Adventist Education

Below I'm going to post an article I just wrote for our church newsletter about the impact of Adventist Education in our church. I know that the system is hurting and in some cases has its issues. But I think you will see from the article the importance that having a both a strong youth program and a Christian school. I know that the three legged stool is an over used metaphor, but I really think that if the home, the church and the school work together we will do the best at keeping students involved in the church. We have a much better chance with these three working together than we do without it. Let me know what you think of the article and perhaps post your pros and cons of Adventist Education. How can we do better, how can we save the system, should we work to save the system?

"As we are faced with the financial crunches at MCA it is easy for us to ask whether having the school is worth it. I have had the benefit of observing the impact Adventist Education has had over the last 9 years, specifically through MCA. I can not speak for MCA students that attend other churches, but I have kept track of the students who are part of our youth ministry. I have long been curious about whether there is a correlation between church attendance and being enrolled at MCA or another Adventist school. Over the past several weeks I have gathered data about 120 students who are either currently High School aged or have graduated from our youth ministry. For the current students separated them into four groups: Public School, Other Christian School, MCA, Other SDA schools. Then I looked at their attendance at church, those students I see at church more than twice a month I marked as involved, less than twice a month: occasional and those I don’t see over a two month period: not involved. Currently there are 35 students in the High School Ministry. As far as our average we are at an all time low of students from the youth group who attend High School at 43%. The average of our alumni who attended MCA is 53%. As you can see both with the alumni and our current students about 60% of the students are actively involved. Here is where the rubber meets the road however. The question to ask is ‘does going to MCA increase the chance of a student being involved in Church?’ Here is what the numbers say 83% of the students who attend an Adventist school are involved in church and the other 17% are occasionally involved. Of the students who do not attend an Adventist school the numbers are different, 35% are involved 17% are occasionally involved and 48% are not involved.

The numbers are impressively stacked in MCA’s favor for our current students, but what about the 84 students who are alumni of our youth program. As you can see from the graphs 53% of our alumni graduated from MCA with a whopping 70% attending Adventist Education. What interested me was the difference in church involvement between those two groups. Historically has MCA been an influencer of future church attendance or involvement. I must admit that there are some assumptions with these numbers and that they are in no way 100% accurate, but I feel that the margin of error is within acceptable ranges. According to national polls of high school students, it is generally understood that 60% of students leave the church after graduating from high school. So that is a benchmark for us to look at. According to my data the students from our church defy those numbers, in our case 68% of our students who attend an Adventist school are still involved in church. This is contrasted with 44% of the students who did not attend Adventist high schools currently being involved in church! That is a big difference. Not only are we 28% above the national average with the kids that attend MCA the numbers for those who did not attend MCA are right around the national average. This tells me two things. First MCA is very important and is beneficial to the long term future of our church. Secondly this tells me that if students do not attend MCA we must to better at keeping them as part of the church. I hope as we consider the future of MCA and Adventist Education in the metro area we keep these numbers in mind, I am so grateful to the commitment of the Minnetonka church’s dedication to Adventist Education and to Youth Ministry. Our kids are important! Let’s keep fighting on their behalf and seeking God’s will for the future of our church."

Sabbath and Sports

A few weeks ago in our staff meeting at church we were discussing the impact of sports on church attendance. Over the years this is something that I have thought about a lot and over the course of this post I hope to explore (and journey together) some of the issues that are being risen by this recent phenomenon in the Adventist Church.

I have found myself on both sides of this issue. Growing up one of the greatest benefits of having an Adventist Education, (it still is a great benefit) is that I didn't have to choose between playing sports and the Sabbath. This choice was made less difficult because I never made a sports team :). My Senior year of high school I went to my first High School football game because a good friend of mine, Kyle, was playing. I remember how rebellious, cool, and guilty I felt as I went to the game and then went to a local pool hall afterwards to hang out with people we'd met at the game. I stayed up so late that it was difficult to make it to church the following day.

As I began youth ministry, the first church I pastored at had no kids in Adventist Education. All the kids attended public school. Dances, and sporting events were all on Friday night and so I had the difficult decision to make about whether I should attend games when invited by students. Part of me wanted to show up and support the kids and part of me wanted to show them my respect for the Sabbath. I remember reading about athletes and teams who had taken a stand and refused to play on Sabbath, and articles were written in the youth magazines lifting them up as heroes of the church for making difficult decisions.

