THE ADOLESCENT CHURCH
Michael D. Musselman
April 1, 1990
It was fall. I was a teenager. And the annual back-to-school ritual had begun. Mom hustled me off to the mall and dogged me from clothes rack to clothes rack as I painstakingly selected three shirts.
"What's wrong with this?" she demanded, holding a bright red-checked shirt to my chest. I hated checks.
"I don't like it," I moaned, my fragile teenage ego already dented by Mom's mere presence.
"You need enough shirts to get through the week," she declared with finality. "Now, this is a perfectly good shirt."
Needless to say, I went home with five shirts that afternoon and dutifully put them in my closet. The three shirts I picked, I wore. The others I didn't-not simply because I childishly balked at parental authority, but because I was also emerging into an adult, and I needed to make some decisions for myself.
Many times church leaders are frustrated with a congregation's lack of enthusiasm for a perfectly good church program. Perhaps it's because they have, not a rebellious child, but an emerging adult on their hands. A congregation not only grows physically, but also moves toward maturity. And that causes growing pains.
As an elder in a growing church, I worked with an adolescent congregation. Our church Session had successfully overhauled a stagnant, dying fellowship by introducing an innovative small-group ministry. "If you want to be a part of what's going on," we implied, "a small group is the place to be." Many of our people, especially our new arrivals, instantly felt they had a place to belong within the church.
Then, to improve pastoral oversight, the Session modified the system. Groups were clustered around elders who led them in monthly fellowship meetings. A few groups complained that this disrupted their routine. ...
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