By: Ben Mixon
Another week of prayer is at the doorstep of CA, and students expect the same as always. A week of being pressured into standing for repetitive song services and half listening to the testimonies and stories of the speakers, while trying to sleep amid the ice cold chapel AC. Behavior is easy to see, but difficult to explain. Collegedale Academy is one of the best high school environments for God to flourish from a parental perspective. So why do the students of CA feel so…bored when it comes to Christianity?
New Religion teacher Mrs. Foster has already picked up on the seemingly stoic attitude of the student body after teaching at CA for a mere month and a half. Last week, she presented the senior class with a question, “How can we possibly keep the message of Christ fresh?”
A lot of students have been here or in other Adventist school systems since the beginning of memory. The word “fresh” does not even compute anymore when gesturing to religion. Being asked how to liven up the teaching of the gospel by an adult is also not something unfamiliar. So how much of a role do adults play in making God exciting for Adventist school veterans?
At the high school level, it is no longer the obligation of the staff to bring a fresh version of the gospel to us, the youth. We are in a transition involving taking the reigns of our own lives and making our own decisions. No one, not even parents, should expect to still influence our beliefs as we approach the upper teen years.
Adults continue, however, to think they should try to influence our beliefs and verbally feed us with their knowledge and experience. In a classroom setting, teachers seem so pressured to tell students everything they know, because they think that if they don’t, they have failed their job. This is a turn off to a students desire to learn. Teachers who frantically scramble to feed students information tend to dry up a young persons appetite for knowledge. Keeping the message fresh in a group setting cannot and will not be more successful than an individual consciously attempting, in his or her own free time and space, to hear and feel God.
So what can make us seek the Word as individuals? I submit that it is God, and only God, who can inspire us to search out His gospel. Adults should be there to help us and answer questions if asked, much like Christ will enter our lives if we ask Him to do so. They must lead by example, and ease off making God feel like such a requirement. Regardless of what this week of prayer brings, students and teachers alike must find their own method of freshening God, and rely on Him to draw close.
