"Short" daily entry

So I'm going to try to start doing a short blog entry every day. I have internet access in the house where I live, so I figure I should take advantage of that and start doing a better job of communicating. So without further ado, here's what happened today, Saturday January 31.

Today, like all Saturdays, I went to the worship services of both the adolescentes (12-15 years old) and the jovenes (16 - 30 years old). I'm in charge of directing the worship service for the younger group every other week (this wasn't my week). Being in charge can be frustrating because: 1) even though the worship service is supposed to start at 6pm, the kids don't show up until 7; and 2) when they finally do arrive, I always realize that I really can't connect with them very well (and taht's putting it lightly). "Middle schoolers" are a difficult age to begin with. Middle schoolers who don't speak English and have lived all of their lives in a poor gang neighborhood are nearly impossible. I've just started with the job of actually leading the games and "preaching" or doing a bible study with the kids. So I'm still optimistic that I'll start to grow on them bit by bit in the next six months. But still, right now getting these kids to participate in things sometimes seems impossible. Last week, I was told to make the worship service centered around the theme of building group identity (a lot of the kids who come don't even know the names of some of the people who come... and I don't know all of them either). So I prepared what I thought was a really awesome night. I started by going out and buying tennis balls (they were the only small sized balls I could find). Then, when enough kids finally arrived, we played a game where everyone stands in a circle and someone starts the game by saying the name of someone else in the circle and then throwing them the tennis ball. That person then does the same thing to another person in the circle, until everyone has received the ball and its returned to the person who started. And then you start adding more balls, timing them to see how fast they can do it, etc. I couldn't get everyone to play, and the ones who did agree to play weren't exactly thrilled to be doing it. Once we started, a couple of them even changed their minds and sat back down in their seats.

Since the game kind of failed, I had them all sit down and decided to take a more direct approach to helping them learn each other's names. Each person took turns going around in the circle and introducing themself by simply saying their name, how long they've been attending the church, and one word to describe either their personality or an interest. About 2/3 of them, after a HUGE amount of prodding quietly rattled off all three parts of the introduction. The rest all decided to sit in the back and not participate (and ignore me when I kept inviting them to come to the front) or just shook their head when I asked them to say anything more than just their name. So I then read 1 Corinthians 12, which is about gifts of the spirit and how we are all called with our different gifts to be the "body of Christ." I started to try to get them talking by asking basic comprehension questions, and was met by silence. I then decided to ask them what "gifts" or talents they had to try and create a profile of the group. A few of them volunteered things, and I wrote their answers down on the chalkboard. But again, most of them just sat there uninterested, or just talked amongst themselves. I ended by telling them how each one of them was valued and important, each has gifts and talents, and that it was really important for them to get to know each other and become a tight-knit group. We concluded the service in the traditional style: singing a song, taking up an offering and closing in prayer.

So the worship service today wasn't directed by me, but rather by Hugo, a youth leader who is actually a member of a different church, but is nice enough to come to our neighborhood and work with the kids from Km 13. Like last week, most of the kids didn't show up until after 7pm. Hugo skipped the "games" part all together, in an effort to show them that they need to come on time in the future if they don't want to miss the "fun" part of the service. Hugo read a passage from Romans and then talked to them about what exactly it means to be a Christian. He talked about being totally against the world. He told them that God has lots of children, but no grandchildren. That's to say, that it doesn't matter if your parents were Christian, in order for you to be "saved," you have to be "born again" and accept Christ for yourself; your parents can't do it for you. He also included a short comparison of heaven and hell. He closed by reminding them that they don't know when they're going to die, that every decision, good or bad, has its consequences, and that if they decide they want to be baptized (or if they already have been) they have to "walk the walk" - you can't be a Christian in name only.

As probably all of you well-know, most of this message is very, very different from my own theology. Listening to Hugo's sermon was pretty uncomfortable at times, and I kind of wished I didn't speak spanish, so I could just sit there and pretend he was talking about something else. I've done a lot of thinking about the differences in the messages you hear at a church here in Lima versus the white, middle-upper class Presbyterian churches I'm used to back home. And I really don't think the whole social gospel/postmodern/emerging church approach would really work here. I think it makes sense for Hugo to tell them that Christians are totally different from "the world" when the world as they experience it is so rife with unwed teenage mothers, drug and alcohol abuse and gang/domestic violence. Maybe these kids really do need an old-school, black and white, disciplined version of Christianity that includes a little fire and brimstone. I'm not saying that the evangelical churches in Peru are perfect, but I do think they probably know more about what they're doing than I do. And I'm not saying that the PC-USA-type churches are wrong. I think middle-upper class white North Americans are much better suited to a more liberal theology that paints the world with shades of gray rather than black and white, that asks questions instead of providing answers, and that stresses the social gospel more than personal purity. I'd love to go more in depth with this later, but I've got to go to bed. It's a good thing I haven't gone to seminary yet, because I'm pretty sure I'd be laughing at myself right now if I had....