Let’s talk about the “taboo” topics of church
Men’s roles vs women’s roles Homosexuality BOM Any and all questions most of us have but are too afraid to ask because 1) You feel like you can’t ask or 2) You’re embarrassed I hope I got your attention. Because the young people NEED your attention. I cannot and will not pretend that I can speak for everybody. However, I will say that I KNOW that this post will relate to MANY. Our church can do better. This is a fact. The young people can also do better. This is also a fact. Both are true because there is always room for improvement. I want to make this clear. That this post is not blaming or blasting the church or anyone for that matter, but a “wake up call” or a “call to action” that the young people need your help. Yes we have gmba camp, yes we have YIA, yes we have many things to offer. But they are lacking a HUGE component, and it’s what I mentioned in the beginning. The taboo topics. I like to think of this as “the basics”. Why can men be ministers and not women? (Our church’s belief) Why are we against homosexuality? (Our church’s belief) Why do we believe in the Book of Mormon? (Our church’s belief) This is why I call all those hard questions the basics, because they are. They are just some of the unique basics that set our church a part from others. And yet many young people do not understand WHY. Myself included (in the learning process) The Ohio area had a youth retreat weekend recently with the theme “What we believe and why we believe it” It was the most refreshing and fulfilling church event I have ever been apart of. It was raw. And real. “Taboo” topics were covered. “The basics” were covered. Why are we THE church? What does that mean? Why do we believe ___? The easy answer to these questions would be “Because it says so in the scripture” and maybe you even quote the scripture to back those beliefs up. That’s great! But sometimes just pointing someone to scripture isn’t enough. Sometimes we don’t understand what we are reading. Or we think we do, but we actually don’t. Or we’re using scripture not in KJV (Another question: why is that “wrong”??) My point to this whole thing is, we were given the opportunity to “go there” and talk about the things that are not talked about nearly enough. My point is leaders of our church made themselves available, and made it known, that we could TRUST them and ask the hard questions. My POINT is: This needs to be made into a normal thing, not a special occasion. I try to live by the saying “Normalize hard conversations” because the more we talk about something we consider as hard, we realize two things. 1) It becomes easier to talk about and 2) I’m not the only one that feels this way BONUS: you realize it’s not that weird and actually more common than you thought. And when people realize that last one, and continue to speak about the hard stuff, the more speaking about such topics is normalized therefore more and more people feel they can open up and get the help they need. And isn’t that the whole point? To help the young people. To bring them closer to Christ. To get them more involved in the church? The young people want that too. And I can tell you a great place to start. When there’s a problem, you start from the beginning. How can you help the young people? Start with the basics. Much love & God bless, -X
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July 2019
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