Wednesday, September 20, 2006

So what's the message?

So one of the main thrusts in my church and thus my internship is the Franklin Graham festival that is coming to Winnipeg in October. So ever Tuesday the high school/junior highs go to 'Christian Life and Witness Classes'. They are basically prep for the festival. I think for quite some time I have been turned off of Franklin Graham, it began a couple years back in my 'Evangelism' class at college. We watched a video of Graham' alter call at one of this festivals, I think the consensus that the class came to was that we were not comfortable with his approach. Now maybe that is because of the generation gap between him and myself. I have found myself at odds with pastors or ministers that are more than twenty years older than me i think in this period there has been a significant ideological shift.
But back to the question at hand, something really perturbed me about a video that they showed a couple weeks back. The idea behind the video was that people needed forgiveness from God for various of things. One of the things that the video focused on was that people need forgiveness for their loneliness. I think we need forgiveness for a lot of things..but loneliness is not one of them. I think people who feel alone need God's love...to feel his presence not to be told that they need to ask for forgiveness. This is especially the case for youth. I feel it is almost part of adolescents to feel alone or wanting friends or someone to turn to. I just fear that there were teens at the class who saw loneliness as a sin. I feel this like a lot what the festival is saying is creating an improper view of God, which is having a huge effect on teens. Not sure if you guys agree with me on my view of loneliness, if you do or don't I'd love to get some more insight on this.

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