From the other side of the Glass

Last Saturday, I went to an "Understanding Teens" seminar that was held up in Moncton, with one of my friends, who just happens to help with youth. The Seminar was geared toward parents, but I felt we could get some helpful insight by going.

As we sat there in the High School auditorium, something hit me, besides realizing we were almost the only 2 people there who weren't married and had a child. What hit me was how differently we look at things now that we are out in ministry.

Back at Bethany we were pretty well immersed in the hypothetical, with some practical. We went to class every day, most of us, and once a week helped out with or ran some sort of ministry. So our perspective of ministry was pretty much shaped by what we were told in textbooks.

The best way I can think to describe this comes from a junior high school memory. We used to have a class called Family Education, or something like that. In this class we'd spend time learning about the development of children and then after a few weeks we'd throw together a temporary day care. During these weeks there would be a time we would sit behind this one way mirror, you know the kind they have in jail, and watch the childrens' behavior. Then we'd paly Freud, Skinner, Piaget or some other psychologist and try to explain why they do certain things and how we should respond. This is pretty much what we did in our classes at Bethany

Now we find ourselves on the otherside of that glass. Now we're immersed in the practical and we dabble in the hypothetical. Other than the few seminars we hit or the books we read our perspectives are now being shaped by our experience.