To my understanding the Youth Pastors in this area of South Florida have been having "network" meetings for years. I was made aware of this pretty early on in moving here to Florida, working for a Christian clothing store. And when I came of staff with Youth for Christ almost 3 years ago I was excited to be apart of this "network" of youth Pastors and youth workers. In the last 3 years however this network has changed so many different times in so many different ways. It is after all logical that it would have changes, I mean the average stay for a youth pastor is like 18 months or something crazy like that, and leadership is hard for one person with other obligations to prioritize when "networking" isn't a part of their job description.
Well this week we had some miscommunication that took place between some members of the network, and not only am I unclear as to what happened, but there was another organization that may have gotten the impression that YFC was not for them or with them. This is not really the point of this post but this situation got me thinking what does networking mean and when it comes to the Kingdom and His causes how do we accomplish this.
I would never dare to suggest that I have any answers or that my ideas are correct, I just think when it comes to the kingdom and reaching the lost we all have lost the purpose of networking. We constantly pin larger churches in competition with smaller churches, and one organization against another. And this is sad, I can't help but believe that satan is having a hay day with this kind of philosophy, being able create this idea that we don't ALL have the same mission and calling to reach the lost and to disciple believers. This individualized understanding of different talents and gifts doesn't mean we reach out in different ways, doesn't it in fact mean that we work together to do it more completely???
Well I could go on and end up in a very long dialog that has nothing to do with this topic, but I want to know what do you think about networking, have you seen it done right? Or maybe I'm way off and the purpose of a network should be something else- maybe encouragement or accountability? Either way I'm not positive but I don't think the word network is even used in the Bible....however "unity" is used several times in scripture, perhaps we should strive for more of that?
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