The Face of the Future

I wish you could look into the faces I see every Tuesday.

Five young men grimace, laugh, and groan in a grass-roots communication class. We meet in the old milk house attached to our barn, once a place to store nourishment, now a place to drink it in—and we work on everything from spelling and grammar to speaking and reading aloud. It's an animated group, spirited, full of ideas, and punctuated with lots of mirth. We even have a time for exercise built into our 2-1/2 hour class in order to burn off some of the excess energy generated by fourteen to sixteen year old men. (So far, I can keep up most of the time . . .)

A frequent assignment is to bring to class a piece of "fabulous writing," ready to read it aloud. Who better to learn communication from than the master communicators? We've heard from Churchill to Hitler and Tolkien to Dekker and MacArthur to Mohler—writers, leaders, and first-class communicators who employed their skills to influence people for good or evil.

It was a natural progression to learn to communicate from the Master of the masters, to read the Word of God aloud in a way that expresses what He really thinks in a way that people can understand it. Together we wove Scriptures together to offer thanks and praise to God, then offered to present the medley to churches. The video below is the unedited version of the reading they shared last week in a church right here in Ferndale.

I've often told these men that they are the future of the church. Not one of them may be a pastor or a "professional communicator," but every one of them needs to know how to lead a family, to speak to needs in the Body of Christ, to instruct people on the job. They are the face of the future, and as I watch them, I have hope.


PS—Please pardon the videography; I shot this on my phone while sitting in congregation and trying not to shake :)

Everything that Breathes—12-7-14 from Robert Robbins on Vimeo.