I was hesitant to post the blog entry I did last night. For several reasons. 1) Is is approrpriate for my blog? 2) Am I not giving people enough credit for being discerning? 3) Etc., etc.
My main reason for posting the article was just to bring attention to people about what is going on in our churches. This probably wasn’t surprising to most people, because we have either a) witnessed it ourselves, b) been a victim of the church “pick up”, or 3) have tried to “pick up” people ourselves at church. And when I say “pick up” I don’t mean sexually, though that may have been the intent, or is the intent of some of you.
But as the director of a college ministry, we have had to, on several occassions ask different people not to come back to our group, or have had to pull them aside becuase they were acting inappropriately…mainly being overly aggressive with the women in our ministry. Interestingly enough, we have not yet had to pull a college student aside, but rather, adults who have come intentionally into our group to “pick up” on women. Some of the instances have been more severe than others.
I believe that the women in our ministry are very wise and discerning people, and that we as a community do our best to make the church/worship environment a safe place for everyone.
So I posted the article as a reminder to our students that we need to continue, both men and women, to make this a safe environment for everyone. And to bring attention to those people who might be unaware of some of the more sly efforts of those who try to aggressively pursue our students in a threatening way.
Everyone is hoping to find someone at church that they can connect with, date, fall in love with, and eventually get married. Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of us. After all, I met my wife at one of our young adult worship services. So that is not the issue. A lot of us are looking for Christian people to enter into a relationship with. I am just more concerned about those people with bad intentions, who actually use church, or the worship service as a time and place to scout and recruit after women.
And I might just be more sensitive to this issue, because this has been a big problem for us in our larger church body at times. Recently my friend just said to me that his buddies were commenting on how the 11am church service at Bel Air, is the hottest night club in town. So maybe I’m just really aware of some of the dynamics that go on during our worship services.
Ultimately….this is to be expected from Maxim. But maybe I would actually be more concerned about it if it was coming from Christianity Today or some Christian publication.
At any rate, this has turned down other directions from some other bloggers:
Check out Sycamore who posts about The Need for Protection in Church
Which is followed by a response from Cerulean Sanctum who has a different take than Brian.
