The Resolute

Gus is an MTS apprentice. And Gus wrote some studies about Christian dating (and some other stuff). But is there more of a link between the two than Gus? Well, I think what links them is that Christians are in danger of undertaking them wrongly in the same way.

Christians do dating differently to the world. Sometimes it’s called ‘courting’ to help make the distinction. One of the differences (there are several) is that a large part of what you are doing is explicitly assessing whether or not someone is wise to marry.

MTS is a brilliant movement committed to raising up gospel workers to go out into the harvest. During a 2 year program focussed on front line ministry and training, apprentices are given the opportunity to assess whether or not they should go into full time word ministry.

How do we do either poorly? By missing two words:

‘Or not’.

If you date you don’t have to get married. If you do MTS you don’t have to go into full time ministry. If it’s a Godly and wise course of action to take then go ahead and get married/go into full time word ministry but we need to protect the other two options from the stigma of failure.

If these undertakings are about whether or not to make a commitment to a longer, more permanent version of themselves then the option ‘or not’ should be viewed as a positive outcome. If you were trying to figure out which way to go and were able to make a decision then you’ve achieved the goal. Neither should be about getting on a metaphorical conveyor belt, but gathering information to make a decision.

Imagine you’re running a church. Everything’s going really well; you preach faithfully every week, you have strong numbers and an outward looking focus. You’re even able to appoint a youth pastor. Then one week in a staff meeting the youth pastor mentions that a growing number of the youth are disappointed with the songs that you are singing in church. They can’t complain about the songs lyrics but feel that the music is somewhat lack-lustre. They look at their friend’s churches and see that their music is so much better; they even mention that the songs at KYCK (Katoomba Youth Convention) are better. You’re inclined to take their concerns seriously because you believe that a vibrant youth ministry is important to the church. So you ask some of the musicians to come up with a revised song list.

You can’t profess to have a great knowledge of music so you leave that up to the musicians but you’re still careful to check the words of all the songs. At first you’re a little unsure. You feel a lot of the songs don’t seem to say much… but the musicians assure you that these songs have the best tunes. So you let them in… it’s not like they’re bad theology… they just don’t say much… but they don’t say anything wrong.

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