By Shawn Flory Replogle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Youth:<\/strong> I dunno [insert Leader name here<\/em>], Christian\u2019s can seem pretty hypocritical. Love your neighbor and all that, when I see the anger and ugly words Christians use in the world, well, I\u2019m not sure I want to be a part of that.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> Honestly, me either. Some of what Christians do and say in the world don\u2019t seem like they portray a full picture of God.\u202f Like God should be contained or controlled.\u202f But, the God I see in the Bible is bigger than that, bigger than anything each of us can imagine. It helps me to remember that.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth:<\/strong> Hmm, I guess. I can see how easy it is to make God too small, fitting into our neat little boxes, falling under someone else\u2019s labels. It doesn\u2019t seem to be very easy to be Christian in a world like that. How do you stay? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> Well I get discouraged sometimes. But I also remember I\u2019m not the first person to live through challenging times. The church has been here before. The very earliest Christians faced very strong reactions to their attempts to be faithful to Jesus. Over the centuries there have always been groups of people who use the label \u201cChristian\u201d to collect worldly power. But at the same time there have always been at least as many Christians seeking to be faithful to Jesus in their own ways.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth: <\/strong>You mean like Alexander Mack over three hundred years ago? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader: <\/strong>That\u2019s a great example!\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth: <\/strong>Yeah, that\u2019s such a powerful story. Eight young adults \u2014 men and women \u2014\u202fchoosing\u202fto follow Jesus by being baptized as adults and not being satisfied with the baptisms they didn\u2019t choose as infants.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader: <\/strong>You are so right. It certainly wasn\u2019t an easy choice. They faced the potential of serious punishment and really only escaped that because the ruling authority in Schwarzenau, Germany was sympathetic. Even other like-minded Christians were upset about what they had done.\u202f\u202fThey thought those 8 young adults \u2014 who were not much older than you by the way \u2014 had made a very serious mistake. Their attempts to follow Jesus were questioned and challenged all the time. \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth:<\/strong> How did they not give up? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> I think they believed in the story. They believed that the faithful choices of those who had come before them were worth something. They believed that it was important to read about Jesus, try to understand Jesus, and try to respond to the Jesus we meet in scripture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth:<\/strong> We make Jesus complicated sometimes, don\u2019t we?\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> We really do.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth:<\/strong> \u2026When really God isn\u2019t asking us to do more than follow Jesus, to do what he did, hang out with those he hung out with, and say what he would have said. To take Jesus seriously.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> Which might be simple, but is rarely easy.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth: <\/strong>But it\u2019s our story, isn\u2019t it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leader:<\/strong> Yep! It is\u202four\u202fstory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Shawn Flory Replogle Youth: I dunno [insert Leader name here], Christian\u2019s can seem pretty hypocritical. Love your neighbor and all that, when I see the anger and ugly words Christians use in the world, well, I\u2019m not sure I want to be a part of that.\u202f Leader: Honestly, me either. Some of what Christians do and say in the world don\u2019t seem like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[104,23,51,59,103],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-skit","tag-follow-jesus","tag-history","tag-shawn-flory-replogle","tag-skit","tag-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1748,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions\/1748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/yya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}