Monday 23 January 2012

Nurturing Passions

This post is a conglomeration of two ideas which I realised were basically the same:

1. As parents we need to nurture our kids in whatever THEY love
2. Mission activities are more likely to work if the people involved are passionate about them

It's all about nurturing the passions of others; in their work, their free time, their time for God.

As a mum I spend a lot of time being led by Rachel is what she wants to do and then allowing that to form whatever it is we can learn together.  You do not need a writing pad to practice writing; a white board and a game of classrooms can achieve just the same thing.  You don't need books to practice reading; getting a magazine is a great way of reading and hardly realising it.  You don't need to write lines of numbers to practice mental arithmetic; just give your child some pocket money and let them work out what they can buy with it.

It sounds easy and it pretty much is; make the focus football or dancing or shopping or cinema or cycling or jumping or museums or parks; there are a million ways to teach our kids life long lessons (academic and otherwise) without using a classroom.

And so is true of organising a church to grow and do more.  You can set up a soup kitchen in the church hall if you have people who are passionate about the homeless and have the time and energy to serve them.  But if your church is full of people who love to sing and dance then why not organise a community am-dram group which have loads of fun and bring people together. 

Rather than starting from blank ideas; start from what people love.  Tap into the passion and everyone will take off with the ideas and make a success of whatever it is.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Rather than starting from blank ideas; start from what people love. Tap into the passion and everyone will take off with the ideas and make a success of whatever it is."

Thank you so much for this thought. It mirrors what our bishop said when he came to talk about MIssion Action Planning to the PCC.
It is good to be reminded of it.

LLM Calling said...

thanks for the feedback, I feel a bit like my thoughts are sometimes too random, but if they concur with a bishop then.... :)