lesson. We are not giving lessons. That is dead and does not bring life to people.
Those who speak must receive a burden to labor with the youth, one by one. Through prayer and other means, we must pastor them so that the Lord gains them. We should not always teach them what Adam, Abel, Enoch, and Abraham did. They may memorize all that in one week and forget everything the next. Teaching them this way will be futile. We need to reach their feelings in such a way that they will never forget.
Intellectual exercises and oral quizzes are just dead letters. There is no need to give so much attention to these things. Furthermore, we should not worry about how many attend. Instead, we should strive to learn lessons, have living experiences, and receive living burdens to labor with the youth. We must do a work of kindling a fire in them that will lead them to kindle it in others. Only this kind of work will be alive.
Enjoy more: Hymn 102
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