Tonight a group of us went to our professor's house for refreshments and discussion on anything that might arise from our class discussion. I think if I was there an hour longer I would have started talking, but there was enough to fill the silence so I let it go by.
One of the most profound thoughts that I came across was the realization that in our post-modern world, this younger generation is desperately looking for some concrete answers. Our hearts are in the right place, I believe, help thou my unbelief, but we don't know truth in some of the immense "gray" areas. I guess to an extent we as Christians have to be content with not knowing, but that seems to be the answer to all of our questions these days.
Another thought was regarding the idea of mentorship, and how it ought to look. This could be in regards to vocational desires (pastoral, teaching, etc) or spiritual. Though sometimes I wonder how separated those two really are. I think we're not doing a bad job of raising up our children, but we're having a tough time raising up mentors to train those children once they're no longer children. We're also having difficulty teaching people to be teachers, and pastors. How can you learn to pastor unless you're given the chance to minister, to speak with the dying, to preach to the congregation? How can you learn to teach until you're given the chance to communicate?
The only solution we have right now is the idea that we have to create for ourselves our own learning environment. I think we're too used to being spoon fed exactly how we're supposed to learn, so that we are prepared. I'm just glad we're finally realizing that our education system is not fully preparing us for ministry, as scary of a thought as that may be.
