“Forget the former things;do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV)
19
I love routine and am rather nostalgic. So I've struggled over the summer in deciding whether to enter into my 22nd year of Words from the Well or to embrace something new. Comfort and familiarity are always much easier for me to embrace and hang onto. But I have to be honest that the last couple of years found me using more archived devotions than ever before. I awoke some days just not feeling it.
When I found myself thinking, yes, I think I still want to do this, I had to remind myself of my weariness of the grind of writing a devotion five days a week. Summers off the past couple of years had not changed that. So last week I came to the decision to end my WftW writings and embrace something new.
My passion as I begin to look to the future beyond the ministry I currently do is to write, to speak, and to consult with churches and parents about how to raise kids that will be devoted followers of Jesus. The statistics are startling and depressing with regards to young people raised in the church. Sixty to seventy-five percent of high school graduates leave the church and often their faith in their post-high school years. And the majority of the others, if truth be told, have little spiritual maturity. Overall, there is very little return for all the time, effort, and money spent by churches on children and youth programs. And I see it every year at this time as new freshmen walk onto campus.
There is a problem, which most church leaders acknowledge, but they continue the same approach that helped create the problem in the first place. Using my years of experience working "downstream" from the local church's children and youth programs, I have some thoughts on how to begin to remedy this.
So I want to turn my focus to this, as well to writing about other things involving applying faith to life. It has been a privilege occupying this space over the years. Know that it will remain and you can return to it as often as you want.
If you wish to follow me on this new adventure, please go to www.jimmusser.com I will have my first post up in a day or two.
Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to share with you the words the Lord inspired me to give you every morning. I am grateful that they were a blessing to many of you.
Jim
