Utumishi Blog

Why are the girls in the church youth group all getting babies out of wedlock? Is it:

1. They don’t know it’s wrong. Solution: Tell them and tell them again.
2. They don’t know why it’s wrong. Solution: Explain the reasons and the logic.

The first approach might occasionally be appropriate – particularly with a brand new Christian from a pagan background – but it isn’t the problem for most people. The second approach is much better.  Here we’re asking people to Think – not just drone-like obedience. Answering the ‘Why’ is much more powerful than ‘Just Do It’, particularly if we go beyond practical, pragmatic, me-centred reasons for obedience and start talking about Biblical worldview, gospel dynamics, changed identities.

But what if we know what to do, we even know why we should do it, and we still don’t do it? What’s the problem? And what’s the solution? More talks, more discipline, more accountability groups?

One of the biggest things I learnt in 2012 was that we (humans) are fundamentally driven by our passions, our heart, our affections. The talk that particularly convinced me was this one by Peter Mead (this is an edited, illustrated clip of the first half):

If this is true then there are a lot of implications. Here are a few:

• In discipling and youth work it’s not enough to educate. People need to have their hearts captured by a greater vision, bowled over by a greater love – Christ.
• In our personal Bible reading we are not just seeking information about God and his commands, we are seeing to know Him, to relate to Him heart-to-heart (Mead talks about how to do this in practice in another part of his talk – here).
• In preaching we’re not just conveying information, we’re targeting the heart. Not in an emotionally manipulative pumping-up sort of way but by presenting the heart with the right object and author of love – Christ.