Tonight I met with the 14-18 peer cell leaders. This is always a highlight of my youth work with Sarah as these young people are excellent and really such a joy to be with. It’s always quite sad when they leave the house at the end of the session as the discussions are always thoughtful and real.

Tonight we were looking at questions as one person in particular was struggling to find answers for questions. We came to the conclusion that many in church seem to have stopped asking questions and that they just accept certain things about their faith because ‘they just do’.

Could it be that people have stopped asking because they are afraid of what they might find? Does this indicate that people do not have real trust in who God is? This was a possible conclusion we came up with. We felt there was some evidence too.

The church has failed to make a significant impact on this nation. We wondered if that indicated a lack of trust in our message by those in church? If so, does that lack of trust come from a failure to question? When we question, when we analyse, when we turn to the Bible we look afresh at what we believe, we question whether what we read is backed up in experience, we search for new ways to assimilate ancient truths into our everyday lives, we look to re-interpret for ourselves and our culture.

A failure to question is to take on old truths in old packaging that we do not really understand. We take these on because we trust the person that taught us years ago the truths that he (and only very possibly she)had based their lives on. In effect we are living on that persons faith. Because we have not had to test this, to question this, to analyse this, it is difficult to trust our lives to it.

Tonight these young people decided that they needed to question more, that they needed to take on these ancient truths, but in a new way, in a way that will have meaning for them, and in a way that will have meaning for their peers.

Tonight was exciting, and I am really looking forward to taking up this discussion again with these people in a few weeks.