The Prayer: Explained Further

I thought tonight's discussion went well. I hope you guys will continue it on Ryan's post. It's two posts down. Please go do that.

As for the prayer issue, in case you didn't notice, that was completely unplanned. I wanted someone new to pray, I thought of Ben but knew he never would, so I decided to ask him to anyway. When he refused, something told me to not let it go, and it went on from there. The part where I suggested that we not pray at all as long as Ben refused to...well I really had no clue what that was about. It just felt like the thing to do - not for the sake of embarrassing Ben, but for the sake of making a point. That point? Well, like I said, I wasn't really sure, it just felt right.

On the way home, the point kind of came to me, so I thought I'd try to explain it: Part of the problem in our youth group (which we never really covered in the actual discussion but certainly could have) is that we have a lot of members that, aside from hiding things from us, seem to actually rebel against us. Even if they are, for the most part, one of the "main characters" in our youth group, they still harbor this attitude that says, "I'm not doing that and you can't make me."

The point: As long as we have attitudes like this in our youth group, our youth group remains incomplete, get it? I think the point of not praying tonight was to bring attention to how we remain incomplete as long as one member refuses to do their part.

I didn't mean to embarrass Ben, and if it had been anyone else, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't criticize someone for being shy, but I knew that this wouldn't be the case with Ben. It's okay if somebody is too shy to pray. It's not okay to rebel against the purpose of our youth group.