Rabbits in headlights

I was speaking to a group of young people this week about David and Goliath and I used an illustration of rabbits in headlights. If you drive along a country road at night and you catch a rabbit crossing the road, it will tend to stand still, almost as if it is mesmerised by the car headlights. Why don't they keep hopping across the road instead of waiting for their impending collision?

The point I was making to the young people was how the Israelites were like this when they saw the size of Goliath, the nine and a half foot tall giant. They were paralysed by what they saw, whereas David walks in with his confidence in the living God. So instead of waiting for the impending beating from the giant, he knows that his God is greater than any giant.

This got me thinking as to whether some churches are a bit like these rabbits in how they view young people: they are leaving our churches and there is nothing we can do about it.

However, if we view the situation through the eyes of David, with his confidence in the living God, how different might it look? With God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).

God doesn't want the young people to be turning away from our churches either so we have to walk with our confidence in him, that we can find a way to stop the trend, to work out new ways of reaching young people, even if it means defining new ways of doing youth ministry in our churches.

If we don't, our churches will experience the inevitable fate of the rabbit.

Andy

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