Youth ministries often do a good job at offering grace. If we had to err on the side of either having high expectations or offering too much grace, I'll pick grace every time. However, we need to do a better job at expecting tons from our students. Because it's not just them who will be trying to live up to Jesus' expectations, it will be the Holy Spirit living in them as regenerate believers who will spur them on and transform them more and more into the image of Christ.
Anyways, I do admire at times the expectations the LDS church places on their members. If I'm honest with myself, our youth ministry has a long way to go in helping each student understand that he or she is a missionary wherever God has placed them in life. Of course, whenever we hold high expectations in one hand, we need hold plenty of reminders about God's grace and Jesus' work on the cross in the other.
From the article:
We think to ourselves how "behind the times" these young people are forced to be when they are required to do door-to-door evangelism for their religion. We reflect on how grateful we are that we have the truth once and for all delivered to the saints. We may even think about how much more superior our youth ministry strategies are compared to theirs.
Or are they?
* Mormons expect a lot out of their teenagers. We don't.
* Mormons ordain their young men into the ministry at the age of twelve. We don't.
* Mormons require their teens to attend seminary every day of high school. We don't.
* Mormons ask for two years in the field of every graduating senior. We don't.
Maybe that's why we don't meet a lot of ex-Mormons, while there are hundreds of thousands of former church attendees in the true church of Jesus Christ (of everyday saints) who flee the church after graduating from high school.
Maybe that's why Mormons give more, work harder and are exploding as a religion. In 1985 there were 4.5 million Mormons and now there are over 12 million.
When many of our teens graduate from high school, they grab their books and a beer and go off to the college dorm (A.K.A. "The Party Zone"). When Mormon teens graduate from high school they grab a backpack and a bike pump and go off on a mission.
They know what they believe and why they believe it. They've hammered out their theology on our doorsteps. Their souls and minds have been steeled and sealed into Mormon orthodoxy through their fanatical commitment to the accomplishment of their version of the Great Commission.
Meanwhile we compress most of our mission work into one week in Mexico once every year or two. And even that is comprised mostly of building houses, not necessarily advancing the kingdom of God and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
