Black Baptists should engage changing culture, says conference workshop | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

By: Min. Angela Lee Price

Pastor Michael Evans speaks about how churches can respond to change during the African American Fellowship Convention at the civic center in Lubbock, Texas, Wednesday, July 6, 2011. (Miranda Grubbs/ Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

This workshop presenter at the African American Fellowship Convention in Lubbock, Texas yesterday, Pastor Michael Evans, a Baptist Pastor suggested that Baptist need to do more to engage the culture, particularly young people. Some of the suggestions were if you are in a Spanish-speaking community, learn to speak spanish, use Facebook and Twitter to let friends know you are in church, if your church or community has alot of young people, have dances for them. He also said that the church-going audience is more educated now, many having completed high school and college. As a result, Sunday school teachers are going to have to "step up their game" by not reading lessons verbatim. Instead they need to know the text, and background and come prepared for dialogue so that deeper learning can occur. 

I agree.  The church needs to do much more to reach young people. In many churches, the absence of young people is scary.  There is no doubt about that.  The world is reaching our children everyday on television, in the movies, on the radio, and yes, on Facebook and other social media sites.  Young people are being exposed to sex, immorality, crime and drugs at extremely young ages.  Too many children act like grown adults and it is sad.  They know how to make babies, but they know nothing about how to raise them because they are still babies themselves.  So, yes, the church needs to reach young people. 

But once the church reaches them, the church needs to teach them.  The church is not a social club.  It should not be a place that just has activities for activities sake.  The church should be just as radical, if not more radical, in "training up a child" as it is in reaching a child.  The church needs to offer Bible Bowls and debates in scripture in such a way where young people will get it, and will not be afraid to speak to the Jehovah's Witness at their door, nor too timid to give a sound defense for the faith.  The church should be just as radical in training up children in their culture so that they not only know whose they are in Christ Jesus, but who they are as a people.  The church needs to be just as radical in "training up a child" in reading, writing, math, techonology, and the sciences so that our children, African American children, are able to compete with the best and the brightest from any culture anywhere. 

Black Baptists should engage changing culture, says conference workshop | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal