Reaction to the Book Growing Young

Essay#1: Describe your reaction to the book Growing Young

My reaction to the book Growing Young is that the book is beneficial and is of more importance to the young generation. Fundamentally, the book aims at bringing back the young generation who does not value church back to the church again. The book is centered on the efforts which various churches undertake to fight against the massive decline of the church population (Powell, 2016). These churches to achieve this mission, they use various criterion including, engaging the young people on spiritual matters and besides this, growing spiritually and emotionally through conducting of various missions.

The book Growing Young is critical because it pinpoints the value of preaching the gospel and the scripture narrative to the entire universe (Powell, 2016). A greater population is made up of the youth, and in contrast, the youth have ignored the church. Therefore the primary target of this book is especially on the young people. The book tries to unfold each scripture of the bible so that everyone can be able to recognize the living Christ. As demonstrated in the book, no one wishes to go to hell, and at the same time, the worldly pleasures is a great barrier to the journey of knowing Christ. Many youths ignore the church and instead embraces the worldly pleasures, hoping to know the word of Christ and scriptures at a later time. But this is not always the case; many youths perish as a result of these worldly pleasures. The book Growing Young therefore comes to the rescue of the young generation against these pleasures of the world (Stewart, 2017). Since the book values the preaching of the scriptures, there has still been a great setback in achieving the goal of unfolding the word of God and increasing the church population. This is because only few student ministries and churches have taken this issue on board. Moreover, the book Growing Young aims at recruiting the next generation pastors at their young age by making the youth to undertake various church ministries. The church wants the youth to take ministerial missions so seriously and want a total commitment of the young people to these missions (Powell, 2016).

Conceivably, the books point out that, there is no good point or time to be ordained in the church than when someone is at his teenage. The passion and feeling to become a future generation pastor begin here, and this will assist the teenage to grow spiritual and avoid issues like backsliding and avoiding the church. It seems like Growing Young is a principle for the modern way to encourage the whole congregation and also to promote growth just for the sake of growth (Stewart, 2017). It can be noted that Growing Young has been recognized of late due to the existence of different tribes than many of the readers of this book.

Ideally speaking, I have realized that this book is full of encouragement and at the same time challenging. It is worth noting that the book is not challenging negatively but instead a positive manner. It gives you hope and light in your future life. Moreover, it prescribes the code and moral principles that help one to live a good life. In the long run, one will be challenged to take serious steps to growing the church young. Growing Young is a serious analysis of widely recognized practices from many churches. Growing Young offers more recent information and also assists in interpretation of how churches should engage the young people in carrying out the activities of the church. The book outlines the important of knowing what it means to be young in the todays world, and this is incorporated in the price and value of the book. Due to the existence of culture among the teens, the book aims at advising the youth to start their adult development at an earlier stage (Powell, 2016).

Additionally, Growing Young was written with a faithful heart to the almighty God. This was made possible by leveraging the different skills and resources that the young generation had been blessed with. But there has been a feeling to me that Growing Young was written with a lot of pragmatism, but the general tenor of this book was the love of the church. One should note that Growing Young does not entail persuading the young generation just for the main objective of increasing the number of people in the church (Powell, 2016).

My further reaction to the book Growing Young is that it is aimed at the pursuit of Jesus. Moreover, I appreciate the emphasis the book has consistently created by taking the word of God with much seriousness it deserves. However, in as much as I appreciate this, there are some conclusions in the book that I do not agree with. This conclusion is: some of the authors have not mentioned the word preaching on the churches Growing Young. The authors give their views by indication this area as where some of the leaders will invest less time on.

Essay Three ideas of the book that are interesting

First, the idea I find interesting is the fact of the recognition of hope for churches today. The author of the book encourages and gives hope to spiritual leaders that there are hope and fruits to come after unfolding the work of Christ to the world. Everything is not lost according to the authors of this book. This is because there is particular group of the church that is specifically engaging in and preparing the church next generation (Stewart, 2017). Another reason because this idea is interesting is that; the young generation is not an add-on to today's churches, but rather they should be the center and heart of the church today.

When all this is done in the right way, it will bring a true picture of the whole church congregation, and this will give hope to the members of the church. It is worth noting that, if we initiate all the necessary steps to bridge the gap that exists in our generation, then all people will grow young. With the hope, individuals will start to volunteer to take positions in the church and to carry out various ministerial activities. Moreover, the young people will in most cases desire to create relationships not only with their fellow young leaders but with seasoned leaders in the church as well. Undeniably, the idea can be valuable in my own life in that it inspires me as well an give me hope for good life. Moreover, it helps me in acknowledging the importance of youth leadership in the church. In addition to this, the area encourages me to engage and volunteer in different church activities and knowing that all I do will not go in vain, but there is an ultimate price to come (Powell, 2016).

The second interesting idea is the area that indicates that young people are compelled by a faith that promises reward in heaven. This area is of interest to me because it requires a total commitment for one to enjoy the heavenly promises. It is quite interesting that the reward is an eternal reward; hence the young generation should fight at all cost to live in the moral ways of the church to inherit this reward. There is, however, a great set back especially to the young generation in achieving this mission is the worldly pleasures and the dynamic culture among the teens. Notably, the churches are entrusted with helping the church as a whole in achieving the mission of eternal life which is the reward. The authors of the book Growing Young stresses that churches who have successfully reached out to young people are open to dialogue with the outside members of the church. Moreover, they view culture as not being an enemy. Everyone should live according to the principles of the church, and surely the promises shall be inherited.

This idea is valuable to me because it gives me a positive challenge in life and it makes me desire the promises of following a good faith. This area challenges me to as well seek the promises of heaven. I should involve my fellow church members so that the promises can be seen as a great objective that the church should work towards to. Moreover, it helps me to sacrifice and deny myself now of the worldly pleasures and enjoy a bumper reward of eternity (Powell, 2016).

The third interesting idea of this book is the title of the book itself Growing Young and the emphasis on forming a community. To be honest, by reading the title itself even before reading the book, I have a feeling that the book has good information stored in it. At the end of the all story, the church is aiming to start a conversation that will engage the young generation in the church (Powell, 2016). The title is a positive title if I may say and it gives you hope and encouragement in reading the book. This is valuable in my life since the title of the book gives me a lot of curiosity and encouragement to find more good things about the book.

On the other hand on the issue of community, formation of community in the church is important as well. The authors put more emphasis on these formations because the missions of the church are not individual missions but collective missions. Members of the church work together to bring back the lost members of the church back. Moreover, the formation of communities enables the members to overcome temptations through prayers collectively. In reality, the formation of a group is important because it can emerge into a tiny church in the long run. This can make people miss church but not miss their small formed groups. This area is valuable in my life because it will give me a lot of encouragement, since will be carrying out our activities as a group and also it will offer a wide range of consultation from the group. In summary, the church missions and objectives will be achieved as a group.

References

Powell, K. E. (2016). Growing young: Six essential strategies to help young people discover and love your church. Grand Rapids: Baker Books