Kevin Swanson is the executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado, and has a popular radio program called "Generations With Vision." Here's a quote from him about the danger of separating the generations for education and ministry. I completely agree (although I might add that in his quote, as do most people who are trying to make a point, he uses generalizations that may or may not be true. For example, I don't think that every child that has to go to daycare is disconnected relationally from his parents - but I don't really think Swanson means that, either). This thought is one of the reasons why we encourage the youth and college students to be part of the ministry of the body as much as possible. We grow from relationships that bridge generations.
"Love requires movement toward the one we love. It is personal involvement. The Bible speaks often of Jesus as "moved with compassion" and then He always proceeds to involvement in the problems of others. It is one thing to "love" mankind through cold institutions, and other thing to personally visit a widows and lovingly disciple a little child.
"After two hundred years of building our institutions on the worldview of Rousseau, such things as relationships and love seem to be distant concepts anymore. If love is movement, our modern institutions have worked hard to create a fixed distance between persons in family, church and community. Our educational systems lay down those limits, and this inevitably impacts marriage, the family, and the Church. The distance ensured by removing a child from relationship at two years of age into daycare, by segregating familes, and by compartmentalizing groups of people in school and church by age, marriage status, their "special need," etc., assures some form of pseudo-relationship, but it doesn't do much to create opportunity for love to operate. The engineered distance set by our institutions keeps things safe and manageable, but it certainly doesn't allow for the movement of love."
I am realizing more and more how love and discipleship is much messier than we think, and that's a good thing. My natural instinct is to shy away from problems or uneasiness. Jesus faces them head-on. I wanna be more like him.
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