Being a big fan myself, I also read about athletes like Deion Sanders and James Worthy who took a stand for their faith as Christians and were able to spread the gospel in their respective sports. As I thought about it, I was sad that there would never be an Adventist who could share our unique and valuable perspective on Jesus with the sports world. If we were to share the gospel to the entire world didn't that mean athletes? And if people did accept the Sabbath would that mean that they would no longer be able to use their greatest gift to minister to other athletes and use the stage of sport to spread the gospel and the blessings of Sabbath? I didn't have good answers for these questions, and perhaps I still don't. So I left the issue alone.

Recently my mind has returned to these issues. More and more, kids at our church, beginning as young as 5th grade are choosing sports over church and worship. Kids are joining a traveling team or they have tournaments that all take place over a whole weekend. Kids and parents are more and more often choosing sports over community worship. And I, as a pastor, am starting to get worried. Are we going to lose a generation of kids to because of sports. I am seeing that sports is the catalyst that begins the slippery slope of prioritizing things higher than corporate worship. I would love to see some posts by my non-Adventist friends on whether this is an issue in their youth groups as well.

So I want to start a conversation. I am more and more convinced that God is concerned about community and unity. Worship services are one of the church's greatest tools of creating these two things, and more and more families are missing out. Does this concern you or am I over reacting. I'm hoping that people will post on both sides of the issue.

p.s.
After seeing some of the posts I wanted to put up this chart that I have used to evaluate Sabbath in my life. I try to find the balance between Rest (stopping, taking a break) Blessed (what brings joy, happiness) and Holy (set apart for God) which is what God intended the Sabbath to be. I try each week to eat the whole pie, but sometimes more often than not, I fail. I think that for me the most difficult part of the pie is to find the holy aspect of the Sabbath. It is easy to stop our everyday activites and take a break from them, it is easy to be happy (Isa 58) but to find the holiness of God through the Sabbath can be the critical evaluator when we determine how to be fully enriched by the blessing of keeping the Sabbath.

Is it time to change our Outlook.

I'm a little frustrated with our eschatology. Why are we always doom and gloom? This morning at church during prayer I heard the lament again of how awful this world is and that things are going downhill so fast that Jesus better come quick to yank us out of this miserable existence. Now, I will freely admit that I have lived a relatively pain free and sheltered life. Sure I've had some bad things happen to me, but not to the extent of many people especially the millions of children who will die this week because of starvation. But for a while now I've been a little miffed by the view that this world for the lack of a better term, sucks.

I'm blogging about that this week because I am in the middle of reading a book titled "Younger Evangelicals", while I don't really consider myself and evangelical there are many things about the book that resonated with me. In a nutshell what the book said was that from 1950-1975 fundamentalist evangelicals held the view that since Jesus was coming pretty soon, (premillinialism, which Adventism including myself believes) we don't really have to worry about the problems of the world, i.e. the environment, the poor, social justice, because Jesus was going to come and judge everybody and we'd go to heaven and live wonderful blissful lives. I'm finding that this view (often promoted by modernistic evangelists) has gotten the Church (capital C) into a lot of trouble.

I remember being about 15 the first time I thought about Adventist believes in this vein. I had heard through Revelation Seminars or maybe at school that at the end of time those who worship on Sabbath would be persecuted and that Sunday worship laws would force us to choose between the Sabbath and our lives. (Theoretically this could all still happen, who knows) These events would mean that Jesus was about to come. My thinking at the time was why in the world are we paying all of these lawyers to protect the Sabbath, just let it go and Jesus will come sooner!

My postmodernism has taken over my thoughts in this area. I have travelled to several parts of the world. Interestingly enough people are pretty happy. In fact I'm pretty happy. I like living, I like growing in the shape and purpose that God intends for me. I like hearing the stories of peoples lives. I like technology, I like my family, I enjoy a good meal, playing games, sports, music. In spite of some of the crummy things that happen I dig the life that God has given me. So I just don't resonate with doom and gloom eschatalogical thinking. Why do we focus on the bad instead of leading people to the good?

I like to think that I'm looking forward to Jesus second coming as much as the next guy, but perhaps I also am looking forward to the journey of searching for Jesus in this life as well. What do you all think?