Too much creativity
A few days ago we were invited to a youth leaders conference to share our creative ideas that we apply in our church for a more relevant approach to the post-modern generation. Sounds very complex, but these people were really interested in improving their youth ministries, the communication of their message, in order to be more relevant for their kids. So, they put up a conference for leaders from four regions in South-East of Romania, ready to absorb new information, really determined to make themselves good and again, relevant, communicators... to be able to reveal God's truths to a more and more sophisticated, confused and sensitive generation.
Well, it's not so easy... When two creative people have to cross half of the country to get to the meeting, their creativity can be "dangerous". To get to the point, we decided to take a shortcut (at least it was on the map) to save about two precious hours and about 125 miles. The result? The "shortcut" was about 20 miles of very bumpy off road, up in the mountains, with a really small city car. First it appeared like a Camel Trophy adventure but, when the smoke started under the hood and the transmission oil was sprayed all over the engine, we said it's serious. No phone signal, no gas stations, no other cars, but pure nature at its best. Too much "creativity" I'd say! We continued like this until we get to the first village. We also found a sort of mechanic who improvised something so we can use the car. It worked surprisingly well. We didn't save two hours, but we were on time at the conference. Happy end... by the way, we choosed the same route on our way back.
Rei knows a lot about taking risks in order to be creative and relevant in communicating God's word. He "burned" himself many times, but the result worth it. So, he's always putting a lot of passion in his seminaries, with many examples from his ages of experience. To be relevant means to use what is cultural to communicate what is eternal, he said. We need to keep our eyes open, to study with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other one. We cannot isolate ourselves nor get saturate into the culture we live in, but we need to interpret it, to keep a hold on it. We believe this is what God expect us to do, and living like this, we can be relevant as well, for any generation of young people. May God bless our efforts!
